The Office of the Eye of the Bull

Originally published March 5, 2013; republished March 17, 2013. This has been one of JoeAm's most popular blogs. It was withdrawn due to potential violations of COMELEC rules for engagement in elections by a foreigner. Comments pertaining to political parties and their principals or candidates have been removed. Support of the President is non-political. It advocates for a strong, unified nation.

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I'm not sure why the classic circular target for archery or darts has a small red or black dot in the middle called a "bull's eye". Maybe in the American wild west that was the best way to shoot a crazed bull, I dunno. Or Robin Hood's comrades had a good imagination or sense of humor.

But the bull's eye is the place where everyone aims this weapon or that.

And I suggest that President Aquino give a name to his office at the Palace, rather like Obama works in the "Oval Office". President Aquino can call his office "The Eye of the Bull". 

This idea struck me as I watched people criticize President Aquino for the deaths of Sutan Kiram's people in Mindanao rather than criticize the Sultan.

How in God's great and glorious green earth people could lay this outcome on the President is beyond me. I suppose there exists a need to find culprits for anything gone wrong. And he is the catch-all culprit. If he had done something different the deaths would not have occurred.

Am I the only guy in the Philippines that believes that if the Sultan had done something different, the deaths would not have occurred?

By my reckoning, the deaths occurred BECAUSE PRESIDENT ACQUINO WORKED HARD to get an agreement structured to stop the murder and mayhem in Mindanao. In so doing, he generated jealousy among those not invited to the peace table.

The Sultan could not wait for the peace progress. He had to push it, because he was not at the table. He waited all his life, some 74 years, most of them in strife, and then, as peace was on the horizon, he took it upon himself to insert himself and assert his claim with an unwanted physical presence in the contested land of Sabah.

Let me tell you, that peace table would have to be as big as my island of Biliran to host all the various Sultans, Emirs, Governors, Mayors, Rabbis (a little humor there) and Clan Leaders who were jealous because they did not get to sit down to carve out their piece of the peace.

I've popped off a few comments on Rappler news reports regarding this incident and I am considered a foreign and unsympathetic - and unwanted - critic of the Sultan's acts by Muslims and their sympathizers, as well as a lot of "normal" Filipinos (a little more humor there) who seem to have an uberpatriotic bent.

I admit to having some measure of cynicism about the incident.

• The Sultan claims it is his homeland, which is why he is there. He is passionate about it. Yet he would be willing to entertain offers to leave if the rent he receives from Malaysia were increased. I guess his passion is really with his wallet. And for that, people have died.

• The Mindanao Peace Agreement would provide the unified Filipino negotiating framework for deciding what to do about Sabah. It is a complex situation, and Malaysia has a lot to say about it. Short of outright war, the Philippines is in no position to dictate to Malaysia EVEN IF the Sultan' claim is completely legitimate. The agreement is on track to be finalized next month. Why, then, did the Sultan pick now to provoke an incident?

So the President's great success in Mindanao offends people. Just as his crackdown on the corrupt offends the corrupt.

Because he orchestrated a huge diplomatic breakthrough in Mindanao, President Aquino has evidently aroused jealousy, not only from the Sultan and other wanna be Muslim leaders, but from former President Arroyo's backers, who could not claim this achievement. President Aquino showed them up. Read this interesting article at ellen tordesillas' blog: "Aquino fell into saboteurs' trap".

In the Philippines, that is grievance number one. Doing something better than someone else. It is the cause for vengeance. Never mind what is good for the Philippines.

What counts is what is good for ME!!

Do you want to know why President Aquino works in the Office of the Eye of the Bull? Because, by working to develop a clean, honest, productive Philippines, he is offending people who are corrupt and jealous and angry that their sacred cows are being targeted for reform:

• The Catholic Church
• President Arroyo's Cronies
• Smugglers , Tax Cheats, Kick-Back Scammers and Bribe Experts like LTO, PNP, Customs, and DENR Officials
• Generals, Governors and Mayors Indicted for Corruption
• The Monopolists and Oligarchs Preserving their Easy Road to Riches
• Muslims Not at the Table

You know, about the only friend the President seems to have most days is the People.

And when the noise gets so loud, the critical arrows whizzing toward the bull's eye, even the people lose confidence. They join the ranks of the critics, unable to say "I support President Aquino as the leader of my nation" because peer pressure is like envy pressure, a huge power to conform. They can't stand firm in the face of fire and say, "I am for my country, and the leader of my country".

They bend, they break, they start criticizing their President.

Do you want to know why the Philippines self-destructs every few years?

Envy. Greed.  And people who are unable to give of themselves to make a community.

I'm an outsider, from a land where patriotism means sacrifice. On some days there seem to be precious few patriots in the Philippines. From the Humpty Dumpty New World Dictionary:

• Patriot: A citizen who is so committed to the well being of his fellow citizens that he will give of his heart, his mind, and his body to preserve national unity.

Well, if the nation cannot rally around its President, who does it rally around?

Sultan Karim? Senator Enrile? Manny Pacquiao?

Then there are those who argue it is patriotic to criticize.

I answer, "yes, if that criticism is constructive, not personal." If it is solution-oriented, not destruction oriented. It is not patriotic to undermine and divide. That is the opposite of preserving national unity.

And, of course, the guy with the bull's eye on his desk is President Aquino, who catches it all.

