Warnings she must heed:



The Bolante question



By The Manila Times Research Staff

All kinds of speculations have been aired since former agriculture undersecretary Jocelyn Bolante was arrested in the United States for entering the country without a visa.

Could his arrest be a US government warning shot to the Arroyo administration?

Opposition voices are saying his arrest was made on the initiative of the Arroyo administration. They allege the administration does not want Bolante to come back to the Philippines and be forced to spill the beans in congressional investigations about his alleged diversion of P728 million from funds for fertilizers to be shared with farmers to President Arroyo’s 2004 campaign kitty.

Both the Philippine and American governments are not forthcoming with details.

The Philippine government has in fact ordered a total blackout on statements and news about Bolante.

US immigration experts are befuddled why Bolante was arrested and held. He is in a US Immigration and Customs Enforcement “processing center” in San Pedro, California.

Why was he not just made to board the plane back to the Philippines? If the issue against him is merely a visa problem this is a big question.

There is speculation that he was caught with undeclared money. And new US laws allow American authorities to arrest persons suspected of having done fraud or committed any kind of corruption.

A source—who has requested anonymity—working in an American think tank that is close to the Republican Party told The Manila Times about “the warning shot theory.”

Various sections in the State Department and the White House are concerned with details about other countries’ performance in the war against graft and corruption and human-rights abuses. Similarly preoccupied with these issues are some American congressmen and senators and their aides.

It seems that some people in the Bush White House are worried about (1) the slow pace of the anticorruption campaign in the Philippines, (2) the fast pace of the killings of militant activists and sometimes innocent populist leaders identified with the Catholic Church or Protestant churches here in the Philippines and (3) the attacks against civil liberties and freedom of the press during the one-week national emergency in February.

These Americans are worried about these Philippine matters because President Bush is facing questions about alleged human-rights violations in Iraq and in the American prison camps in Cuba. The Bush administration is also being criticized for small-time graft in the awarding of contracts in Iraq and small-scale wrongdoings on the domestic front.

They are, in addition, concerned because in Latin America three leftist government have been elected whose leaders are making Fidel Castro’s one-man band a foursome.

These White House and State Department aides are concerned that the Philippines, being a favorite Asian ally of the United States, could become an international scandal and end up being chalked up as a count against the Bush administration.

The Bolante question is thus liable to become a critical problem for the Arroyo administration.

What if the Bush administration decides to come down on the side of her opposition?

This could happen if political corruption grows unabated in the Philippines and breeds more cynicism and generates more communist dissidence as in the Marcos regime.

The AFP, and now the combined AFP-PNP tasked with working together to pursue the all-out war against the communists, is becoming the biggest recruiter for the NPA-CPP, as militants and even populist Church-associated peasant and student leaders become desaparecidos as in Argentina, Brazil, Nicaragua and El Salvador.

This is being observed by relevant US Embassy personnel as well as Americans doing US government and private-sector work throughout the country.

It was the US Embassy in Manila that was given the credit for “being responsible” for ordering Bolante’s visa cancellation and opening him to arrest on arrival.

The US Embassy would not do that if it did not have Washington’s approval.

Bolante’s arrest, the think tank source said, is a warning shot at GMA from Washington. The message she must heed is: Cut down on corruption, cynical rule, and behave—or we’ll bring you down!

American newspapers have been writing about Philippine corruption and the killings of political activists—including noncommunist Christian propoor workers.

Some governors and mayors, allies of President Arroyo, have also complained to her about their grassroots leaders, taken for communists, being disappeared by AFP—linked militias or by soldiers themselves.

The European media and human-rights groups have been making an outcry about these Philippine issues.

Even the new papal nuncio in the Philippines has “hit political killings, demanded justice,” a news release by the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines said on July 20.

Perhaps to put his best diplomatic foot forward, Archbishop Fernando Filoni, Pope Benedict’s nuncio, corrected a news report about his plaint that came out in a newspaper (not The Times).

But read this, the exact CBCP news release:

“July 20, 2006—The Papal Envoy to the Philippines has raised concerns about mounting violence especially on activists and journalists and urged government leaders to bring to justice all the perpetrators.

“Human-rights groups reported at least 700 people have been killed since President Arroyo took office in 2001.

“In a forum at the University of Asia and the Pacific, Archbishop Fernando Filoni said the number of killings is alarming despite the abolition of the death-penalty law.

“‘I am surprised to see that in the Philippines there is still an activity of high incidence of a moral and political violence against those who profess different political ideologies, like . . . journalists and political activists,’ said Archbishop Fernando Filoni.

“While he hailed President Arroyo’s decision to junk capital punishment, the nuncio said it raises question on the government’s intention.

“’It will truly be a contradiction, if on the one hand, we practically abolished the death penalty and yet, on the other hand, we are not respecting or implementing the rights of the human race,’ he said.”

“Meanwhile, the CBCP also denounced the spate of killings in a pastoral statement issued recently.

“’We join the outcry of groups that have denounced the increasing number of extrajudicial killings of journalists and social activists suspected as sympathizers of insurgents allegedly by some ultra-rightist elements in the military,’ the CBCP said.

“The bishops also called attention to a ‘great number’ of similar executions that have never landed in the newspapers.

“‘The defense of human rights and of human dignity must itself be just. It has to be impartial, irrespective of religious belief or ideology,’ the bishops added.”

The actual release can be seen on the CBCP official website.



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Posted by Pesante-USA