Driving Forces of the Anti-Terrorism Bill - Bad News for Filipinos

What are the forces that compel legislators to draft laws that imperil
the basic rights of citizens afforded by the constitution? What are the
merits of a new anti-terror bill? Does the end justify the means? Do
we allow the systems that are meant to safeguard the interests of the
people to become legal vehicles to sow terror among the populace?

Senator Pimentel along with all those that stand opposed to this bill
deserves our laud and support.

The Philippines, and virtually every country in the world all has their
share of deviant and antinomian elements that they have to deal with
respectively. None of the ways that each sovereign country will ever be
completely agreeable with how other sovereign countries deal with those
elements. There will always be pros and cons to any system. But for
the longest time, we have succumbed to the pressures of economic powers
to comply with their standards at the expense of our basic rights and
fundamental liberties.

It seems that this is all for show and, as Senator Pimentel has clearly
pointed out in his privileged speech, can be used by the powers that be
to sow terror among those they were meant to protect. As a country, we
have been fighting insurgency for the past 100 years. From the pockets
of insurgency that contented against colonial powers, to the huks, to
the New People's Army, to the never ending war in Mindanao.

Terrorism is too broad a term. It can refer to the way a town bully
acts, a wife beater, or a husband beater, the way a loan shark behaves,
or how a large corporation imposes itself on smaller businesses or
entrepreneurs, or refer to the way a corrupt law enforcement officer or
official acts, or to any act of private citizens that threatens the life
and safety of another. To be terrorized is to be overwhelmed and
paralyzed by fear.

From the perspective of the Muslims who continue to fight for religious
independence, those who stand on the other side can be construed as
terrorists. Both sides will assert that their actions are warranted and
legitimate. Either side can justify their actions based on the powers
granted to them by their recognized leaders or government. Both sides
consider the other to be terrorists against their respective causes and
ideologies. We are confronted with significant issues whether we take a
relative or absolute position which needs to be settled and mitigated if
any semblance of peace is to exist.

Causality at work. Every action will have its equal opposite reaction.
Every ripple will intersect with seemingly unrelated events that will
have a compounding or exponential effect that is disproportionate to the
triggering act. As long as a colonial powers, for example, tries to use
force as the instrument for domination, whether through military or
economic methods, there will be those that will exist to oppose such
measures. As long as an absolute stand is taken, or a rule is set,
there will be those who will act opposed to such parameters or
constraints. This is human nature at work. These are the fundamental
issues that we never seem to learn from, despite several thousands of
years of tradition. It is something that can never be completely resolved.

What the US and G8 countries are now having to contend with is nothing
new to Filipinos. Fighting with Al Qaeda or Hizbollah, or any other
extremist group is something Filipinos have been exposed to for more
than 100 years in the form of the Mindanao war. Still, solutions have
yet to be defined (since either side demands an absolute stand). How
then, could a new bill, that is based from the ideas and concepts of a
country that knows nothing about what it means to wage a war with
religious extremists (this is what an anti-terror bill really focuses
on) perform any better under circumstances which we as a people have
known and learned from? Shall we undo learning just to comply with
ignorance?

What have we learned? From my observation, we know from our experiences
with fighting religious extremists in Mindanao that most of the fighting
was isolated to specific areas in Mindanao. It was only the NPA, in its
current form, that made striking civilians part of their mandate.
Incidents that are motivated by religious extremism wants the freedom to
be left alone and the option to remain isolated from everyone else--from
what they call infidels. But like ripples in a pond, the original
motivation has resulted in violent cataclysm. As one author put it, a
clash of civilizations. With the exception of the criminality espoused
by the NPA and other organized crime syndicates, despite the ongoing war
in Mindanao, the rest of the Philippines enjoyed relative peace and
harmony (even prosperity). Mindanao Muslims simply wanted out of the
Republic, for historically they did not consider themselves Filipino.

The model the US and other G8 countries uses to fight this war is not
based on knowledge, and yet, we have legislators that are trying so hard
to pattern new bills to fit the US profile. Nothing in this model that
Bush pushes promises peace--it is terrorizing by nature (just consider
the complexities introduced by the Patriot Act). US citizens have been
working to limit the control and pervasiveness of Big Brother. They
have laws that prevent law enforcers from violating privacy. They would
rather risk setting the guilty free than convicting an innocent person.
But all this was flushed down the drain with the Patriot Act. All law
enforcers have to do is fit an individual into a set profile (at one
time this was illegal, now it is used as an intelligence gather
method). US policies are headed toward a single predictable
direction---a down spiral. The publicity stunt worked!

From history, a Jihad never ends until clear demarcations have been
drawn, or one side has been completely beaten or surrenders. And if the
tenacity of Filipino Muslims is any indication, 50 years is not enough.
So Bush is full of hogwash. They should have asked Russia about their
experiences in Afghanistan (Russia lost and gave up). Now the US is
using every publicity stunt to pretend that they have actually made a
dent in their war against terrorism. The way they sustain this image is
through the "coalition of the willing". What is the incentive of
joining? Cash. But like the initial grant of 3,000,000.00 USD that was
supposed to help poor farmers reclaim friar land, and the free trade
agreement (opposed by Quezon and Osmena), these incentives will always
slant to exclusively benefit the powers that be and US interests. This
is bribing at the highest levels...the epitome of legalized corruption.

Unfortunately, other criminal elements will piggy-back on the chaos that
is happening since there is no clear way of distinguishing one from the
other. But legislators think that by crafting "language" (syntax and
semantics) they could solve the problem. "Gaya-gaya puto-maya". Learn
from history.

The best way to fight terrorism in the Philippines is not by creating a
bill that is redundant and unnecessary (unless of course politicians
want to score brownie points with the US), but by learning from what we
already know; by clearly separating functions and authority and power
between the military and civilian authority (I mean really...); by
understanding the nature of our problem in our context and not on the
basis of forced or imposed contexts.

America is new to this game of fighting internal insurgency that is
largely based on extremist religion. The Philippines is not. America
is new to fighting a religious war with Islamic extremists. The
Philippines is not. America may have the equipment, but we certainly
have the knowledge gained through collective experience. They should be
listening to us, instead of us listening to them. The problem is 85%
psycho-sociological, and 15% technical. The Philippines has possession
answers that could solve the 85%.

The new anti-terror bill does not introduce any substantive means to
solve terrorism especially in the way the US defines it. It is a
redundancy and a threat to civil liberty (never forget martial law) and
is a waste of tax payers money. Rather than wasting the peoples taxes
on spent saliva and spittle debating this issue, why not introduce
changes that will undo the damages introduced by the Coopers Act that
eliminated the right of the people to a jury system, so that the people,
not just legislators or "experts", can decide. This peoples initiative
is hogwash. Let the experts prove their case to the people through a
jury system. The burden of proof must lie with those who want to
introduce damaging legislation, and not on the side of those who oppose it.

If the powers that be force the issue, who's the terrorist now?