Left Flank

Manuel L. Quezon, III has a biting satire of a commentary about Philippines' President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's plight (the only female politician in the world more conflicted about her marriage than Hillary Clinton), as her advisers and the First Husband testify to Congress over the NBN-ZTE scandal. Quezon subjects her administration to Confucian judgment.

Confucius rejoined: Ch'iu, an honest man hates your hypocrite who will not openly avow his greed, but tries instead to excuse it. I have heard that the ruler of a state or of a clan is troubled not by the smallness of its numbers but by the absence of even-handed justice; not by poverty but by the presence of discontent; for where there is justice there will be no poverty; where there is harmony there will be no lack in numbers; where there is content there will be no revolution. This being the case then, if outlying communities resist your authority, cultivate the arts of refinement and goodness in order to attract them; and when you have attracted them, make them happy and contented. Now you two, Yu and Ch'iu, are aiding and abetting your master; here is an outlying community which resists your authority, and you are unable to attract it. Partition and collapse are imminent in your own State, and you are unable to preserve it intact. And yet you are planning military aggression within in the borders of your country! Verily I fear that Chi-sun's troubles will come, not from Chuan-yü, but from the interior of his own palace.

GMA's authority in Mindanao ('outlying community'?) is questioned. Troubles might come from inside her palace, but GMA is severing her lifeline to PRC.

«It's an offshoot of the political fallout from the kickbacks controversy,» said Benjamin Diokno, a former budget secretary and now professor of public finance.

Mrs Macapagal scrapped the telecommunications project last year but recent allegations that the government tried to abduct a witness in a Senate probe on the kickbacks scandal gave fresh impetus to the controversy. Last week, up to 10,000 people gathered in the Makati financial district to call for Mrs Macapagal's resignation. Former cabinet members are calling on incumbent officials to quit the government.

About half of the $2.6bn total worth of the 11 projects were meant to be funded by China. These included a $660m project to build video links to more than 26,000 public schools throughout the Philippines and a $380m project to upgrade rail services to towns and cities south of Manila.

Mr Diokno cast doubt on the government spokesman's claim that it has enough money to fund infrastructure projects, pointing out that government had been failing to meet tax collection targets.

The Philippines, which used to be Asia's second-largest issuer of sovereign bonds after Japan, had planned to borrow $1.6bn in official development assistance and $500m in sovereign bonds to meet its $2.1bn external financing requirement this year.

In the end, Quezon has another devilishly clever quote to complete a delightful essay full of opposing viewpoints: "Where graft is informally institutionalized in this way, it provides the basis for state organizations that are effective at collecting taxes, maintaining public order, and repressing political opposition but that may undermine the development of liberal politics."

If you take Chinese money, the RP won't be liberal anymore.

RP-US military and law enforcement cooperation has netted a body with a sadistic past. The corpse of Dulmatin, an Indonesian member of Jemaah Islamiyah(JI), was recovered from Tawi-Tawi, and another JI operative, Mohamad Baehaqi, is in custody.

US Federal Bureau of Investigation and Filipino crime laboratory experts have arrived in this southern city to conduct the tests that officials say will take about a week.

Tissue from the exhumed body will be compared with samples that were taken from Dulmatin's children in the southern Philippines last year.

The US government has offered a 10 million-dollar bounty for Dulmatin, a senior figure in the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI) movement, who is believed to have been hiding out in the south for most of the past five years.

He was earlier reported to have been wounded in a clash with government troops in the region on January 31.

The recovered body bore gunshot wounds in the head, chest and right foot, consistent with earlier accounts of Dulmatin's injuries in the gunfight, Dolorfino said. This bolstered their belief that the body was that of the Indonesian.

Dolorfino said that if that is confirmed, then "this is a big blow to them (JI) as he is the most wanted personality in the Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah" in the Philippines.

The suspect had helped plan and carry out the 2002 bombings in Bali that left 202 people -- many of them Australian tourists -- dead.

According to durianburgdavao's Balanza, Dulmatin had several acolytes, including Mohammed Baehaqi, who were also arrested.

Muhammad Baehaqi alias Latip, Salam and Tato, was collared during a raid by military in a house in Piso, Banaybanay in possession of a .22 Winchester rifle, a shotgun and blasting caps, detonating cords and other bomb-making materials and equipment.

