Not yet strong, but still too wishy-washy

Frankly, I don’t see any sign of the "strong Republic" President Macapagal-Arroyo promised us. When we had our one-on-one dinner in Malacañang, the Chief Executive reiterated that she would demonstrate political will since she was not going to kowtow to any pressure group owing to her resolve not to seek re-election.

Among her pledges was that the squatters would be removed from the railroad lines and "relocated", so the railroad could expand, particularly the North Rail and the commuter trains. She stated she would also back to the hilt Metro Manila Development Authority (MMDA) Chairman and DPWH Secretary Bayani Fernando, supporting him all the way in dealing with the squatter problem.

She did add that she was planning to "sell" plots in government land to those occupying them.

Well, Fernando announced on television more than a week ago that he would clear all the river banks from "Aparri to Jolo" of squatters as well as all the railway tracks and the railroad right-of-way. Let’s see how far he gets.

It was disheartening, upon my return, to see on television that squatters in Intramuros are defying a government order for their shanties to be torn down to make way for the development and beautification of their location in Intramuros by the Department of Tourism (DOT). This move is being pushed in connection with the administration’s "Visit Philippines 2003" program.

The defiant squatters were citing an Executive Order signed by GMA only last December requiring "approval" by a committee under the Office of the President before any squatter "home" can be demolished. Sanamagan: Will the President please make up her mind?

Is she for the squatters, or for the general welfare of the entire Filipino people? No wonder so many citizens don’t want to pay taxes or else stubbornly evade taxation – those who don’t bother to pay taxes seem to get all the breaks.

This is not, of course, a brief for the tax-evaders. Everybody must pay taxes. This is why our congressmen should stop making noises about "exempting" professionals and entertainers from VAT, or extending the deferment of such tax payments. Why should those of us who earn more than most be exempted?

I know such an idea won’t make the President, politicians (who need the entertainers, singers, actors, movie stars, et. al to campaign for them), or this writer when he rashly endorses it, popular. But shucks: If nobody pays taxes, how will our government run? How will the police be paid to protect us? How will our armed forces be compensated? How will the roads be fixed, public improvements installed, bridges and schoolhouses built – in short, how will our government underwrite the everyday expenses of running a country? A bankrupt Republic could never be a "strong" Republic – it would cease to exist.

Sure, it’s an old and stale argument trotted out by the tax cheats, tax evaders, and "tax avoidance" slickers (the latter somewhat legit) that the money collected in taxes would be wasted anyway. The chronic claim is that the funds would only be pocketed by politicians and corrupt bureaucrats, or frittered away by putting slackers and shirkers with political padrinos on the government payroll. Tax-money, the argument goes, would only be squandered on useless projects.

This is a cop-out. We must demand reform. We must require the government to give us "service". We must hold our political leaders, congressmen, senators, and local government officials to their oaths of public service, or else cast them out by the power of the ballot. If we don’t use this power right, we can’t complain that things aren’t going right. But we cannot run away from our part of the deal: That of paying our taxes.

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Communist Spokesman and popular TV "personality" Ka Roger Rosal may only have been credit-grabbing when he announced that, indeed, it was a hit squad dispatched by the New People’s Army (NPA) that rubbed out former NPA Chieftain Romulo Kintanar a few days ago in a Japanese eatery. But why disbelieve him? The NPA, in short, has already "confessed" to the crime.

The task of Police Chief Supt. Romeo Maganto, on the other hand, has not been lightened. The Ka Roger boast is all the more reason for Maganto to redouble his efforts to track down the actual murderers, be they NPA or crackpot.

What worries me is that General Maganto appears to have reverted to type: He’s trying to solve the crime through the media. It was grand-standing on his part to announce that he would "mobilize" 300,000 taxicab drivers nationwide as "informers", so they could provide the PNP with clues as to the whereabouts of the "hit men". In his wisdom, Maganto airily remarked that sometimes these "hit men" take taxis. (I almost choked on that pièce de resistance of information.)

Sure, taxi drivers can finger-point. But they’re neither trained detectives nor agents. At best, they’re gossip-mongers. In the old days, it used to be balitang ’chero (referring to the "news" from kocheros, or rig and calesa drivers). A few years ago, this became balitang barbero, since the neighborhood barber was supposed to supply both tsismis and witticisms. Now, what will it be? Balitang taxi-driver? To my knowledge, cabbies – even those of the FX variety – may be good conversationists, but they never "tell" when there’s a hold-up in their cabs. Instead, many of them are the ones who engineer the "ambush".

Women even get molested in those taxis, without the cab-driver interfering, or running to the police to report what happened.

So what’s Maganto’s point? Having been traffic "boss" in his earlier career for so many years, he ought to know the score about his favorite taxi-drivers. The awful truth that in Bangkok, Chiang Mai, Chiang Rai, Ho Ville (Saigon), Hanoi, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Hong Kong – anywhere else, you name it, tourists and local citizens can take taxicabs with confidence. Not so in Metro Manila, sad to say.

If these are Romy-Baby’s "informers", I’m afraid he’ll be mis-informed.

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It was nice for the Philippines to host the 4th World Meeting of Families, and, indeed, this gathering served to remind us all that the bedrock of every society is the family. That having been restated, it cannot be denied that having too many babies continues to drive our people deeper and deeper below the poverty line. We don’t need a convention discussing this, or speeches and injunctions to demonstrate this point. Just look around us: The children from our runaway "baby factories" are all over the streets – in both city and countryside.

