The Defeat of Revolution
by Antonio C. Abaya
written Nov. 15, 2005
for the Standard Today,
November 17 issue
Now to the social and political reasons for our economic failure and thus the persistence of the communist insurgency.
It is bad enough that we earn the least from export activities and attract the least in tourist arrivals, among the eight competing countries in East Asia. Our woes have been compounded by our runaway population growth rate.
I have written about this many times. Suffice it is to mention now that, according to the 2005 World Almanac and Book of Facts, the population growth rates in East Asia in 2003 were as follows: Singapore 0.56%, China 0.61%, South Korea 0.62%, Taiwan 0.64%, Thailand 0.91%, Indonesia 1.49%, Malaysia 1.83%, and the Philippines 2.03%. Guess which country is the poorest among the eight..
Even India (1.44%), Vietnam (1.34%), and North Korea (0.98%) are doing better than us in managing their population growth. The Philippines is in a race to the bottom with Bangladesh (2.15%), Pakistan (2.25%), Laos (2.44%) and Afghanistan (2.62%)..
Unless the growth rate slows down significantly, our population will double to 160 million in 25 to 30 years. More than 70% of the Filipinos now living, including your children and grandchildren, will experience that quasi-Standing Room Only condition..
That prospect does not seem to make any dent on the thinking of the Roman Catholic bishops, who continue to oppose any and all artificial methods of birth control, following the diktat from the Vatican.
Because the question arises or should arise as to how these additional 80 million warm bodies can be properly cared for, given our poor choices in economic strategies, I suggested in an earlier article, only half-jokingly, that we should start an “Iwanan sa Simbahan” program under which all undernourished children in squatter colonies are left in the sacristy of Roman Catholic churches, for the sanctimonious bishops to feed, house, clothe, educate and give jobs to. I would consider that The Perfect Squelch.
As for the political reason for the persistence of the communist insurgency, it has to do with our having been the only American colony among the eight countries. That means we inherited what our seven competitors did not: the American traditions of absolute freedom of the press and political liberalism of the pre-neocon variety. This was explored in my earlier articles “Good News versus Bad News” (Oct. 25 2002) and “Even Raul Roco Would Fail” (Dec 15 2002), archived in
www.tapatt.org.
As I mentioned during an interview with Karina Constantino in ANC Ch 27 last week, modern Philippine media traces its origins to American media, which had its beginnings in the struggle against British imperial rule in the 18th century. Philippine media inherited the built-in anti-government bias of American media, hence its fierce and daily attacks on government, no matter who the sitting president may be.
This was/is simply not true in Malaysia or Suharto’s Indonesia or Singapore. I was in these three countries in the 1990s and the relationship between government and media was explained to me. In Malaysia, journalists have to observe 12 or 13 Rules – which Filipino journalists would rebel against and bristle under – otherwise they would lose their jobs. In Suharto’s Indonesia, journalists were licensed and any anti-government reportage or comments were grounds enough for the license to be revoked or suspended.
In Singapore, as Lee Kwan Yew wrote in his memoirs, government had the standing policy to sue in court any journalist, local or foreign, who alleged wrongdoing on the part of any government official or agency. Such allegations have to be proven in court, otherwise the offending journalist would be fined, or thrown in jail, or both.
Mr. Lee reasoned that if these allegations were not challenged in court, people would tend to believe them and thus lose confidence in government.
If this were Malaysia or Singapore or Suharto’s Indonesia, the Philippine Daily Inquirer – and some other Manila publications - would long have been padlocked and some of its editors and columnists thrown in jail. Who can forget that memorable Inquirer banner headline: “PIMENTEL: GMA RECEIVED JUETENG MONEY”, with the subhead “But says he does not have proof.” Or words to that effect.
I am not a fan of GMA, but such blatantly abusive journalism, done under the rubric of “absolute freedom of the press,” was unfair and would never be allowed in Malaysia or Indonesia or Singapore. Or even in the US, except perhaps in the gutter press of Greenwich Village in New York or Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco. Onli in da istupid Pilipins.