Arrested with Baehaqi were Idamat Generoso and his son Ustadz Mujar, who is a member of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) that the military said is linked to the Jemaah Islamiyah. Baehagi was nabbed in the house of the Idamat Generoso, an employee of the Department of Environment and Natural Resources.

Baehaqi is said to have undergone explosives training under Jemaah Islamiyah bomb experts Dulmatin and Omar Patek, and suspected as the leader of a terrorist team that recently bombed General Santos City, and Makilala and Kidapawan City in North Cotabato.

There is also this Jamestown Foundation piece about the importance of breaking up Dulmatin's group.

Mindanao is The Philippines' Kosovo. Manila favors regional stability over self-determination. The Kosovar declaration comes amid Mindanese protests against Operation Balikatan, a joint RP-US exercise that has reached the "humanitarian" stage.

"Considering the existing sensibilities in the region, continued dialogue should be encouraged among all the parties concerned to ensure regional stability," Foreign Secretary Alberto Romulo said in a statement.

He said the government "would prefer a settlement of the issue...taking into account the internationally accepted principles of sovereignty and territorial integrity."

The country is concerned about its own Muslim separatist movement in Mindanao, where the government is in talks with the rebel Moro Islamic Liberation Front on granting significant autonomy to Muslims.

On Monday, 3,000 local residents, led by national legislators, protested the exercises.

Rebutting the government's claim that the holding of the «Balikatan» exercises was in accordance with the RP-US Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA), Ocampo said the document did not allow for successive military exercises.

«Continued or successive joint military exercises violate the Constitution and even the provisions of VFA. And as we see now, these are not even joint exercises but a one-sided conduct of civic actions by American troops,» he said.

Lt. Col. Julieto Ando, spokesperson of the 6th Infantry Division, shrugged off the accusations, saying the exercises would focus on medical and dental missions, engineering works involving road openings, and school building construction in poor communities.

«We assure them there will be no combat exercises,» Ando said.

Ocampo and Maza lambasted the government for allowing American troops to conduct civic missions in the country.

«Why use uniformed military troops from the United States to conduct these civil and engineering works when it should be the government doing this? If the United States wants to help, it can provide the funds, but it should be Filipinos, not US troops, who should build the bridges and schools,» Ocampo said.

Maza said the humanitarian missions evoked by the US government was just a cover. «These are just an excuse to allow US troops to enter our communities and pursue their real agenda of justifying their war against terrorism,» she said.

Another group of Mindanese legislators is miffed about being left out of the loop.

«Tradition has it that elders and datus are duly consulted on matters of general interest to the populace. This has not been so in this instance as the impending exercise came unannounced, no consultation or prior information dissemination.»

Yet, according to Roger Montana Balanza, assassinations continue and are expected to increase.

A South Korean law designed to manage international marriage brokers due to take effect in June 2008 will be too late for Tran Thanh Lan and four South Koreans indicted for human trafficking in The Philippines. But,the two incidents dramatize the consequences, when South Korean men go looking for brides in lesser-developed states.

The business began in the late 1990s by matching South Korean farmers or the physically disabled mostly to ethnic Koreans in China, according to brokers and the Korea Consumer Protection Board. But by 2003, the majority of customers were urban bachelors, and the foreign brides came from a host of countries. The board says 2,000 to 3,000 agencies operate now.

The widespread availability of gender-screening technology since the 1980s has resulted in an overabundance of South Korean males. What is more, South Korea's growing wealth has increased women's educational and employment opportunities, even as it has led to rising divorce rates and plummeting birthrates.

"Nowadays, Korean women have higher standards," said Lee Eun Tae, the owner of Interwedding, an agency that last year matched 400 Korean bachelors with brides from Vietnam, China, the Philippines, Mongolia, Thailand, Cambodia, Uzbekistan and Indonesia. "If a man has only a high school degree, or lives with his mother, or works only at a small- or medium-size company, or is short or older, or lives in the countryside, he'll find it very difficult to marry in Korea."

Critics say the business demeans and takes advantage of poor women. But brokers say they are merely matching the needs of Korean men and foreign women seeking better lives.

"But this business will get more difficult as those countries get richer," said Won Hyun Jae, the owner of i-Bombit, another agency. "Now, even a disabled Korean man can find a Vietnamese bride. But eventually Vietnamese women will ask why they have to go marry a Korean man when life in Vietnam is good."

