Analysis
NRP in the Mutineers’ Adventurism

Sen. Gregorio Honasan’s “National Recovery Program” is far from being a surgical solution and should be dismissed as the work of an amateur out to apply superficial solutions to what is undeniably a complex, systemic problem in which millions of lives have been sacrificed in so many centuries. Definitely uninspiring, it is just Honasan’s election gimmick and anybody who is serious about it is simply unfit to lead.

By Bobby Tuazon
Bulatlat.com

The Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) is not only a mercenary and graft-riddled state apparatus of coercion. As a fighting force without any clear cause for which soldiers would lay their lives except to serve a foreign power and defend the state and the ruling elite that is at its helm, it has not won any single internal war over the past 50 years. True, the AFP, backed by the CIA, led a dirty campaign against the Huk rebellion during the 1950s but the cause (land reform and against foreign aggression) that the armed guerrillas were fighting for has not died.

It was during Marcos dictatorship in the 1970s-1980s that the armed forces as an institution grew in power and developed a culture that it is a potent force for making and unmaking governments – that it can be a power by itself. This consciousness deepened as Ferdinand Marcos extended the largesse of cronyism to his generals in return for their continued loyalty. Having taken roots, military elitism would later threaten civilian supremacy in government.

The first time this accumulated power was tested was when the U.S. Pentagon issued a policy recommendation - the 1984 National Security Study Directive (NSSD) - to then President Ronald Reagan that called for “reforms” in the AFP, among others. The directive was actually a calibrated ploy of Washington that would lead to a transfer of power from Marcos - who had become a liability to the U.S. government after propping him up throughout martial law - to a “third force.” The “third force” would of course be Corazon Aquino.

NSSD also led to the birth of a clandestine Reform the AFP Movement (RAM) the core of which supposedly included then Defense Minister Juan Ponce Enrile, AFP vice chief of staff Gen. Fidel V. Ramos and several junior officers including Gregorio Honasan. RAM got involved in an aborted coup plot against Marcos after the snap presidential elections of 1986 and, to save their necks, RAM leaders took refuge in the popular uprising at Edsa. As a result, they were able to grab the credits for the ouster of Marcos and made themselves famous as Edsa I heroes.

In the next few years, RAM along with other military rebel groups such as the Young Officers Union (YOU), Soldiers of the Filipino People (SFP) and Guardians and their civilian financiers figured in at least nine coup attempts and mutinies against the Aquino presidency. RAM was also linked to the brutal assassination of Kilusang Mayo Uno leader Rolando Olalia in late 1986 and student leader Lean Alejandro the following year.

The name of Honasan, who had since become a senator, had also been dragged in the May 1, 2001 siege of Malacañang by pro-Estrada loyalists. Supposedly in preparation for his presidential or vice presidential bid in the May 2004 elections, Honasan last year came up with a campaign platform, “National Recovery Program” (NRP). The senator claims that NRP is his surgical solution to the Philippines’ “basic problems” (“mga pangunahing problema”) of peace and order, poor economy, poverty, corruption and population explosion.

Since last year, big streamers proclaiming Honasan’s NRP have been exhibited along highways in many provinces. A small movement, composed mostly of Guardian members, has also begun rooting for his presidential candidacy. Fifty of them together with a handful members of the pro-Estrada People’s Movement Against Poverty (PMAP) mobilized in what could have been a “people power” contingent in support of the July 27 mutiny.

Inspiration

But NRP became also an inspiration of sorts to the 300 young officers and enlisted men who staged a mutiny by laying siege on the plush, unguarded 5-star Oakwood Premier Apartment Building at the Ayala Center in Makati on July 27. Leaders of the mutiny, including Lt. SG Antonio Fuentes Trillanes IV, a fellow Bicolano of Honasan, proclaimed that a new government that would be formed after their adventurous act would adopt the NRP as its program.

NRP is however far from being a surgical solution and should be dismissed as the work of an amateur out to apply superficial solutions to what is undeniably a complex, systemic problem in which millions of lives have been sacrificed in so many centuries. Definitely uninspiring, it is just Honasan’s election gimmick and anybody who is serious about it is simply unfit to lead. In the first place, Honasan’s prescriptions are almost bare, skeletal and devoid of any flesh or substance.

The author of NRP boasts that the nation’s poor situation (“mahirap na kalagayan”) needs a radical and comprehensive reform (“radikal at malawakang reporma”). Those who believe in real radical reforms will find nothing radical and comprehensive in Honasan’s simplistic and most often sketchy prescriptions. And, in the first place, there’s also nothing radical about his analysis of society let alone its “mga pangunahing problema.” The average high school student knows better.

