Philippines Gets U.S. Press Coverage

     The lack of sufficient and timely coverage of events in the Philippines has been a major omission on the part of the U.S. news media. This omission is irritating but not surprising, given the even greater omission of the Philippines in U.S. history books. Of late, however, there has been an up-tick in coverage by the news media. I should qualify "news media" with the full disclosure that I have not watched television news for about fifteen years and listen to public radio only when in the car. My news media is the New York Times (NYT, daily, both hard copy and on line), the Washington Post (daily headlines on line), and my local paper, the Green Bay Press Gazette (daily hard copy). For an initial example, see my previous entry on this blog, "Filipinos Outraged by Government Corruption" (Sept. 8, 2013). Floyd Whaley (NYT) was on the scene in Manila and published two pieces about this issue, including in the second one a large picture of the chief current corrupter of officials, businesswoman Janet Napoles Lim. This coverage appeared in late August of this year.

Barely two weeks later (an unusually short gap for news about the Philippines), Reuters, the widely syndicated print news agency, announced the outbreak of armed violence in Zamboanga in the Muslim Autonomous Region (MAR) in the southern island of Mindanao (Sept. 12). Apparently a small but lethal group of Muslims broke away from the main group (the Moro National Liberation Front or MNLF). The MNLF had signed a treaty with the national government and established peace in the region about a year ago. Floyd Whaley of the NYT picked up on the news of the new outbreak of fighting by the rogue group and wrote a couple of articles, which appeared on Sept. 13 and Sept. 16. The latter article focused on the fact that President Aquino flew to the region for an inspection and to help restore peace. I had never read of a president visiting the MAR at any time, much less while bullets were flying, some even at the president's escort helicopter. The same day that Whaley's second piece appeared, there was a notice in the "Nation and World Watch" section of my local paper with the headline, "Philippines: 100 guerrillas die, captured." I could count on one hand the number of notices in the local Green Bay paper in my 45 years here, and I wrote two them as guest features.

News snippets about the Philippines have also appeared with increasing frequency in the business sections of newspapers and magazines in the last year, ever since the Philippines has emerged as the new "Asian Tiger" with its economy expanding, just as other Asian nations are experiencing a bit of a downturn. More surprising to me are a couple of complimentary film reviews in the NYT, including one this past Friday, Sept. 27. The movie, On the Job (in Filipino with English subtitles), gets high marks for fine acting and "wondrously alive" filming. The film shows the seedier side of Manila and the deep-rooted police corruption there.

It remains to be seen, of course, if the current attention being paid to the Philippines in the U.S. press is just an anomaly or a trend. Hopefully a trend, so we get more news than just Philippine-U.S. combined military maneuvers or the occasional (monthly perhaps) notice of the friction between China and the Philippines over disputed possession of islands in the South China Sea.

Filipinos Angered by Government Corruption

"Shocked!"  "Angry!"  "Mad!"  I rarely hear (or read) such words from my Filipino friends, but I did over the past two weeks about the corruption scandal in the Philippines.  In my observations, Filipinos are easy going, perhaps to a fault, when it comes to corrupt government individuals and their associates.  They enjoy lampooning corrupt officials and the notoriously corrupt police force.  The lampoons, or sometimes even arrests, don't change things.  I read not too long ago that Erap Estrada had been elected again to public office.  He is the former president who was impeached for corruption and put in jail, where he faced a capital punishment sentence for stealing over a million dollars from the people who elected him.  As the current head of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism said recently, "If you can't jail them, elect them" (New York Times, August 30, 2013).  (This same NYT article, points out, I should note, that the corruption is not within the Administration of President Aquino.)

But Filipinos have a tipping point, as President Marcos discovered too late, when he was outsted by the huge non-violent People Power Revolution in 1986.  It seems that Janet Lim-Napoles became the tipping point this time, though she is just the last in a series of recent cases of official corruption.  Ms. Lim-Napoles, a businesswoman with deep pockets and insider connections, was imprisoned in late August.  She allegedly bribed government officials to siphen off something like $141 M USD.  These funds had been established by the government for projects to bring relief to the very poor.  The officials and their connections concocted bogus relief programs and then pocketed the money for themselves. 

Thus the outrage and the tens of thousands of Filipinos protesting non-violently but very angrily in Luneta Park in Manila on Monday, August 26.  Thus the reaction of my frustrated friend, "Bob, we are not only angry! ! ! We are Mad!"   

Reading About the Philippines

Island of Tears, Island of Hope offers multiple insights into the Philippines, and it is non-fiction and non-war, although there is fighting.  I learned about the country's sugar-cane industry, something I had known about but not explored before.  According to the author, Niall O'Brian, "Ninety percent of that rich plain [the western side of the tall island] is covered with sugar cane.  When you say Negros you say sugar" (p. 4).  I also was reminded of the Marcos years, specifically the period of the violent clashes between President Marcos' dictatorial  regime and the NPR (New Peeoples' Army) from the mid 1970s until 1986.  The NPR was trying to radicalize the farmers and under-employed workers on the sugar cane plantations.  The Marcos government reacted with repressive measures; the NPR made repraisals; matters spiralled.  What impressed me most about the book was how these first two insights paved the way for the most penetrating of the themes, the conflict within the church and among the peasant farmers between violent and non-violent means of opposing the regime and working for justice.  This conflict makes for some of the most fascinating reading, examining the different paths chosen by individuals, often those in the same family, and by different priests and religious, not a few of whom chose to take up arms.  The violent versus non-violent solution that troubled so many is at the heart of the book and leads to one of the central issues of non-violent resistance and the theology underlying base Christian communities.  To crown these achievements, the book is written with the eloquence of simplicity.  Read it.