For now, Vietnam remains a popular source of brides, second only to China. Marriages with Vietnamese women are considered so successful that the local government of at least one city, Yeongcheon, in South Korea's rural southeast, subsidizes marriage tours only to Vietnam.

There are other sides to these stories. Last October, during the Pusan International Film Festival, I also watched Hello, Stranger, in which a North Korean defector helps a Vietnamese guest worker find his Vietnamese girlfriend. Events turn to tragicomedy as he learns, that his only love, who lied when she claimed only to be working, is actually married to a South Korean man, and that his odyssey to ROK to rescue her and marry her was only a miserable failure replete with a bullying, exploitative boss and language barriers.

Whether another layer of bureaucracy can prevent such regrettable incidents is questionable, but at least it's a recognition of sorts, that all is not right. ROK is a a source, transit, and destination country for human trafficking, according to Human Trafficking.

Rina bravely admits to a praiseworthy perplexity and skepticism about the constitutional fracas occurring around the NBN-ZTE scandal in The Philippines. I'll join her in that predicament, and, as a non-Filipino, I think I need more help than she does.

ZTE Corp. issued a statement denying allegations by witnesses testifying in a Philippine Senate anti-corruption hearing that a former elections chief and President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo's husband were promised huge commissions to clear a national broadband contract with the Chinese company.

Both men have denied the accusations, and the deal was scrapped last year. But the scandal and nationally televised hearings have continued, threatening Arroyo's administration with fresh opposition protests and coup rumors.

(…)

Last year, a Filipino businessman who lost to ZTE the bid for the project to link online all government offices told senators the US$330 million (€225 million) ZTE proposal was overpriced by US$130 million (€89 million) to accommodate kickbacks demanded by ex-elections commissioner Benjamin Abalos and the president's husband, Jose Miguel "Mike" Arroyo.

Former Socioeconomic Planning Secretary Romulo Neri testified that Abalos offered him a bribe to approve the ZTE proposal, which he refused. Neri stopped short of linking Arroyo or her husband to the scandal.

Last week, Neri's former consultant, Rodolfo Lozada Jr., surfaced in the Senate after claiming he was held for two days by government agents to prevent him from speaking.

He said he discussed the deal with ZTE officials but failed to "moderate the greed" of brokers like Abalos, who last year quit as the elections chief. He also claimed Abalos threatened to kill him if he did not secure a kickback for him.

Obviously, ZTE, and the PRC government, will plead its innocence, and make threatening noises about not spoiling the business environment.

The problem is, that business and constitutional issues are intertwined. On the one hand, there's what actually might have happened between Chinese and Filipino businessmen and the two governments related to broadband companies. But then, because the scandal snared congressional figures, there's the constitutional relationship between Congress and the president. There's also President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's lack of popularity, which doesn't stop her from fighting.

President Arroyo spoke yesterday for the first time about the NBN issue after Lozada's explosive Senate testimony, saying she trusts the impartiality of the Ombudsman in its probe.

«We want to fight corruption.  The Ombudsman, who is constitutionally independent, has announced that she will carry out a review of this issue and the related allegations,» Mrs. Arroyo said in her speech at an economic briefing jointly organized by the Investor Relations Office, the Manila Overseas Press Club, and the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines. Lozada told the Senate last week that her husband and Abalos demanded kickbacks from the ZTE deal.

«We take the ZTE issue very seriously,» Mrs. Arroyo said adding that she «moved quickly to cancel the project as soon as I could after proper consultation with government of China, our biggest export market.»

She said she has instructed Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez to investigate the others implicated in the deal who are not within the jurisdiction of the Ombudsman. «We do not tolerate corruption,» she said.

«I trust that the Ombudsman will investigate this issue thoroughly and that she will ensure a transparent process in doing so.  I instruct the Secretary of Justice to likewise be thorough and transparent in his investigation,» Mrs. Arroyo said.

The President noted that allegations of corruption «have regularly emerged even in previous administrations as part of our less-than-impressive political culture.»

«I just hope this set of charges will not be a political football,» Mrs. Arroyo said. She said there's no way she could eliminate the «legacy of political corruption» overnight but stressed her administration has achieved great strides in its battle against well-entrenched grafters.

She said fighting corruption is one her administration's major goals.

Even if the NBN-ZTE scandal is like Watergate, Rina, just keep repeating, "Bring It On!" (So, for Rina, a little musical relaxation—more available, but it's in Tagalog)

American troops are arriving in Mindanao for the annual Balikatan exercises, which stress an humanitarian mission. But, there seems to be a problem with the chain of command between the Americans and Filipinos.

