GI June

Bombings, the threat of emergency rule, coup rumors, official visits by US security officials including the new US CIA director, and revitalized street protests against the de facto President’s maneuvers to hold on to power beyond 2010 -- all constitute major elements roiling the political cauldron in the run-up the forthcoming State-of-the-Nation address. Ordinarily they can provide more than enough material for weekly political commentary. Yet this week, I choose to write closer to home.

My psychiatrist-sister has just been diagnosed with cancer. These past weeks she has been hit by a tornado of events, thoughts and feelings brought about by the discovery of this life-threatening disease. She - and I - need to gain a proper perspective on this and according to a nondescript-looking book she shared with me, The Book of My Healing by Peggy Schmidt, writing about a serious illness or accident, can do that, apart from actually promote self-healing.

Being a doctor, June didn’t ask the question “Why me?” in a metaphysical way. It was not like her to look to God for an explanation for every catastrophe, personal or otherwise. She looked into the family medical history and there were nine other close relatives who also developed cancer with some eventually dying of it.

She reviewed how conscientious she was in having her regular medical check-ups as well as in seeking expert advice about various physical ailments. In fact she had been given a clean bill of health after undergoing a full executive check-up two months before her diagnosis.

She reflected on her lifestyle, work load and general mindset, noting her share of stress factors, bad eating habits and unhealthy practices, like daily losing precious sleep doing email or chatting on line.

She belatedly acknowledged that once a person reaches her golden years, a lot of body parts, including one’s genetic material, start to go out of kilter, causing abnormal cells to grow uncontrollably. Not even the most saintly, health-conscious and prudent person is exempt from developing the disease.

It was a seemingly endless series of tests that she had to go through to finally pin down the type of cancer, the stage and what had to be done to save her life. Being a doctor had its plus side: she was conversant with the experts and could participate with relative ease in her medical management; she could seek second and many more opinions from an array of doctor-relatives and doctor-colleagues before making critical decisions; she could do her own research or ask her bioresearcher-daughter to come up with the latest on diagnosis and treatment.

But it had its down-side too: June could not keep herself from thinking in detail about the most dire of scenarios: like not having a treatable kind of cancer and being consigned to palliative treatment; or of brain metastasis (that would be the end of her professional career); or chemotherapy turning out to be far more debilitating and crippling than the cancer itself.

For too long a time she was her own general physician: she wrote down her medical history, she ordered the tests she thought she required; she called on the specialists she thought needed to be consulted. She see-sawed from trying to be clear-headed as a doctor, with the cold objectivity she was trained to apply, to being overwhelmed by fear bordering on panic like any patient with the dreaded disease. She could not help noting the sins of omission by some of the physicians whose help she had sought and who had dismissed or missed her signs and symptoms.

Then there was the matter of cost. Chemo alone would be a hefty hundred forty thousand pesos per cycle; she needed six to eight cycles. At first she had hoped she could be included in a clinical protocol researching a new drug for the kind of cancer she had. That would have meant all or almost all of the expense of further diagnostic examinations and treatment would be shouldered by the research sponsors.

But one restriction after another stood in the way of her inclusion until she gave up trying to be the square-peg patient in the stringent round-hole research protocol. It seems only patients who have absolutely no means end up agreeing to be human guinea pigs; that is, they are research subjects first and foremost and patients second. All the delay while trying to qualify for the free treatment had eaten into June’s precious window of opportunity to get at the fast-growing malignancy. We urged her to start chemo ASAP; the money for the rest of the treatment cycles would be found somehow.

It was when the bill came that June found out that she had just contributed twentyfive thousand pesos to government coffers in her effort to get well. Yes, Sen. Mar Roxas, that’s 20% VAT on life-giving medicines despite all the government hoopla about bringing down the price of pharmaceuticals.

A doctor classmate of June quipped that it would be interesting to see how she would “process” in her mind what she was going through the way she had helped hundreds of her patients and thousands more to whom she had given stress management seminars. How would she summon the physical strength, the will power, intangible stuff like faith and hope, and always, the lightheartedness and sense of humor, to steer her through a sea of anxiety, pain and worry about the future.

As it turned out, loved ones, friends and even strangers, came forward to provide the sympathetic ear, the useful tips on mitigating the chemo side-effects, the quiet place to rest and recuperate and the indispensable financial assistance.

