PHILIPPINES: Arroyo knew in advance about solders' mutiny

August 13, 2003
Issue 

BY NICK SOUDAKOFF

On August 1, the government of Philippines President Gloria Arroyo formally charged the 321 soldiers who occupied parts of the Makati business district in Manila last month with attempting a coup d'etat.

Two officers and five soldiers who have been charged are still at large. At least 45 of the soldiers also face court martial for "articles of war violations" in connection with the failed mutiny. Thirty eight other soldiers have also been detained.

Arroyo has refused to lift the "state of rebellion" she declared on July 26, saying there is still a threat to the government.

During their brief mutiny, the soldiers accused the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) top brass and the government of corruption, the sponsoring of terrorist bombings in Mindanao and protested against low pay and poor housing.

Their demands included the resignation of Arroyo, defence secretary Angelo Reyes, head of military intelligence General Victor Corpus and Philippines National Police (PNP) chief Hermogenes Ebdane.

While the soldiers' mutiny ended in less than a day, the political fallout continues. To diffuse unrest in the AFP, Corpus resigned on July 30. Arroyo also announced that there will be an independent commission established to investigate the mutineers' accusations and that there would be an increase in soldiers' pay.

The government is trying to discredit the mutineers by linking them to political figures such as Senator Gregorio Honasan and former president Josef Estrada. Honasan had declared on July 11 his intention of standing in the May 2004 presidential elections.

The government filed coup charges against Honasan on August 4. He has been in hiding since July 29 and denies being involved in the soldiers' rebellion.

Allegations of corruption and graft in the military surface periodically in the Philippines press but are hotly denied by AFP senior officers.

The mutineers' allegations about government-AFP involvement in terrorist bombings in Mindanao has further undermined the credibility of the government's "war on terrorism" in general and the war in Mindanao in particular.

Only two weeks before the mutiny, on July 14, Farthur Rohman al-Ghozi, a senior Jemaah Islamiyah militant, and two Abu Sayyaf members "escaped" from a maximum security cell in the PNP's Camp Crame national headquarters in Quezon City, Manila.

On July 21, police chief Ebdane sacked the "whole command group" of police intelligence, according to the Philippines Daily Inquirer, under suspicion that they assisted the escape. Reuben Galban, the dismissed chief of the police intelligence group's foreign intelligence liaison office, is alleged to have driven the escapees in a van out of Camp Crame.

Gracia Burnham, one of the two US missionaries held hostage by Abu Sayyaf on Basilan island off Mindanao in 2001-02, caused a furore after her book, In the Presence of my Enemies, was published in May. In the book, she accused the AFP of colluding with Abu Sayyaf, supplying her captors with guns, ammunition and food.

After 377 days in captivity, Burnham was freed in a military rescue operation that killed her missionary husband Martin Burnham and nurse Ediborah Yap.

Burnham also asserted that the AFP, for a cut of the ransom money, let the Abu Sayyaf group and their hostages go after trapping them within the Lamitan hospital. A Senate investigation into the Lamitan Hospital raid found circumstantial evidence of AFP collusion with the hostage takers and recommended that three military officers involved in the raid be court-martialled.

Allegations of corruption can bring a massive political cost in the Philippines. Josef Estrada was ousted from power by a popular uprising fuelled by outrage over his acceptance of bribes from an illegal gambling syndicate. Estrada amassed a fortune through graft during his three years as president.

A Philippines Daily Inquirer columnist, Belinda Cunanan-Olivares, alleged in 2001 that Estrada and his chief of police, Panfilo Lacson, had amassed "more than 53 billion pesos which would be about 7 percent of the country's budget for 2002".

The investigations into the July 26-27 mutiny have revealed that the AFP leadership and the government knew about the planned rebellion as early as June 4.

House of Representatives deputy minority leader Rolex Suplico was reported by ABS-CBN News on August 3 as saying that AFP officials admitted at the July 31 hearing of the House committee on national defence that they had prior knowledge of the plans for the mutiny but did not do anything about it.

Suplico also pointed to the testimony of the AFP deputy chief of staff for intelligence, Major General Pedro Cabuay, who said that the presidential palace was regularly updated by intelligence reports about the mutiny, which indicated that Arroyo personally knew about the impending mutiny but did not do anything to have its organisers arrested.

"The question now is why? Why did they allow [the Makati siege] to happen, when they could have prevented it in the first place?", Suplico said to reporters. "Did the armed forces want us to be in this situation so that they could have a bigger role in the affairs of the government? Were we set up by the military for its own political agenda? Or are these all part of a grand political agenda of [the presidential palace]?"

From Green Left Weekly, August 13, 2003.
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