Sept 21 : Martial Law & Memory Truth Telling

How does one tell the story of a decade and a half of martial law to the young generation today?
 The proclamation of martial law happened on Sept 21, 1972. 
When it happened, the general population did not know how to react to the proclamation.

 The analysis of sociologist Randy David was that: 
(a) the ordinary person did not have civil and political consciousness and that
(b) there was widespread poverty and everyone was willing to give a chance to an unknown kind of authoritarianism that had legal justification in the 1935 constitution ( paraphrasing mine).

That brand of authoritarianism just fell into place and into the hearts and minds of Filipinos so used to patronage politics – until the promised abundance of the so-called New Society that was supposed to be rid of corruption did not happen at all. 

Up to now, I am still amazed at how the Filipino took too long to oust a dictator who ruled for over two decades.
Or for that matter, how our judiciary, at that time, said that it cannot rule against a presidential prerogative as it was a domain that involves a political question or one that belongs to the realm of the sovereign people, as the 1973 Constitution had been ratified by citizen's assemblies. 

This was weaponizing the law & gave that era a semblance of constitutional authoritarianism.

We said: What is so - called "legal" is not always just.

When martial law was proclaimed, I was in an out of town school and my mother who happened to be separated for four years from her parents during the second world war suddenly ordered me to fly home.
I obeyed because parents know best.
There were no classes for two weeks or so.
It was such an uncertain juncture in time.
As a burgeoning social activist, I was part of a group which was into study sessions analyzing the problems of society.
A few years later, I decided to pursue studies about society and development like it was my personal reaction to the historical events happening and unfolding before my eyes.

What palpable changes do we see now in our institutions?
One change is the way we have reformulated the martial law provisions in our 1987 Constitution which now provides for both Congress and our Supreme Court to look into and inquire into the validity or factual basis of any martial law proclamation using their checks and balance functions. In this sense, we have been politically educated. We have institutionalized people power in our charter provisions such as recall, initiative and referendum.

But, we are still a very poor country. Our country is run by the oligarchy: by no more than 300 families that hold more than 70 percent of the national wealth.
Yet, our people are constantly always hopeful and resilient.
When one is in the rock bottom, one feels one has nothing to lose.

This time, we are placing our hopes in a political vision that is constantly evolving.
We have learned a lot of lessons from almost two decades of martial law which was legally justified in a colonial 1935 constitution.
We have since then changed that colonial martial law provision in our 1987 charter so that our children will never again experience that dark era in our history as a young nation.  

Hostage in Hindsight

The view is different when one is looking back. A literary artist said that except for historians, hindsight is the lowest form of intelligence. So, firstly, I will share some of my emotions when the hostage taking by a decorated ex- cop was happening in iconic Rizal Park. I prayed for the safety of our women and men in uniform, our media practitioners, tourists and everyone involved when it was happening. The whole wired world was looking at the tragic event and we even landed in the New York Times. The social media were tweeting to the hilt. So, after the fact, we have lessons learned.

Could have we prevented what happened? Was there something that we could have done to prevent the tragic event? In hindsight we make postmortem reflections as lessons learned. There is no excuse for hostage taking. It is a heinous act. I guess, one taking this route is ready to die. In this sense, the hostage taker is making a political statement. One predictor of rebellion is perception of injustice, rightly or wrongly. So, there is sense in the analysis that a skilled negotiator should have been appointed for the hostage crisis very early on.

Experts are saying that hostage taking is a desperate final attempt or a form of bargaining. The analysis is that Rolando Mendoza, probably thought that he will never be heard. And yes, there could have been success if it was handled better. How does one policeman go from being decorated to becoming an outlaw? His colleagues are saying that they know Mendoza as moral. So, from 1986 when he was decorated as one of ten outstanding policemen in the country to 2010, his feelings of frustration escalated to tragic titer or levels.