And June, ever the psychiatrist, teacher-researcher and gritty fighter soon summed-up some of the things she learned after her first round of chemo. As a patient who, coincidentally, is also a physician, she wrote, tongue-in-cheek, in her first email to all and sundry:

1) Don't refer to all cancer patients who took chemo and lived beyond the time frame everybody else or even their doctor thought possible as "cancer survivors". They are more appropriately called "chemo survivors" since the chemo is really more toxic than the cancer.

2) Don't let people know you have cancer until your doctor has told you what specific kind you have. Otherwise, you will be flooded by text messages asking whether they will still see you next year.

3) Be careful giving your announcement piecemeal or telling some people about your condition confidentially. It will still spread like wildfire and some people will feel hurt that they didn't merit being in your priority list.

4) If you get advice which really sounds too radical or even weird, don't argue. Just say you'll think about it.

5) Important to note. Chemo meds are "cash on delivery".

6) Not all chemo come with the famous dreaded side effects of nausea, vomiting, bleeding and hair loss. Forgive people who will tell you, the worse is still to come, for they know not what they say.

7) By the way, it really makes you feel in control if you shave your hair ahead of time. (It may not fall but...) You may even discover the new hairdo suits you and keep it beyond chemo. One suggestion: Tell the barber to set his clipper only at No. 2 not zero. You only want to look like Demi Moore not Yul Bryner!

She signed her email “June aka GI June” in humorous reference to her newly-shaved head. #

*Published In Business World
17-18 July 2009

What it takes

The political future of this country continues to defy simplistic and worn-out notions especially about how the festering crisis of legitimacy hounding the Arroyo regime can be quickly resolved. Those placing their hopes in the 2010 elections as the definitive way to end Mrs. Arroyo’s shaky and detested reign have been jolted by Malacanang’s brazen maneuverings to maintain hold on power. The run-up to the 2010 elections is hands down already the most chaotic, riddled with controversy and shrouded with doubt and uncertainty.

There is the last-ditch attempt to amend the 1987 Constitution by utilizing Mrs. Arroyo’s hold on the Lower House of Congress to convene a supposed “constituent assembly” sans Senate participation. The plan includes getting judicial stamp of approval for this political jujitsu from a Supreme Court dominated by Mrs. Arroyo’s appointees and who have time and again proven themselves pliant to her wishes.

The Arroyo clique would then move to shift to a parliamentary system that would allow Mrs. Arroyo, by this time representing her hometown district in Pampanga, to run for Prime Minister. Should she win she would enjoy all the power, perks and privileges of the office including immunity from suit for the multiple crimes of plunder, human rights violations, electoral fraud and treasonous ceding of national sovereignty and patrimony to foreign interests. By the way, the post of prime minister, by nature of the parliamentary system, would have no term limits; theoretically, Mrs. Arroyo could go on ruling this god-forsaken country indefinitely.

Efforts to reform the fraud-ridden electoral process by installing an automated system that would cut short the time for counting, transmitting and consolidating the poll results have only added confusion to an already confusing situation. From the simple idea of speeding things up using computers, it has become increasingly clear that what could actually happen -- with a questionable and even flawed bidding process, a cheating mafia still embedded in the Comelec , and technology only a curiously select few control – is large-scale automated cheating OR a pre-determined failure of elections.

The latest twist has the winning bidder for the automated electoral system or AES inexplicably caught up in what appears to be “irreconcilable differences” not unlike a marriage gone sour even before the honeymoon had started. The withdrawal of the local partner TIM from its joint venture with the Dutch company Smartmatic is another explosive ingredient to the extremely volatile election run-up with just a little more than 10 months to go. The belief is rife that TIM's move is part of a scheme to ensure and strengthen the Arroyo regime's control of the election results.

The various conspiracy theories behind the TIM-Smartmatic break-up; the most recent spate of bombings including, according to the police, intentional duds; fresh rumors of a military coup; and the shrouded but no less ominous threat of a Palace coup via the National Security Adviser’s call for a “transition government” preceding the shift to a parliamentary system as the only way to resolve the political crisis -- are testament to the confusing state of affairs the country is currently embroiled in.

