Analysis
The United States’ role in the
Political Crisis
A Neocolony, Not a Sovereign State
BY THE CENTER FOR
PEOPLE’S EMPOWERMENT IN GOVERNANCE
Posted by Bulatlat
Two major, recent developments reveal,
more than anything else, who and what are the real powers in this
country. No, they are not Arroyo, her family, cronies and friends; and
no, they are not bureaucrats like Norberto Gonzales.
The first event is the confirmation
that the United States is closely monitoring political events in the
Philippines. The second is the Arroyo government’s entering into a
contract with the U.S. lobby group Venable for it to raise money for the
Armed Forces of the Philippines modernization and the constitutional
amendments to which Arroyo and company are, mostly for political
convenience, committed.
Every country with the means to do so
spies on others, including its own allies. But U.S. spying on the
Philippines is qualitatively different. It is first of all being done by
this country’s former and continuing colonizer, whose influence remains
deeply rooted in vast sections of the population especially among this
country’s current political leadership.
But the United States looms large in
the Philippine political equation not only because its interests-- and
therefore its premises, values, ideas and sentiments-- are regarded among
much of the Philippine population as its own. It is also because U.S.
power has always been a critical factor in determining the outcome of
major political events, among them the elections in which the U.S. has
meddled for decades, as well as EDSAs 1 and 2.
Implicit in U.S. analyses of the
current crisis in the Philippines, for example, is the assumption of U.S.
involvement in determining its outcome. When the U.S. describes Noli de
Castro as unfit for the Presidency, for example, it is also saying that it
will not support de Castro’s ascension to the Presidency. This is a
preference already evident in the explicit support that former U.S.
Embassy Charges d’Affaires Joseph Mussomeli gave to Mrs. Gloria Macapagal
Arroyo in July, and in the Embassy’s continuous harping on “the
constitutional process” (i.e., Arroyo’s impeachment) as the solution to
the crisis.
Unlike those of other countries, U.S.
analyses are the bases not solely for interpreting the meaning of
political events in the Philippines. They are also the bases for managing
them.
The Arroyo government contract with
the U.S. law firm Venable, on the other hand (a contract Mrs. Arroyo said
she has rescinded but which in the same breath she said the government
would “go back to” later), demonstrates that it takes two to run and keep
a neocolony. These two are (1) the imperial power, and (2) its willing
lackeys in the neocolonial state.
In the minds of these lackeys U.S.
interests are the same as the country’s. This explains why they’re more
than willing to accept money from the U.S. government on a critical matter
like amending the country’s basic law despite the distinct possibility
that whatever support the U.S. gives will be premised on the
Constitution’s being amended to, among others, allow foreign ownership of
land, public utilities, and the mass media.
Beyond this puerile assumption,
however, is also these lackeys’s looking after nothing more than
self-interest. For them the country’s future and its people’s interests
are less than secondary; they are concerned with neither people nor
country, but with themselves, whose prosperity depends on, among other
factors, how well they serve US power through the neocolonial state.
If these two events reveal how sadly
accurate is the description of the Philippines as a neocolony rather than
a sovereign state, they also reveal how this country’s so-called
leadership works hand in glove with the United States in keeping the
country that less than independent and sovereign, as well as poor,
undeveloped and weak, and as no more than an appendage of another state.
Posted by Bulatlat
Contact Person:
Luis V. Teodoro
Executive Director
Telefax No. 929-9526
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