US forces participating in the exercise will stay at Bitanag, about 2 kilometers from the Panamao hospital, where American security concerns recently caused tension among the local staff.

Dr. Silak Lakkian, hospital chief, said a M/Sgt. Ron Berg had ordered the local personnel to shut down the facility during the night effective Nov. 30 and had threatened to shoot anyone defying the order.

She said the workers found out how serious Berg was when they once tried to switch on the hospital's generator after 6 p.m. Berg called her on the phone and ordered her to switch off the generator, which provides electricity at night.

An investigation later showed that no such order had been issued by US officials.

Sulu Gov. Abdusakur Tan said Maj. Eric Walker of the US forces later apologized to Lakkian.

Rafael said the incident was unfortunate. He said Filipino Marine commanders in the area should have informed the local staff instead of the Americans. Rafael said US forces were only trying to protect the hospital as a red alert status was in force in Panamao then.

«It was just a misunderstanding in communication, when the Americans spoke in English and the other did not understand,» he said.

Rafael said the investigation had been completed and that he was submitting a full report on the incident.

In Zamboanga City, Maj. Gen. Nelson Allaga, Western Mindanao command chief, said there was no need to sanction the American soldier responsible for the closure order on the Panamao hospital.

M/Sgt. Berg certainly knows how to go "green to gold".

With only one group claiming responsibility, a non-event no one takes seriously, the most generous conspiracy, the Glorietta mall bombing as boon for the Arroyo administration meme, is hardly a compliment for Filipino politics.

(View photos at Glorietta Blast.)

Only slightly less appealing are either the «fire insurance» theory:

Does that mean that the government set the fire itself? Not necessarily, it would be premature to conclude that. However, the situation today can be likened to a case where you have roaming bands of arsonists. Given that terrorist threats are commonplace today, any President in a pickle and interested in self-preservation can simply relax his/her vigilance and let the terrorists do what comes naturally to them, knowing full well that the political windfall would go to him/her. He/she knows that in matters involving National Security where secrecy is involved, negligence is hard to detect.

Or, the puppet-master theory (a version of which Manila Bay Watch espouses, too):

It is more believable to suppose that another force is trying to exploit the growing rifts between President Arroyo and Speaker Joe de Venecia.

From my observations of the country?s political scene, it is clear that the aim of the bombing is the turning of the political crisis currently enmeshing the nation into real chaos.

This kind of situation has more benefits to terrorist groups or ultra-Rightists.

The goal of these groups is to hasten the polarization of the different political forces.

But, it's war-gaming as usual for US troops, even if shopping is curtailed.

«It will not affect our exercises. We will continue with the bilateral relationship that we have established. We will continue to do things in a normal fashion and continue our training,» Colonel Ben Mathews II, commander of the Marine Aircraft Group 36 and Talon Vision 08 exercise co-director, said on Saturday.

«Again, it was sad that this occurred but I don't think this should stop the continuing exercise,» he said.

«My concern is, of course, the welfare of my marines and sailors and our Philippine counterparts. We will take appropriate measures. We need to ensure we are safe and that we continue to do our bilateral exercise,» said Colonel John Mayer, commander of the 31st Marine Expeditionary Unit and amphibious landing exercise co-director.

The venues of the exercises as well as humanitarian missions -- held inside the Clark and Subic freeports, Fort Magsaysay in Nueva Ecija, Crow Valley reservation in Tarlac, Ternate in Cavite and Laguna -- are not going to be changed.

US troops based in Clark will be restricted within the economic zone during the 15-day exercise until October 30 but this, said Mathews, has always been the policy from the start of ground-air integrated training under Talon Vision.

Asked if he was allowing any troops to go out of Clark, he said: «Well, no. We are keeping our marines and sailors here in Clark. But we have been doing that since the start.»

«There are so many opportunities for our marines and sailors here to buy things and to eat at the nice restaurants and to enjoy the facilities that we don't really see the need for them to go out,» Mathews said.

Yet, the FBI is helping Philippines authorities nonetheless. Such official nonchalance in itself could be significant.

The most ridiculous commentary on Filipino politics, though might be this: «An alternative theory in the investigation into the Makati bombing is that it was accidentally set off by incendiary material inside the building.»

Make that clumsy employee president!