News
Analysis
Arroyo’s
Iraq Gambit a Matter of Political Survival
BY
CARLOS H. CONDE
Bulatlat
Angelo
dela Cruz, the 46-year-old Filipino truck driver whose abduction by Iraqi
insurgents last week has resulted in one of the Philippines’s most
emotional crises in years, has become a symbol of the new Filipino
everyman: the migrant worker. His ordeal resonates among a people who
instinctively look abroad when they dream of a better life.
With
little or no opportunities for a better life here, millions of Filipinos
like Angelo dela Cruz, who agreed to drive his truck into Iraq because he
would be paid double, are willing to gamble with their lives.
When
the government suspended the deployment of workers to Iraq last week due
to the abduction, dozens of Baghdad-bound Filipinos protested. “If I die
in Iraq, at least I’m sure my three children here will get something out
of my death. If I remained here, we will die hungry,” one of them, a
woman, angrily told reporters at the airport. Every day, hundreds of
Filipinos still line up at employment agencies for jobs to the Middle
East, Iraq included.
It
is this desperate determination among Filipinos to toil abroad so their
families back home can lead a better life that makes the plight of Angelo
dela Cruz politically explosive, and President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo
knows it.
“Keep
in mind that, prior to this, she was a staunch supporter of the United
States. The only logical explanation for this change in policy and her
willingness to risk disappointing the U.S., is to tame the protests at
home,” said Teodoro Casiño, a congressman of the progressive political
party Bayan Muna (People First), said.
Pullout
Iraqi
militants had threatened to kill dela Cruz, the father of eight children
from Buenavista, a dirt-poor agricultural village in Mexico, Pampanga
province just north of Manila, unless the Philippine government withdraws
its 51-member contingent from Iraq. On Friday, the government said 11
troops, including the head of the contingent, were on their way home.
While
the pullout had elicited sharp reactions from other nations, including the
U.S., many Filipinos couldn’t care less about the criticisms against
Arroyo. She initially vacillated on the insurgents’ demand but later
acceded, mainly due to the potentially explosive backlash she would face
if dela Cruz dies, analysts say.
Reflecting
this sentiment are the television and text-message polls, not to mention
the almost daily protest actions by cause-oriented groups, that show most
Filipinos want Arroyo to withdraw the troops.
In
dela Cruz’s hometown on Thursday, his neighbors, relatives and friends
jumped and yelled for joy when Al-Jazeera aired a video showing an upbeat
dela Cruz, who said he would be home soon. People in his village reacted
by tying yellow ribbons around trees and electric posts; some promised to
cook his favorite dish when he returns.
Competing
needs
Sen.
Rodolfo Biazon, chairman of the Senate committee on national defense and
security, said this crisis “is not just about the life of one
Filipino.” Right now, he said, the Philippines “have opposing needs:
to maintain a good relationship with the family of nations, as we did many
times in the past when we sent troops to fight in the Vietnam War, in the
Korean War, in Kosovo, in Somalia, in Kuwait, in Haiti.”
The
other “competing need,” he said, is to maintain political stability.
The Arroyo government, he said, will be destabilized if dela Cruz dies.
“Maintaining political stability is more compelling than our need to
cooperate (with the U.S.) in this confused war,” Biazon said.
Biazon
said Arroyo’s action had been misunderstood by the U.S. and its allies.
“Without understanding the context of why our country is doing this,
nobody has the right to question our loyalties,” he added.
Serious
and damaging
Foreign
leaders do not seem to agree, however. U.S. Secretary of State Colin
Powell criticized Manila on Thursday. “We are blessed with coalition
partners -- just to name two, South Korea and Bulgaria -- who are not
blinking, who are not faltering, even though they are being tested
mightily by kidnappings and beheadings,” he said in Washington.
A
U.S. diplomat stationed in Manila described Arroyo’s move as “very
serious and damaging” to Manila’s relationship with Washington. He
said the U.S. did not expect this from Arroyo, who is widely considered
the strongest U.S. supporter in Southeast Asia and whose country has
received by far the biggest military aid compared to other countries in
the region.
Eduardo
Dagdag, a national-security expert who teaches at the Asian Center of the
University of the Philippines, said Manila’s move “will raise a lot of
questions as to how dependable the Philippines is going to be as an ally
in the fight against terrorism.” He said the Philippines needs the U.S.
in fighting terrorism. “So if we are vacillating now, I doubt if we can
get the U.S.’s full support,” Dagdag said.
The
Philippines has been described as the “weakest link” in the campaign
against terror in Southeast Asia, where members of the terror network
Jemaah Islamiyah had allegedly infiltrated the separatist Moro Islamic
Liberation Front and co-opted some of its members to commit acts of
terror, according to the Brussels-based International Crisis Group in a
recent report.
Since
the U.S.-led war on terror began in 2001, the U.S. has considerably
increased military aid to the Philippines, from $38 million in 2001 to
$114.46 million last year. The U.S. has also sent hundreds of its troops
to the Philippines to train their Filipino counterparts in hunting down
terrorists and, in some instances, provided logistical support during
operations targeting terrorists.
A
new round of “training exercises” by American and Filipino troops has
been scheduled later this month in central Mindanao, the hotbed of the
country’s Muslim insurgency.
Political
implications
Casiño
believes that the withdrawal will have a huge political implication in the
U.S., especially for President George W. Bush, who is becoming
increasingly unpopular mainly because his administration misled Americans
about his justifications for occupying Iraq.
He
said Arroyo did not have much choice because of her untenable political
predicament at home. “She still has not convinced a significant section
of the population that she won fair and square” in the last election,
Casiño said. “She does not need this kind of controversy so early in
her term.”
Ibon
Foundation’s Antonio Tujan said the lack of a clear mandate has become a
political straitjacket for Arroyo. “If she had a clear mandate, she
would say, ‘The people elected me because they believed in my agenda
and, therefore, I should not face the terrorists anymore.’ And she would
not have withdrawn.”
If
dela Cruz gets killed, the resulting backlash from the public will surpass
the rage they displayed in 1995, after Singapore executed Filipino maid
Flor Contemplacion. That incident was considered the single most crucial
test of the presidency of then President Fidel V. Ramos. Arroyo, Casiño
said, would not allow a repeat of that experience.
Senator
Aquilino Pimentel Jr. agreed. “If he (De la Cruz) is beheaded, there is
no question that his death would be blamed not on his captors but on the
President. His execution would explode into another Flor Contemplacion
situation which could undermine the already shaky presidency of Mrs.
Arroyo," the senator said in a statement this week.
Unpopular
measures
Complicating
the picture, Casiño said, are the measures Arroyo wants to implement in
the coming months -- measures that are sure to elicit protests and add
fuel to the fire. Among these are higher taxes, cuts in government
spending, and increases in electricity and fuel prices and fare rates.
The
dela Cruz crisis could also galvanize opinion against Arroyo from the
millions of overseas Filipino workers, whose dollar remittances have been
propping the economy for decades but who feel that the government has not
been doing enough to protect them. Many of these overseas workers come
home abused and, in many instances, dead.
“She
seems to think that it would be far easier to explain to the U.S. her
action on the hostage situation than to appease an angry public in case
Angelo dela Cruz dies,” Casiño said. “She’s being pragmatic, and if
Mr. dela Cruz is released, she will definitely make it up to the U.S.” Bulatlat
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