At first, Honasan just repeats the archaic militarist line that the country’s peace and order problem, referring specifically to “criminality and terrorism,” is the main obstacle (“pangunahing hadlang”) to its progress. There’s essentially nothing new in this because it echoes the same line espoused by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her generals (“the Reds and the other Muslim terrorists are the main obstacle to progress”) and that of the conservative business sector with their concern about crime syndicates. Worse, it also ignores the publicly-known hand of top AFP and police generals in the aggravation of criminality and in the formation and operation of kidnap-for-ransom (KFRs) gangs such as the Abu Sayyaf Group.

The “solution” being offered by Honasan to address the peace and order problem includes the implementation of the national ID system which has been widely criticized as a neofascist measure. He also advocates citizens vigilance but if he means the formation of civilian vigilantes who, since the Marcos years, have sown a reign of terror in the rural villages and in cities like Davao, then there’s nothing new here. How he will also reform the police is a problem by itself for its sheer lack of clarity.

Lumped under NRP’s peace and order problem is insurgency which essentially implies that in Honasan’s mind the CPP-NPA “insurgency” is a mere peace and order threat. Like the typical military leader and bureaucrat indoctrinated by U.S.-inspired propaganda, he wonders why the insurgency thrives despite the end of the “Cold War” several years ago and with it, he believes, the ideological ground for pursuing the revolution. Although he proposes the resumption of peace talks with the armed Left, it is unclear how and under what agenda this will be pursued.

Meantime, he supports sustained civic action and other anti-insurgency components particularly in the rural areas. In short, instead of laying down a new road for peace, Honasan is just repeating the antiquated militarist solution to the rebellion problem that uses the peace talks process as a means of compelling the armed guerrillas to capitulate.

Short-sighted

Honasan also offers short-sighted remedies to his problems with the economy and poverty. He is right on target about the poor becoming poorer, unemployment, the ballooning foreign debt and the alarming budget deficit. But he misses the target as regards its solution because the program that he envisions is all about reforms in the taxation system and the bureaucracy and nothing about the structural roots of poverty, social injustice and low productivity.

He also proposes the immediate implementation of the Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization Act, a law signed by former president Estrada. The act had been rejected by farmers and fisherfolk organizations as nothing but the concentration of the land and fishpond monopoly, the further realignment of agriculture and fish industry for export and liberalization in farm imports.

One of the programs Honasan hopes to implement to weed out corruption in government is the purging of so-called “ghost employees.” If implemented, however, this policy will result in the lay-off of thousands of employees and, hence, the aggravation of the unemployment problem.

Relatively, a well-elaborated program that the senator seeks to implement under NRP are “reforms” in the AFP and police. The “structural reform” that he envisions is the mere transfer of the Philippine National Police (PNP) to the AFP and streamlining that would make the military look efficient as an armed force. It also includes the reshuffling of command officers.

And, although NRP also calls for modules on leadership and “values formation,” it is silent on how the AFP and police should uphold without question the constitutionally-enshrined supremacy of the civilian bureaucracy over its armed forces.

So, is the NRP the young mutineers’ “bible” and “the only program, and no other, that provides solutions to the problems of our country?” Above all, was Honasan, as claimed by Interior and Local Government Secretary Joey Lina, involved in the staging of the mutiny which could have been part of a grand coup plot that was hatched right inside the hospital suite of ousted president Estrada?

“Pro-Estrada”

Scanning the young military rebels’ “Message to the Filipino” which they broadcast on videotape at the height of the Sunday mutiny, the statement betrays an oft-repeated line of Honasan and other members of the opposition who had supported Estrada during his impeachment trial for plunder and other graft charges. They say that the installation of the Macapagal-Arroyo presidency by people power was “a violation of the Constitution.”

Were the military rebels, after all, supportive of Estrada instead? Or were their naïve idealism and romanticism hijacked by power rivals of Macapagal-Arroyo to serve their own ulterior motives? It is believed that the Trillanes paper about corruption in the Navy procurement system was submitted to a ghostwriter of Estrada who teaches at the UP’s National College of Public Administration. A few members of its faculty led by former Dean Raul de Guzman were implicated in the impeachment case against Estrada.

All this point does not however lessen the legitimacy of the issues raised by the rebels, particularly Trillanes, about the high-level corruption in the military and the fact that the powers-that-be in government are the “real terrorists.” And it is correct to say that corruption and the lack of any valid cause of fighting in the AFP will continue to breed more Trillaneses in the AFP until such disaffection and idealism will find its correct political expression other than the inherently-flawed coup d’etat.

Perhaps they should take a lesson or two from the likes of Lt. Crispin Tagamolila, who found a principled cause and a pro-people commitment in the armed revolutionary movement, and former Navy Captain and AFP Inspector General Dan Vizmanos, who continues to inspire younger activists in the national democratic struggle. Bulatlat.com

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