The Arroyo regime is always quick to accuse the entire breadth of the legal opposition of politicking, destabilization, sabotage and worse. We suspect it does so not so much to convince anyone except the most ignorant or naïve but to give the Arroyo loyalists something to defend her with, no matter if they sound like a broken record.

For good reason most people suspect government behind every hitch or problem that crops up. This kind of thinking only shows the extent and degree to which the Arroyo regime has lost its credibility. More so it reveals how the regime has mangled its mandate and responsibility to the people beyond redemption and how its overweening ambition and desperation to stay in power pushes it to bring the ruling system perilously to the brink.

There are those who, fed up with accusations and counter-accusations, hold government and the opposition equally responsible for the deteriorating situation, for seeding doubt and cynicism in the political atmosphere to suit their own sinister and self-serving ends. It is a view that the Arroyo regime at times welcomes, and even deliberately nurtures. For it somehow obscures and glosses over the fact that it is government that is vested with the power and resources to promote national interest and the common good.

There are those who stick their heads in the sand ignoring the dangerous developments taking place. For example, some persist in “Get out and vote!” campaigns seemingly oblivious that at the rate things are going, there may be no elections whatsoever or that only a thoroughly corrupted electoral process would actually take place.

Some, especially presidential wannabes and other candidates for the 2010 elections, have not skipped a beat in their single-minded determination to win, going full blast with their campaign advertisements, provincial sorties and machinery building.

Self-proclaimed “alternative” candidates or putative movements for change and good governance come up with all sorts of seemingly novel approaches to choosing deserving candidates in the 2010 elections without facing the reality of a downright rotten and discredited electoral system that would frustrate any attempt to express and uphold the will, if not the true interests, of the electorate.

What is needed at this time is a concerted, unwavering and focused political campaign to thwart the Arroyo clique’s evil scheme to convene the bogus “constituent assembly”, acquire the Supreme Court’s imprimatur for this, and thus gain the legal leeway to shift to a form of government, including the institution of a transition period, whereby Mrs. Arroyo remains in power.

This requires massive and sustained mobilizations or demonstrations (and the widespread information and educational campaigns that are their sine qua non) up to and including the possibility of a popular, unarmed uprising to oust this criminal gang from the Presidential Palace. The rank and file and junior officers of the military and police must be convinced to refrain from being used to violently suppress such a protest movement. Those in the civilian bureaucracy must be convinced to withdraw their support in various creative ways for this outlaw of a regime. The international community must be convinced that the Oust Arroyo Movement is legitimate, popularly and broadly supported and inevitable -- should Mrs. Arroyo push through with its ill-disguised grab for power.

Nothing short of this monumental display of direct people’s action -- of “people power” -- can stop the Arroyo cabal in its tracks. #

*Published in Business World
2-3 July 2009

Revolutionary option

AFP Chief Gen. Victor Ibrado recently admitted that the military is having difficulty meeting the deadline imposed by de facto Commander-in-chief Mrs. Gloria Arroyo three years ago, to end the decades-old communist insurgency in 2010. (Philippine Star, 22 June 09) This was after he and his predecessors had repeatedly boasted that the military was on track in achieving the defeat of the New People’s Army (NPA). The lame excuse is that the armed guerillas “are just crisscrossing borders and transferring to another guerilla front” even when the AFP had already allegedly “dismantled” the political and military infrastructures of numerous rebel fronts.

One need not be an expert on military strategy and tactics to know that guerillas by nature employ flexibility and shifting tactics. This is a guerilla movement’s way of dealing with the overwhelming superiority, in terms of numbers and weapons, of the state’s armed forces at any given point. Instead, it makes use of the favorable physical and social terrain in the countryside, i.e. the rugged mountains and remaining forested areas as well as the support of the rural populace, to conduct their type of revolutionary warfare.

Time and again ruling regimes announce the impending demise of armed revolutionary movements in much the same vein and for the same reasons that they belittle the democratic protest movement. The aim is to conjure strength and stability, to foist the illusion of popular acceptance if not support, because government is supposedly undertaking reforms that address the causes of armed conflict and mass protest actions.

Deceptive propaganda works up to a certain point given government resources and numerous levers to manipulate, if not control, the mass media. But reality always catches up and the truth becomes so glaring that the regime’s minions are compelled to eat their words and offer the lamest of excuses or persist in the most egregious of lies.

