JEDDAH, 14 July 2006 — IT is amazing how far the Philippine public will allow standards of governance and accountability to fall in the name of stability and of sticking to the devil they know.
President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has just appointed scandal-tainted Lt. Gen. Hermogenes Esperon Jr. as the new military chief of staff, while the Department of Foreign Affairs did nothing to cancel the passport of former agriculture undersecretary Jocelyn “JocJoc” Bolante, who has been implicated in the illegal diversion of 728 million pesos in fertilizer funds to Arroyo’s re-election campaign. In a bit of good news, Bolante was arrested a few days ago in the US when his visa was canceled.
Esperon’s name, along with that of several other generals, was mentioned in the “Hello Garci” tapes of conversations between the president and former Election Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano during the 2004 elections. Esperon allegedly helped Arroyo win the election by rigging the votes. A military fact-finding board cleared Esperon and other generals of any wrong-doing, but Arroyo stopped their findings from being released publicly or to Congress itself. If there was nothing to hide, why was the release of the report blocked? The public has the right to know what the military inquiry found out.
Esperon has already complained that his appointment as AFP chief of staff would be viewed by some as payback from Arroyo for helping her win the 2004 election, and he is right. Although he does have a distinguished military career, his repeated vows of total allegiance to the republic and to the commander in chief (i.e. Arroyo), and his suspected involvement in election rigging, make him the perfect choice for the president. One would think that the president would have picked someone else for the job, someone who had not been implicated in election shenanigans.
But then, that would be asking too much of a president who has shown over and over again that she will cling to power no matter what it costs her in terms of her moral standing vis-à-vis the public. The continuing onslaught of corruption and vote-buying has so numbed the moral compass of many Filipinos that they now just shrug their shoulders when confronted with Arroyo’s dubious methods, having sunk into a sticky morass of relative values where her behavior has become acceptable instead of repugnant.
Only this would explain the seeming reluctance of the Arroyo administration to have Bolante appear before the Senate committee that was investigating the fertilizer fund scandal. Not only was his Philippine passport not canceled, he was repeatedly allowed to leave the country and return, without being detained for questioning. Does that seem like an administration keen on getting to the bottom of this diversion of hundreds of millions of pesos? Not at all!
I certainly hope that Bolante will be extradited soon to the Philippines so that he can appear before the Senate committee and explain what happened to the missing funds.
Dangerous Escalation in Lebanon
AS I write this, Israel has just attacked Lebanon, bombing all three runways of Beirut’s airport, effectively shutting it down. Israel claims it is targeting terrorist targets in Lebanon, saying that the Shiite group Hezbollah, which has been launching missiles into northern Israel from southern Lebanon, has been allegedly using Beirut airport to bring in weapons from abroad.
Hezbollah earlier this week captured two Israeli soldiers in border skirmishes in southern Lebanon, and is now demanding that Lebanese prisoners being held by Israel be released.
To complicate matters further, Hezbollah members are elected members of the Lebanese Parliament, making them de facto members of the Lebanese government.
Lebanon, of course, has a long history of being invaded by Israel. The first time was in 1978 and the most famous incursion by Israel into Lebanon was in 1982 when the Israeli Army went all the way into Beirut to dislodge the Palestinian Liberation Organization and its chairman, Yasser Arafat, from Lebanon.
Beirut has since become a regional magnet for Arab tourists, especially after the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the US made Lebanon a preferred vacation destination of Saudis and many other Gulf Arabs. With its mild weather, great food and fun nightlife, Lebanon is a natural vacation destination for Gulf residents wanting to escape from the oppressive heat back home.
I can only imagine the economic devastation the Israeli bombing of Beirut’s airport will produce. Tourists, who are in effect now stuck in Lebanon, are probably panicking, and tourists who were planning to visit Beirut shortly are probably busy canceling their reservations and making other plans.
The greater danger of course is if the conflict escalates and widens, drawing in Syria, Iran and other neighboring Arab countries. If that happens, God help us.
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