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Friday, March 29, 2024

Marcial Lo

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Earlier this week I finally took possession of a LandBank cash card that lets me draw upon an account into which was earlier deposited my humble share of compensation awarded some years ago by Congress to victims of human rights violations during the martial law years.

For people like me who aren’t poor, the award is more valuable symbolically. But for many others who feel the daily grind of survival much more painfully, the money will go a long way, not just towards restorative justice, but more practically towards easing their lives for a long while to come. Total payout is somewhere south of P10 billion, which by any measure is a great anti-poverty program.

My hat has to come off to the board and staff of the compensation commission, led by the very fetching retired police general Lina Sarmiento, who did a yeoman’s job of painstakingly sifting through over 70,000 applications in order to weed out the frauds from the genuinely entitled claimants.

Once, General Lina sat me down to walk me through a sample application. The applicant mentioned certain dates and names in his narrative of his underground involvement. Those dates and names then had to be manually cross-checked against the narratives of other applicants whom the checker might remember as claiming to be associated with the primary.

[Unfortunately, not enough time or money was available to the commission to properly database the information and computerize the cross-referencing.]

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This process was basically repeated 70,000 times in order to narrow down the qualified applications to some 40,000 names. Unfortunately for our country, even on something as sacrosanct as making reparations for lives and liberty lost to martial law, there were still 30,000 people out there—almost as many as the real victims—who jumped on this dark moment in history to try and make a quick buck.

* * *

By great happenstance, around the same time I was claiming my LandBank card, President Duterte was announcing the imposition of martial law in Mindanao, in response to vicious attacks on Marawi City by two ISIS-affiliated terrorist groups, Maute and Abu Sayyaf, that were still going on as I write this.

By and large, the rest of the country has gone along and even heaved a sigh of relief over the President’s decisiveness. The stock market barely moved, the Church wrung its hands over priests and parishioners taken hostage, Congress pledged its super-majority support.

Opposition leader Vice President Leni Robredo voiced approval, while the mainstream Mindanao insurgent groups, MILF and MNLF, distanced themselves and expressed their hope that the peace process would not be affected.

It’s not difficult to explain this relative sanguinity.

One, the terrorists have been pretty open about their fealties to ISIS and their penchant for beheading, hostage-taking, and attacking even women and children. And it’s the easiest thing in the world for them to extend their support and logistics networks throughout the contiguous island of Mindanao, not to mention their links to foreign jihadists.

And two, the 1987 Constitution severely restricts the President’s power to do a repeat of Marcos-style martial law even if he were so inclined:

Martial law justified only by rebellion or invasion.

Cannot extend beyond sixty days.

Must be justified to Congress within 48 hours, who can then overrule him by simple majority.

May also be overturned by the Supreme Court upon any filing of opposition.

The Constitution can’t be suspended.

Congress can’t be shut down.

The courts can’t be supplanted.

Even if someone is denied habeas corpus, he still has to be released if he isn’t judicially charged within three days.

* * *

These are safeguards for which we of course have the late President Cory, martial law’s most famous widow, to thank. They also serve as reminders that history doesn’t repeat itself mechanically, that today’s martial law will not automatically be the same as yesterday’s.

In fact, that mechanistic link was broken much earlier, in 2009, when former President Arroyo also declared martial law throughout Mindanao right after the Maguindanao massacre. Business and government operations continued normally, all the suspects were arrested, all assets frozen, all evidence seized, no lives were lost. Originally slated for 30 days, she lifted martial law after only 8 days.

Contrast that with the performance of the previous administration during the Zamboanga crisis of 2013. No martial law was declared, and yet hundreds of lives were lost, countless civilians displaced, billions of pesos in property destroyed. From the same people who gave us the Luneta hostage incident and Mamasapano 44, it was pretty much par for the course.

In the end, it’s who the leader is, that’s what really counts. As well as the citizens, of course—to make sure that abuses are avoided and the job is done quickly and done right.

* * *

A depressing postscript to this piece concerns the CPP’s reported orders to the NPA to intensify their military offensive activity, at this time of national distress, and just as the fifth round of peace talks are scheduled to resume next week.

This particular rebel group has been called many things in the past. But today, they certainly can’t be accused of letting anything stand in the way of what they want.

 

Readers can write me at gbolivar1952@yahoo.com.

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