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07271 May 9, 2007
Graft and corruption'
That's the name of the game in the Philippines, moderator told
by Evan Silverstein
MANILA - The biggest problems facing the Philippines today are massive poverty, endemic corruption and worsening violence and criminality, according to one of the island nation's most venerable statesmen.
Jovito R. Salonga, an 86-year-old former Filipino senator, retired attorney and son of a Presbyterian minister, recently met with the Rev. Joan S. Gray, moderator of the Presbyterian Church (U.S.A.)'s 217th General Assembly.
Salonga, long known here as a champion of democracy and human rights, served four decades in public office, including a stint as senate president, under three different administrations - Diosdado Macapagal, Ferdinand Marcos and Corazon Aquino.
Salonga, who opposed the Marcos dictatorship, discussed the upcoming elections in his country and the impact of United States policy on the Philippines. He also railed against U.S. President George W. Bush and cheered the emergence of Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois.
"I think that there are three main problems of Philippine society today," Salonga told Gray. "Number one: poverty. Number two: Corruption in government and society. We usually call it graft and corruption. And number three: Ever-rising, increasing criminality including extra-judicial killings."
Since President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo took office in 2001, hundreds of human rights activists, journalists, clergy and other church workers have been slain, sparking accusations of a systematic, nationwide campaign to silence those who challenge the status quo.
In all, there have been 835 reported cases of extra-judicial killings since Arroyo assumed power. Of those, 25 are church workers - 15 of them from the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP), which hosted Gray's visit, April 5-9.
"I think this extra-judicial killing involves the basic human right to live and to live with dignity," said Salonga, who is a UCCP member. "So this is really a gross violation of the fundamental right to live. We also have the Bill of Rights. No one shall be deprived of life, the number one liberty, or property without due process of law. But this is more than just life under the due process clause. This involves a violation of 'Thou shall not kill.' The number one commandment."
Gray's stay in Manila, the capital of the Philippines, was part of a three-nation tour of Asian church partners. It was the Atlanta pastor's first international trip since being elected to a two-year term by last summer's General Assembly in Birmingham, AL.
Her presence in the Philippines was also intended to send a signal that the PC(USA) stands in solidarity with the UCCP amid the violence.
The Filipino-born, U.S.-educated Salonga, wearing glasses and hearing aids, answered questions in English as relayed by Emilio C. Capulong Jr., a friend and local attorney who sat next to him during the meeting at the ex-senator's suburban Manila home.
Capulong's younger brother, Noel "Noli" Cortez Capulong, a UCCP lay leader and activist, was a victim of an extra-judicial killing last year. Two unidentified motorcycle-riding gunmen fatally shot the younger Capulong four times as he was driving home. The killers are still at large.
Some positive developments have taken place in addressing the killings, said Salonga, pointing to public outcry and pressures from the international community led by the European Union, human rights groups, and other organizations.
In addition, he said, there have been investigations by the United Nations and by a commission headed by a retired chief justice of the Philippines supreme court. Both groups have attributed the killings to the Philippines military. Salonga said the Philippines senate has also taken up the matter.
Attending the meeting with Gray on April 7 were her husband Bill, and the Rev. Insik Kim, the PC(USA)'s coordinator for East Asia and the Pacific. Also present were Bishop Eliezer Pascua, the UCCP's general secretary, and the Rev. Rannie Mercado of the UCCP.
Kim told Salonga that last summer's PC(USA) General Assembly expressed the denomination's support for the UCCP in its struggle for justice and human rights amid the rampant violence.
Kim said the PC(USA), through General Assembly Stated Clerk the Rev. Clifton Kirkpatrick, also wrote a letter to President Arroyo and President Bush expressing concern over the ongoing violence in the Philippines.
Salonga compared the extra-judicial executions in the Southeast Asian country to violence in Iraq, where killings and assassinations have become common.
"I do not think that it would be an exaggeration to say that what is happening in Iraq is probably happening here in the Philippines," Salonga said. "And there is a reaction against this. Unfortunately, our president is following the example of George W. Bush to our detriment."