We all get frustrated in our lives at one point or another but there are persons who are prone to slide towards mental illness. When frustrated, most of us get off and move on while others develop psychiatric tendencies. There was a recent suicide in our school and so we, teachers, have been especially urged to spot some tendencies in our students. So, I have been watching out for both physical and other signs and symptoms such as depression and anxiety, sleepiness and thus insomnia, difficulty in concentration plus what we call the shut out syndrome ( physically present in class but mentally absent).

Did media exacerbate the inflamed feelings of the hostage taker by the live coverage? Someone said, yes to coverage but not live. Or just delay the coverage. A media expert said, we should never blame media. Reportage is what media people do. I believe that media practitioners are risking their lives by just being there to cover the incident for us who are ensconced in the comfort of our homes.

Mostly, citizen journalists in social media who were looking at the live coverage were saying that our men in uniform, our SWAT (special weapons and tactic police) team were inept, unskilled, incompetent, unprepared and lacked equipments. For sure, these need looking after by our government. Another analysis is that even if the systems for managing these types of crisis were in place, the officers in uniform did not feel at liberty to carry out their tasks in deference to higher officials who wanted to call the shots.

For the victims, they do need to heal and there is a standard protocol for
this : diffusing, debriefing but each victim must be treated individually as a special case.

The travel ban by the HongKong authorities or for their tourist nationals not to visit the Philippines is uncalled for. Can you imagine if the world also issued a travel ban to China during a time when there was melamine or lead poisoning that implicated China?

Life goes on for the Philippines. One foolish incident should not make life less beautiful for us in our lovely islands in the Pacific.

We & The Others : Towards Multiculturalism

I spent most days last week in this season of Ramadan talking to Shari’a court judges and learned scholars and ordinary folks in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao (ARMM) and I have come out from that experience renewed with my long standing personal resolve that we should not be afraid of a separate juridical entity or another state for Muslim Mindanao. 

I say this also in reaction to a recent opinion by Amando Doronila in the Philippine Daily Inquirer ( PDI, Aug 23, 2010) saying that the Dean Marvic Leonen remark about being open to the option of charter change if needed for a new peace agreement with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) is reviving the controversial issue of Philippine national territory partition. This remark by Doronila has been perceived to be not promoting “self determination.” In this sense, media should look at the issues with good judgment. For example, to implement some of the 1976 provisions of the Tripoli agreement with the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), the required constitutional amendment happened in 1987 and the Final Peace Agreement happened in 1996. Not that the decade long interregnum should be the rule but rather the exception. Suffice it to say that whatever political configuration is arrived at, the legal requirements and constitutional processes can be worked out and given a timetable.

Anyone afraid of partition needs to be educated about history and about multiculturalism. The Moro sultanates in Mindanao are older than the Philippine Republic. Given that the Mindanao problem is one of the longest running problems in the world, we should at the least, be open to new political configurations, partnerships and political projects. We can have parallel governments. Since time immemorial, the strategy is assimilation and integration of minority groups while the dominant groups are holding social, economic and political power. This has resulted to minoritization and subordination. We, women identify with what feminists call the “ othering process” because for centuries now we have come to be subordinate to men. Now, our ideals are multiculturalism, appreciation of cultural diversity, peace, equality and development. We want everything.

We can certainly learn from one of the oldest cultures in the world that has withstood time. We can enrich our differing cultures. We will share standards of human rights but we are also different in many ways.

Who is afraid of partition? Where is the fear coming from? Are we afraid of the Muslim culture? Are we afraid that we will be subjected to Muslim laws? Personal laws and status follow a person wherever he or she goes. Non Muslims will never be subjected to Muslim laws. We have freedom of religion. What we should be afraid of is when our church or umma will define for us how we should practice our religious freedom guarantee. We should be afraid of political projects of local kingpins for domination, control and hegemony through the misuse of religious symbols. Then, too, local kingpins can be in cahoots with a corrupt center of power. We are hoping that all these are in the past now and we have learned our lessons. We are not wanting in formulas for peace. What is needed is the political will to change the structures that do not work.