The revelation this week by the Philippine Daily Inquirer that a group calling itself Freedom Force had been secretly meeting and plotting to take power by overthrowing President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo shouldn't have surprised the public or the president herself. But judging from GMA's startled reaction Tuesday night on television, saying that "these people were never for me," it is clear that she was caught off guard by its existence.
Composed of former Tarlac congressman Jose "Peping" Cojuangco, a brother of ex-President Corazon Aquino; Council for Philippine Affairs (COPA) secretary-general Pastor Saycon, Philippine Star columnist Teodoro Benigno, police Chief Superintendent Florencio Fianza, and others including allegedly 19 generals, Freedom Force is a group that is supposed to pack serious punch.
As reported by the Inquirer, quoting Conrado Limcaoco, a former spokesman of Mrs. Aquino, the group's leaders had recently met with Manila Archbishop Cardinal Sin to seek his and the Catholic Church's blessings for a planned coup. They told Sin that the country was beset with many problems and that they wanted to avoid a communist revolution or a military coup. They of course couched their concern in the usual rhetoric of wanting to defend the country and restore true democracy and freedom to it, whatever that means.
Their proposed coup would replace GMA with a collective leadership, in other words a junta. Sin refused to back them, saying he didn't believe in collective leaderships, so the report said.
With this flat refusal, Freedom Force must have been frustrated, angry and embarrassed. After all, everyone knows that for any coup to survive in the Philippines it must have the backing of the all-powerful Catholic Church. Sin's denial of his blessings meant that the group was back at square one. In the only avenue left to it after its rebuff by Cardinal Sin, the group leaked its plans to the press through Conrado Limcaoco, hoping to embarrass, rattle and perhaps even scare the president.
After all, if any group is really planning a coup attempt, the last person they would tell these plans to is a reporter. Obviously, Freedom Force has now put its coup plan temporarily on hold, and has been busily denying any planned grab for power to the press. No intelligent person would believe these denials, but it poses an interesting question: Would the Philippines be better ruled by a junta rather than by GMA?
The president claimed on Tuesday night that the people in Copa had never really supported her bid for the presidency during EDSA II, and that instead they had pushed for collective leadership. "They were the ones who wanted a collective leadership," she said without elaborating.
What is interesting to note is that along with President Arroyo not having ever been elected president in the first place, these coup plotters want to again replace the country's leader with more unelected leaders. The Daily Tribune rightly pointed this out in its editorial yesterday entitled "Freedom to force": "And now, the same groups of self-righteous prigs are again talking of changing the political system, and again, not through the normal process of amending the Constitution, but to impose on a people — a 'collective leadership' … who appear to believe they have been vested with the divine right to dictate upon a people their choice of leaders and their choice of system, and damn the constitutional torpedoes."
Which brings us to the ill effects wrought by so much coup talk. As many commentators have already noted in the past, including myself, all of these rumors of impending coups only serve to scare off foreign investors who don't understand that coup rumors have always been a part of Philippine political life. It's the sad truth that in a nation of chismosos (gossips), chismis (gossip) about impending coups will always be there. With that in mind, all politicians should try and minimize its effects, not contribute to instability by peddling even more rumors.
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Send the workers home!
SECRETARY OF Labor Patricia Sto. Tomas and OWWA Administrator Wilhelm Soriano are due to arrive in Riyadh next month for an official visit. Presumably they will be meeting Saudi labor officials and the Filipino community.
One major problem facing the Filipino community in the entire Kingdom has been the unresolved issue of the scores of stranded workers who spend months on the streets waiting to be sent home. Most often penniless, these workers, who are victims of unscrupulous sponsors who haven't paid their wages for months, end up having to depend on the generosity of the Filipino community to survive.
The Philippine Embassy sometimes helps these workers, but if their Saudi sponsors are unresponsive or avoiding phone calls, there is often nothing much that diplomats can do to help them leave the country. A solution to this problem has to come, obviously, from both the Saudi and Philippine sides. The Saudi government should streamline labor dispute procedures and introduce stiffer penalties for Saudi employers who end up not paying their employees and abandoning them. These employers should face possible jail terms and their financial assets should be frozen by the government and possibly liquidated if necessary to pay their employees.
The Saudi government regularly cracks down on overstayers, but much of this problem would be eradicated overnight if Saudi employers were made to be more responsible and pay their employees on time.
The other major issue that the Filipino community will want to discuss with Sto. Tomas and Soriano is the now controversial annual $25 OWWA fee that all OFWs are being made to pay in Manila before being allowed abroad. This fee was originally introduced during President Fidel Ramos' tenure but was never really explained to OFWs. Former President Joseph Estrada temporarily suspended its implementation during his time in office, and now it is being implemented again since late last year. OFWs have been miffed that they were never asked for any input on this new fee, and OFWs have many questions on how much of the actual fee is being directly spent on helping OFWs in need. Some OFWs are even saying that the $25 fee, along with other fees, are the responsibility of the employer not the employee under the Magna Carta for Overseas Workers.
Hopefully all of these issues will find appropriate answers during Sto. Tomas' and Soriano's visit to the Kingdom.
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