Salonga said Filipinos have lost confidence in Bush and other recent U.S. presidents.
"I think at this particular juncture in our history the American presidents are not reputable here in the Philippines," he said. "This is no longer the time of Abraham Lincoln or Thomas Jefferson or even Franklin Delano Roosevelt. This is a far cry from those great presidents in American history, whom we honor here. This is the time of George W. Bush. That's why, personally, I appreciate the emergence of Barack Obama."
Referring to government credibility and corruption, Salonga said he believes the Philippines supreme court "is still reputable and credible but the two political departments of the Philippines government, the executive and the legislative (branches) are way down below."
Salonga said he hopes that local and congregational elections in the Philippines on May 14 will be an occasion for national renewal. But in a country where running for public office can get a candidate assassinated, Salonga is not counting on anything.
Nearly 30 people have been reported killed so far nationwide as rival candidates, many of them members of long-established political clans, step up their efforts to woo voters ahead of the polls.
Unlicensed weapons, private armies, weak law enforcement and allegations of vote-buying compound the traditionally rough-and-tumble elections in the Philippines.
"Elections in the past were based on merit," Salonga said. "But today, I cannot say that elections are based on merit. To win an election here, in this city, one has to spend a lot of money, millions. I think the same thing could be true in all places here in the Philippines."
Salonga is no stranger to the dangers of campaigning for public office in the Philippines.
While running for re-election in 1971, along with others members of the Liberal Party, Salonga was critically injured when his party's proclamation rally at a plaza in Manila was bombed. His doctors' prognoses were grim - he was not expected to live.
He survived, however, with impaired eyesight and hearing, and more than a hundred tiny pieces of shrapnel in his body. Despite his inability to campaign, he topped the senatorial race for a second time.
Gray, when asked about her impressions based on those she had spoken with during her visit, replied: "I've never met people who were so committed to doing the right things under duress as I have here in the Philippines at great cost to their personal welfare."
Salonga, who was born poor in a remote barrio in metro Manila, has been fighting corruption and dictatorship since his youth. The son of a Presbyterian minister whose mother was a market vendor, Salonga joined the resistance movement during the Japanese occupation. In April 1942, he was captured, tortured and sentenced by a military court to years of hard labor. Released in 1943, he topped the bar examinations the following year and received a scholarship to attend Harvard University in Cambridge, MA, for his master's degree. He followed up his master's with a doctorate from Yale University in New Haven, CT, but turned down a faculty position there to take part in post-war reconstruction in the Philippines.
Upon his return home, Salonga engaged in teaching and practicing law. He authored several books on corporate law and international law, and was appointed dean of the college of law at the Far Eastern University in Manila in 1956. When President Marcos declared martial law in September 1972, Salonga was one of his most outspoken opponents. He defended political prisoners who challenged the Marcos regime. In October 1980, Salonga was arrested along with several others and was detained without investigation and without charges. After Salonga's eventual release from military custody, prompted by loud protests in the Philippines and abroad, he was offered a visiting scholarship at Yale, where he engaged in the revision of his book about international law.
He also completed a program for a new democratic Philippines and a book on the Marcos regime. Salonga returned to the Philippines on Jan. 21, 1985. When the Aquino government took over in 1986 following the ousting of Marcos in a peaceful, bloodless revolution, Salonga was named chairman of the Presidential Commission on Good Government, an agency tasked to recover the ill-gotten wealth of Marcos and his cronies.
In 1987 Salonga topped the senatorial elections for a third time and became senate president. Under his leadership, the senate rejected a longstanding military bases agreement, formally ending the presence of foreign armed forces in the country after more than 400 years, including American military instillations, a move supported by the Presbyterian Church and other mainline Protestant denominations, Kim and Salonga told the moderator.
"Not only the Presbyterian Church but also the Methodist Church in the United States, they sent us messages in support of our stance," Salonga said. "But here in the Philippines more than 80 percent of our people were in favor of the continuation of the American military bases. We had become dependent economically on the United States because of the military bases here."
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