Martial bonds redux

“GINAGAWA KO ‘yan nung panahon ko kaya it’s the right thing to do. It varied. The threat is national so it’s just right that we should trust the President.”

So spoke – in her first press conference as House deputy speaker – the former president, now Pampanga 2^nd District Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, on President Duterte’s declaration of a “state of lawlessness” in the wake of the blast in Davao City that claimed 14 lives.

“President Duterte knows all the lessons, because he was helping me a lot during my time. He was my adviser on peace and order and drugs. He knows my experience, he knows all the lessons,” Mrs. Arroyo said.

Indeed, the former president knows whereof she stands. Experienced as she was in the ways of states – of emergency, of lawlessness, of rebellion, even of martial law, to wit:

In 2003, President Arroyo declared a state of lawlessness following the two consecutive bombings in Davao International Airport that caused 21 deaths and at the Sasa Wharf Terminal with 16 fatalities. The declaration though was limited to Davao City.

Early into her presidency, in 2001, she declared a state of rebellion after a mob protesting the arrest of deposed President Joseph Estrada virtually stormed the very gates of Malacanang; and also in 2003 at the time of the Oakwood Mutiny led by Navy Ltsg. Antonio Trillanes IV, now honorable senator of the Republic.

In 2009, Mrs. Arroyo declared martial law in Maguindanao in the aftermath of the Ampatuan Massacre of 58 persons, 32 of whom were journalists.

Of her martial law declaration, here is something unearthed from the Zona archives, dated December 07, 2009:

Martial bonds

YOU DON’T use a .45 to kill a fly.
I remember reading that from a mimeographed sheet that came out of Fort Bonifacio in 1972 shortly after Ferdinand Marcos put the entire archipelago under martial law. The statement was supposed to have come from the incarcerated Sen. Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino.
Ninoy’s contention was that martial law was an inappropriate reaction, nay, an overkill, to the socio-economic and political problems besetting the country.
Summed up Proclamation 1081: “…WHEREAS, the rebellion and armed action undertaken by these lawless elements of the communist and other armed aggrupations organized to overthrow the Republic of the Philippines by armed violence and force have assumed the magnitude of an actual state of war against our people and the Republic of the Philippines;
NOW, THEREFORE, I, FERDINAND E. MARCOS, President of the Philippines, by virtue of the powers vested upon me by Article VII, Section 10, Paragraph ('2) of the Constitution, do hereby place the entire Philippines as defined in Article I, Section 1 of the Constitution under martial law and, in my capacity as their commander-in-chief, do hereby command the armed forces of the Philippines, to maintain law and order throughout the Philippines, prevent or suppress all forms of lawless violence as well as any act of insurrection or rebellion and to enforce obedience to all the laws and decrees, orders and regulations promulgated by me personally or upon my direction…”
“An actual state of war” against the republic, Marcos justified his martial law. A perpetuation of himself in power, so Marcos did with martial law.
Fast forward now to the present. “An overreaction.” So yelled former President Fidel V. Ramos at President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s Proclamation 1959 that imposed martial law in Maguindanao.
“Heavily armed groups in the province of Maguindanao have established positions to resist government troops… the condition of peace and order in the province of Maguindanao has deteriorated to the extent that the local judicial system and other government mechanisms in the province are not functioning, thus endangering public safety…” So asserted GMA’s proclamation.
“A rebellion was in the offing.” So seconded Justice Secretary Agnes Devanadera. To dummies, GMA’s martial law is a pre-emptive strike against a rebellion that is yet a-brewing. Which broke altogether whatever legal leg it stood on.

Imminent danger

The erudite Christian Monsod stressed that the “imminent danger” clause of the 1935 Constitution that Marcos abused had been excised from the 1987 Constitution precisely so it would not be taken in vain again. Monsod knows whereof he speaks, being one of the framers of the fundamental law now in effect.
By making a “looming rebellion” as justification for GMA’s martial law, the government raised the ghost of a dead constitution, and along with it the phantoms of a Marcosian past.
Indeed, the spectre of the Great Ferdinand is beginning to haunt and hound our days.
No-election scenarios with GMA holding on to the presidency after June 2010 are given renewed vitality in coffeeshop talks.
“An emerging Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo dictatorship” the Filipino people should resist with all might, said the militant bloc of Congressmen Satur Ocampo, Teodoro Casiño, Liza Maza, et al.
This, even as they re-affirmed their principled stand that Proclamation 1959 was neither constitutional nor necessary given that there is no rebellion or invasion in Maguindanao, and that a state of emergency had already been declared in the area providing the armed forces, the national police and other government agencies with enough powers to deal with the aftermath of the Maguindanao massacre.
“We believe Proclamation 1959 is meant to be a precedent. It is an attempt to impose martial law even without the requirements specified in the Constitution. If GMA gets away with this one in Maguindanao, she can get away with it in any other province or the whole country,” they warned in a statement.
Raised too were the ghosts of an elections past – 2004’s to be exact.

Cover up

“One possible reason for the martial-law declaration might be to cover up the massive fraud that marred the 2004 presidential and 2007 senatorial elections in the province.” So said Sen. Aquilino Pimentel Jr. “President Arroyo and her cohorts are afraid the Ampatuans may expose the rigging of election results in Maguindanao that enabled her to win over opposition challenger Fernando Poe Jr. in the 2004 elections, and administration candidates to sweep the senatorial polls in the province in 2007.”
Seconded Makati Mayor Jejomar Binay: “There have been reports that the Ampatuans have threatened to make the Arroyo administration pay by telling all they know about the massive cheating in the province during the 2004 presidential elections…(if such reports are true) then this reduces the martial-law proclamation into a hunt for evidence of election fraud. It would now appear that the Arroyo administration is using the full might of the state—the Armed Forces, the police and all agencies of government—to recover original election returns or certificates of canvas reportedly in the possession of the Ampatuans as a state of martial law will allow the administration to conduct raids and searches without going through the courts.”
Binay decried the Arroyo administration for “exploiting the nation’s outrage to cover up another serious crime, that of stealing the 2004 elections.”
Nunquam iterum. Never again to martial law. Never again to a Marcos!
Unlearned of our past, we are a nation damned.

COME TO think of this now: Duterte’s declaration of state lawlessness, the issue of Marcos burial at the Libingan ng mga Bayani, back dropped by the very month martial law was declared. Sheer coincidence?

Go ahead, conspiracy theorists, make your day.