We ourselves came from a big family. We were six boys and four girls – the youngest, a boy, though, died in infancy. When my father died because he volunteered to fight in the war, our mother brought all of us up, an impoverished widow at the age of 33 saddled with nine small children. Our sainted mother worked her fingers to the bone, did almost superhuman things to keep us together. We all had to pitch in. My brothers and sisters, it has to be said, were all "self-supporting" from childhood. Most of our family never enjoyed the luxury of childhood, just as most of our poor and underprivileged kids of the kapus-palad never do. Thanks to God and our mama’s prayers and perseverance, her never-wavering faith, her teaching and inspiration, the iron discipline she imposed on us leading to habits of self-discipline, I like to think we grew up better and wiser – and a more closely-knit family. She taught us to love one another and help each other – and to help others.

In this harrowing and materialistic world, on the other hand, it has become almost impossible for the poor to support, educate and raise big families. It’s no longer just a joke that "the rich are getting richer, while the poor are getting babies". With due apologies to the bishops, clerics, and the good nuns of the Catholic church – who presumably don’t have to raise babies and bring up children themselves – it’s time for the President and the government to stop temporizing, hemming and hawing, and put in place a firm, uncompromising, practical "family planning" program. GMA, it seems, has been pressured anew to pronounce that she wants a "natural birth control" program. When you say "natural birth control", that’s tantamount to no birth control at all. "Abortion", admittedly, is murder. But birth control is not.

C’mon, Madam President: You’re not running for re-election. And Holy Mother Church won’t dare cast you out of the fold on such an issue. Ex-communicate you? Not on your life. Our Lord God is Almighty and All-wise. But churchmen are not. Look at the high priests of the Sanhedrin and the Pharisees of the Bible. There are too many of those in our society.

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Nobody’s wondering about what US President George W. Bush will say in his "State of the Union" address tomorrow. He’ll tell Americans that their government is ready to go for the jugular in Iraq, among other things.

Indeed, while US Secretary of State Colin Powell, renowned as the Dove in the Bush cabinet, has been trying to put a diplomatic spin on it, what he’s saying, really, is "read my lips". His lips are announcing that, while the US would like United Nations’ concurrence, the Americans are ready to attack Saddam Hussein and his prevaricating, non-cooperating boys in Baghdad, with the help of a few friends. In the old-fashioned Hispanic challenge, coupled with the Texas way, George Dubya from the Crawford Ranch has been asking, somos o no somos (If you ain’t with us, you’re against us). Alarmed perhaps by their own Tony Blair, who’s certainly somos with his old pard Bush, The Economist of London put it bluntly enough in its January 3, 2003 issue: "If you want to see where America is heading, start by studying Texas."

My daughter Sara rang me up yesterday from Houston, Texas, where she and her husband having been visiting his Fil-American family (that’s where he grew up) since last September. She reported that there were a number of "anti-war" demonstrations, but most Americans, she observed, appeared ready to go.

So there you are.

As for the United Nations Security Council, my guess is that they’ll never give the word "go". France and Germany, for that matter, have already asserted they "want out" of any attack on Baghdad.

The UN is, of course, a very useful forum. It gives its 190 member-nations a chance to debate and get their Andy Warhol-type 15 minutes of fame on worldwide media and television. But we’ve seen what happens when the world waits for the United Nations to act. After all the chest-thumping and perorations, they get dis-united. When push comes to shove, UN members somehow can’t seem to find the "budget" to pursue peace-keeping, or save those being persecuted or getting massacred.

Just consider what happened in Rwanda in 1994, when DAILY 8,000 men, women, children and babies were being openly massacred in the most brutal way (many of them hacked or bludgeoned to death inside their Catholic churches) by the majority Hutus. UN peacekeepers were in Rwanda, but they did nothing for the 100 days in which the massacres were conducted by rampaging mobs. 800,000 defenseless Tutsis died horribly. Years later, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan had to go to Rwanda to apologize.

In Srebenica, Bosnia-Hercegovina, in 1995, thousands of Muslim Bosnian men and boys were rounded up and trucked away by Christian Serb militiamen, to be massacred and shovelled into shallow graves – from a city which had been declared a "safe zone" by the UN. There were Dutch UN peacekeeping troops there, but they allowed the Serbs to seize the Muslims. After an investigation, years later, the UN recently scolded the Dutch!

The most proximate example of UN helplessness was East Timor. The truth is that the Australians had to bravely punch in, with troops and armor, to rescue the East Timorese and the UN workers there from being wiped out by vicious pro-Indonesian Timorese "militia".

The earliest snide comment this journalist got about UN peacekeeping troops was in Nicosia, Cyprus, when my wife and I flew there from Beirut in 1966. We were billeted at the Ledra Palace Hotel and I noticed that UN soldiers, in their now-familiar blue berets, had a gunpost on the roof of the hotel.

I asked the concierge what they were there for. The fellow, a Greek-Cypriot, shrugged, "Those UN fellows are supposed to keep us Greek-Cypriots and the Turkish-Cypriots from each other’s throats. But they’re useless. They’re only there for decoration." In the light of what happened in Cyprus some years later, when troops from Turkey pushed in to seize half the island and set up a Turkish-Cypriot regime under Denktash, the critical concierge was proven right.

Don’t get me wrong. We should all value the United Nations, which provides useful services everywhere. However, in matters requiring guts and force of arms, the UN wavers. Unless a country feels itself in imminent danger of attack, I guess, it hesitates to join a "consensus" to wage war – particularly when a money tax and a blood tax have to be paid. In a sense, the Nobel Peace Prize Kofi Annan and the UN received was fitting: But let‘s not deceive ourselves as to its inherent nobility, for the UN motto, undisclosed, is "peace at any price" – even the price of a few hundred thousand innocents put to death by the offending parties.

This is not a brief for Bush going it alone. But let’s face it. This is Realpolitik. What’s the use of being a superpower, if you don’t use that power for what you believe is "for the good"? For whose good, naturally, will forever be the subject of debate. That, too, is the way of the world.