Her father's daughter
Her father's daughter
Updated 00:36am (Mla time) Oct 31, 2004
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the October 31, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
ILOCOS Norte Rep. Imee Marcos has cut a high profile in the ongoing congressional inquiry into the alleged corruption in the Armed Forces of the Philippines. She tangled with the always-testy Interior Secretary Angelo Reyes over his mother's tax returns. She buttonholed another former AFP chief of staff, Diomedio Villanueva, about his willingness to disclose his Statement of Assets and Liabilities.
When Maj. Gen. Carlos Garcia was a no-show at the first hearing, she threatened (a week ahead of Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago) to block the confirmation of offending military officials at the Commission on Appointments. When Garcia finally showed up, she speculated loudly about an alleged P50-million public relations offensive funded by generals.
At one point, a columnist in another newspaper described her as asking "searching questions" about various aspects of corruption in the military during the televised hearings.
High-profile stuff, except for one thing. Her questions were not searching enough. If anything, and taken together, they can be understood as an attempt to gloss over the fundamental reality that has marked the AFP the last 40 years. It was her father, the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who corrupted the military.
This is not to say that everyone in the AFP, or even in the corps of generals, is necessarily corrupt. Or that those generals who are in fact corrupt bear no responsibility because the blame has been laid squarely at the foot of the dictator's glass coffin.
Corruption in the military, like corruption elsewhere in government, remains a matter of choice. Individuals make the personal decision to divert some of the budget, or accept a supplier's bribe, or favor an influential businessman in a locality. But Marcos created a culture in the military that made it easier for both officers and the rank and file to make the fatal choice.
The country's most successful politician started by politicizing the AFP. From his first election as president, until his last days as dictator, Marcos applied bailiwick politics ruthlessly. The most important demographics were Ilocano roots and personal loyalty. The best example remains the most obvious. Marcos maneuvered his cousin and former driver Fabian Ver through the ranks, finally appointing him AFP chief of staff over much more qualified officers.
By aggressively promoting those loyal to him personally and those who hailed from the so-called Solid North, Marcos devalued the traditional military virtues of courage and competence, merit and discipline.
Marcos then corrupted the military by rewarding his partisans and buying off others. Essentially, he turned generals into businessmen, even while they were in military service.
The stir over Garcia's many houses is a faint echo of public outrage over the generals' mansions that came to light in the mid-1980s-many of them in expensive residential villages near Camp Aguinaldo, all of them out of reach of a general's standard pay.
A consummate lawyer, Marcos worked hard to keep up legal appearances. He was quite vain about the legal justification for martial rule, which he called constitutional authoritarianism. But in truth, his regime was kept in power in part through the use of the military.
Thus, Marcos undermined the military by giving it a heady taste of political power. He brought the boys out of the barracks, as it were, and it has since been a struggle to keep them there.
In other words, he corrupted the military in the same way he corrupted Philippine democracy itself, by subverting it from within and undermining its foundations.
This is the reality that the dictator's daughter fails to see, or does not want us to see. If she were serious about reforming the AFP -- which has been since 1986 a sometimes troubled but undeniably pro-democratic institution-she would begin by looking for traces of her father's rule. (They're everywhere.)
But that is as likely to happen as Garcia suddenly remembering a plausible justification for his unexplained wealth. No Marcos has even apologized for the excesses, the torture, the billion-dollar corruption, that marked the dark days of the dictatorship. We shouldn't hold our breath, expecting them to start now.
Updated 00:36am (Mla time) Oct 31, 2004
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the October 31, 2004 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer
ILOCOS Norte Rep. Imee Marcos has cut a high profile in the ongoing congressional inquiry into the alleged corruption in the Armed Forces of the Philippines. She tangled with the always-testy Interior Secretary Angelo Reyes over his mother's tax returns. She buttonholed another former AFP chief of staff, Diomedio Villanueva, about his willingness to disclose his Statement of Assets and Liabilities.
When Maj. Gen. Carlos Garcia was a no-show at the first hearing, she threatened (a week ahead of Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago) to block the confirmation of offending military officials at the Commission on Appointments. When Garcia finally showed up, she speculated loudly about an alleged P50-million public relations offensive funded by generals.
At one point, a columnist in another newspaper described her as asking "searching questions" about various aspects of corruption in the military during the televised hearings.
High-profile stuff, except for one thing. Her questions were not searching enough. If anything, and taken together, they can be understood as an attempt to gloss over the fundamental reality that has marked the AFP the last 40 years. It was her father, the late dictator Ferdinand Marcos, who corrupted the military.
This is not to say that everyone in the AFP, or even in the corps of generals, is necessarily corrupt. Or that those generals who are in fact corrupt bear no responsibility because the blame has been laid squarely at the foot of the dictator's glass coffin.
Corruption in the military, like corruption elsewhere in government, remains a matter of choice. Individuals make the personal decision to divert some of the budget, or accept a supplier's bribe, or favor an influential businessman in a locality. But Marcos created a culture in the military that made it easier for both officers and the rank and file to make the fatal choice.
The country's most successful politician started by politicizing the AFP. From his first election as president, until his last days as dictator, Marcos applied bailiwick politics ruthlessly. The most important demographics were Ilocano roots and personal loyalty. The best example remains the most obvious. Marcos maneuvered his cousin and former driver Fabian Ver through the ranks, finally appointing him AFP chief of staff over much more qualified officers.
By aggressively promoting those loyal to him personally and those who hailed from the so-called Solid North, Marcos devalued the traditional military virtues of courage and competence, merit and discipline.
Marcos then corrupted the military by rewarding his partisans and buying off others. Essentially, he turned generals into businessmen, even while they were in military service.
The stir over Garcia's many houses is a faint echo of public outrage over the generals' mansions that came to light in the mid-1980s-many of them in expensive residential villages near Camp Aguinaldo, all of them out of reach of a general's standard pay.
A consummate lawyer, Marcos worked hard to keep up legal appearances. He was quite vain about the legal justification for martial rule, which he called constitutional authoritarianism. But in truth, his regime was kept in power in part through the use of the military.
Thus, Marcos undermined the military by giving it a heady taste of political power. He brought the boys out of the barracks, as it were, and it has since been a struggle to keep them there.
In other words, he corrupted the military in the same way he corrupted Philippine democracy itself, by subverting it from within and undermining its foundations.
This is the reality that the dictator's daughter fails to see, or does not want us to see. If she were serious about reforming the AFP -- which has been since 1986 a sometimes troubled but undeniably pro-democratic institution-she would begin by looking for traces of her father's rule. (They're everywhere.)
But that is as likely to happen as Garcia suddenly remembering a plausible justification for his unexplained wealth. No Marcos has even apologized for the excesses, the torture, the billion-dollar corruption, that marked the dark days of the dictatorship. We shouldn't hold our breath, expecting them to start now.
posted by Dante at 12:36 AM
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