In the early 70’s, President Ferdinand Marcos declared that the NPA had been “nipped in the bud” after AFP troops seized more than a dozen high-power rifles in a Tarlac raid. But the NPA raided the Philippine Military Academy armory at the end of the year, carting away much more than what was lost in Tarlac.

In the 80’s, Defense Secretary Juan Ponce Enrile and the Regional Unified Command Commanding General Romeo Gatan vowed to rid Cagayan Valley of the NPA in a year’s time. Thereafter they complained that the NPA refused to come out and engage the AFP in conventional battles.

In the 90’s, AFP Chief Gen. Abadia declared Oplan Lambat Bitag a success and concluded that the NPA would be wiped out by 1995. His successor, Gen. Enrile, declared “decisive victory” over the NPA but candidly admitted that the latter is like a grapevine that could lose its leaves and fruit but would continue to thrive as long as it still has roots.

Then came the current counter-insurgency program, Oplan Bantay Laya, notorious the world over for the deliberate and brutal targeting of suspected civilian supporters, including unarmed activists, for “neutralization”. The latter is military lingo for summary execution, abduction, illegal arrest and detention on trumped-up charges and other tactics to terrorize entire communities and keep them from giving aid and succor to the so-called “enemy”. The AFP documentary “Knowing the Enemy” justified such state terror tactics as the missing crucial piece in the AFP strategy in order to explain away its previous failures.

Frustration and desperation within the AFP leadership was expressed by a ranking general known to be a proponent of extra-judicial killings who reportedly said, “If this doesn’t work, nothing will.” These are the same words of a US Central Intelligence Agency officer in defending “Oplan Phoenix” versus civilian targets.

What the Arroyo regime refuses to acknowledge is the real reason why its “all-out war” policy can never defeat the communist-led armed revolutionary movement. Mrs. Arroyo, her generals (both those in active duty and those recycled into powerful civilian posts) and other Cabinet right-wingers cannot accept that it is precisely the vastly unequal, extremely oppressive and exploitative and, ultimately repressive prevailing social system that is fuelling armed conflict and social unrest. And that no amount of military might nor strategy and tactics can wipe out the people’s legitimate struggles, armed or unarmed.

They deny the reality and refuse to accept the truth even when such is staring them in the face because their own interests are so tied-up with defending and preserving the status quo apart from advancing the Arroyo clique’s particular selfish interests.

Too bad for the reactionaries there exists a homegrown revolutionary movement that presents a clear-sighted, historical analysis of the problems of Philippine society and a matching program to overhaul it.

Whether one sympathizes with it or not, the fact is this revolutionary movement is present and exerts significant political influence. It continues to challenge the ruling system and regime in power at every turn and raises the possibility of overturning the crisis-ridden system one day and introducing a radically different alternative, with an entirely new set of political ideals, principles, values and work ethic not to mention socio-economic program.

Both the promise of profound, sweeping change and the growing actual strength of this movement is what continue to rile the Arroyo regime and unsettle the entire ruling elite.

And should the Arroyo clique, faced with a constitutional limit to Mrs. Arroyo’s continuation in power beyond 2010, resort to outright, wholesale perversion of the remaining vestiges of democratic rule by manipulating Congress and the Supreme Court and by declaring emergency rule, there remains a wide countryside that can provide sanctuary as well as a fighting terrain while hitherto legal, democratic rights and processes are severely constrained.

Senate President Ponce Enrile warns of revolution should the 2010 elections not push through because of failure of the automated electoral system being set up by the Commission on Elections. Mr. Enrile is being facetious because he, as one of the architects of martial rule under the dictator Marcos, knows quite well that a revolution has been and is even now raging nationwide. It finds expression in armed forms in the countryside while seething in the cities and towns in the various forms of protests and mass actions demanding pro-people and democratic reforms. In a society in permanent crisis such as the Philippines, the revolutionary movement is an inevitable and, to many sectors, a welcome offshoot.

Perhaps what Senator Enrile means is that the deceptive trappings of elite democracy in this country will be sundered rapidly, dramatically and irreparably should the electoral circus slated for 2010 be completely disrupted for one reason or another. Revolution then will be more than a theoretical option to many more Filipinos. #