What does “absolute freedom of the press” have to do with the persistent communist insurgency?
It is no secret that many of our practicing journalists – including some editors and columnists – were/are partisans of the communist movement. That is their prerogative. But one of the core beliefs of Marxism-Leninism is that the eventual transformation of society into that pure state called Communism is inevitable because it is historically determined by the unchanging and unchangeable scientific laws of history.
If you believe in that inevitable future, you will do everything you can to help make it happen - a self-fulfilling prophecy – whether you are a KMU militant, or the president of a state university, or a party-list congressman. Or an editor or columnist in the Inquirer..
The (pre-neocon) political liberalism that we inherited from the Americans – which our neighbors did not – has given the communist movement here the hospitable “democratic space” in which to organize and propagandize, which their comrades in the neighboring countries never enjoyed.
In the confrontation states – South Korea confronting North Korea, Taiwan confronting Mainland China, and Thailand confronting Vietnam-Cambodia – the ruling military generals used draconian measures in the 1960s-1980s to totally suppress their communist movements, with the approval of the US, giving their governments the peace and stability to concentrate on economic development.
Indonesia was not a confrontation state, but the Parti Komunis Indonesia (PKI) had been allowed by the populist President Sukarno to grow into the biggest communist party in the world outside China and the Soviet Union.
In September 1965, supremely confident of their numerical strength, PKI militants attempted a coup by machine-gunning to death the top brass of the Indonesian armed forces or ABRI (Angkatan Bersanjata Republik Indonesia) while they were holding a command conference at Halim Air Base outside Jakarta.
Unknown to the PKI militants, one general, Army Gen. Haris Nasution, managed to survive the massacre and escaped to safety, to lead a military counter-coup against the PKI that lasted well into the late 1970s. Most conservative estimates put at 300,000 the number of communists and suspected communists (as well as, no doubt, innocent bystanders) killed by the military in summary executions.
Before and even after they became independent in 1957/59, Malaysia and Singapore also had to struggle against a communist insurgency. The British general who led the counter-insurgency war – I think his name was Gen. Gerald Templar – reasoned that the war against the insurgents could not be won unless and until their front organizations were also dismantled. That meant hauling off to jail their lawyers, their media allies, their “legal” organizers and propagandists, their labor activists, etc.
Malaysia and Singapore inherited from the British colonial government the Internal Security Act or ISA which gave the state the right to throw in jail – indefinitely and without trial – anyone suspected of being a “subversive”, i.e. a communist or a communist sympathizer. Thus did Malaysia and Singapore enjoy the peace and stability that they needed in order to concentrate on economic development.
But our own tin pot dictator Ferdinand Marcos, in typical Filipino fashion, was satisfied with half-cocked half-measures. He outlawed the Kabataang Makabayan (of which I was a member), but gave the KMU, Bayan, etc free rein to organize and propagandize against him, which proved to be his undoing. What was he trying to prove? That he was at heart a liberal democrat?
Perhaps because he was a lawyer, Marcos wanted to cloak his authoritarianism with a façade of liberalism, no matter how thin. By contrast, the non-lawyer generals who were in power at the same time as Marcos – Gen. Park Chung Hee in South Korea, Gen. Chiang Ching-kuo in Taiwan, Gen. Prem Tinsulananda in Thailand, Gen. Suharto in Indonesia – were not swayed by liberal niceties and bore down on their communist militants with total ruthlessness..
Mr. Anno’s comrades should swallow their knee-jerk xenophobia and thank the Americans for having blessed this country with “absolute freedom of the press,” and pre-neocon political liberalism, which they have used with devastating effect against the namby-pamby bourgeois state itself, and without which they would all have long been thrown in jail, there to rot indefinitely in total anonymity.
What REALLY is Press Freedom?
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