Well, it's a free world, a free nation, so all you archers and dart throwers fire away.

But I support President Aquino. I personally don't expect some unrealistic Jesus ideal. The gap between the unpredictable, error prone, imperfectly informed realities of day to day living and that idealistic, unreachable perfection is the easy space into which critics write or speak sometimes divisive, destructive words.

It is a choice to go into that gap, or not go there.

On days when I have this urge to take the man to task about what he says about China or a certain skulking sultan in Malaysia, I think about what a different impression the Philippines makes to outsiders when people see her as unified, versus bickering and divided and one general away from a coup. And I chew up and swallow the critical words I might otherwise write. And I pen support.

Because I am for the Philippines, and I am for her earnest, decent President.

Muslim Mindanao = Hong Kong?

Did you know that the Moro state in Mindanao, once the province of Malaysian sultanates, long ago petitioned the United States to become a territory of America rather than a part of the Philippines?

I did not.

This and other fascinating tidbits of history are included in two MUST READ articles published on blogwatch.tv this past week.

If you have a hard time with the notion of autonomy for Muslim Mindanao, as I have had, think about the region as a separately governed entity like Hong Kong is to China. It does not leave the Philippines. It is, however, for the most part, a master of its own ways.

Here are links to the two superb articles by Ed Lingao, Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism:

• The media and Mindanao

• Mindanao: The hidden costs of war

The Territorial Integrity of the Philippines, or What's Up with Sabah?

The world, when it was larger and not so overcrowded, was a contentious place, an arena for combat over land. Imperialistic ambitions ran rabid as empires were struck, then lost. The Romans, the British, the Germans, the Moors and Huns and Ruskies.  Visions of world domination inspired the Japanese to attack Pearl Harbor. After all, they had stormed China and subjected the hordes there to Japanese rules,  "my way or the slaughter way". Why stop there when the Emperor was descendant of God and needed to be put in his proper global throne?

Then, after World War II, the world shrank. And imperialism tucked its ugly tail between its grubby greedy legs and hobbled off to sulk. The Soviet Union imploded under the weight of a moribund economy and its restive states.

Now, international borders are frozen in place. They are well recognized and generally well respected.

The United Nations struggles to impose harmony but has accomplished one thing: a clear and widely accepted understanding that there must be global rules. And civility, to the extent man can do that.

So now we are dealing with the remnants of all the nations in the world being tossed up in the air over a thousand year span, landing where they are now, with chips and dust and stones flying about here and there.

That's what the tussle between China and the other nations rimming the West Philippine Sea, aka South China Sea, is all about. A little settling of the dust in the steady trek of history passing before our eyes like a ghost. Here then gone.

Sabah, Malaysia (Circle)

Oh, yes, we still have the rabble-rouser states, those with glorious hallucinations that they are the heartland of righteousness, some kind of ego-bound centrality akin to that of a two-year old: Iran in the Middle East, Venezuela in South America and North Korea in Asia. But they will fall to the wayside under cannon or economic travail. We need not worry too much about this axis of the delusional. The only question is the number of needless deaths they will cause through their overbearing but futile need to impose their thinking on others.

The Philippines has two territorial disputes on its hands, not just the one regarding oil-rich islands and China. China is the simpler one. It can be resolved by enforcing the U.N.'s 200 mile sea boundary. China must retreat from its outrageous claim to the entire sea. If the world cannot impose discipline on the Chinese, China will soon be claiming chunks of space because its astronauts are there now. China's pushy self-certainty makes Filipinos appear almost humble.

The more complex international territorial dispute is the Philippine claim to a sizable chunk of Malaysia, the state of Sabah, or North Borneo. This is directly related to the problems the Philippines is having with Muslims on Mindanao, as it is the Moro population of the Philippines that lives both in Sabah and Mindanao. Sabah is very near to Palawan and the Philippine island chain connecting to Mindanao as the map photo over there shows.

The background on Sabah

The Sultanate of Sulu agreed in 1878 to lease the Sabah territory to The British North Borneo Company in return for arms and defensive support to fight the Spanish. The Sultanate conveyed full title and rights to Sabah to the Philippines in 1962. Malaysia disregarded the conveyance and assimilated Sabah within the newly formed Republic of Malaysia in 1963, along with Singapore, Malaya and Sarawak. The Philippines broke off relations with Malaysia. An accord between Malaysia and the Philippines in 1966 expressed agreement that the residents of Sabah should be able to determine where they belonged, but it appears to have gone nowhere.

President Marcos' Army trained a team of Muslims as saboteurs to infiltrate Sabah in 1968 but the troops rebelled when they learned they might have to kill Muslim relatives. They tried to flee but were rounded up and shot. Anywhere from 28 to 200 of the men were executed by the Army in the famed Jabidah massacre. The massacre provoked angry rebellion against the Philippine government by Mindinao Muslims. Some of these rebels aligned with overseas terrorists who trained them to be really nasty in their fighting style. This in turn laid the groundwork for U.S. engagement to help put down the "terrorist" uprising.

That's where we are today. Fighting over a cause that has passed into irrelevance to mainstream Filipinos, Sabah.

Philippine presidents have not pursued the Sabah matter in the interest of building stronger commercial relationships with Malaysia. But the claim still exists. My guess is they also saw the geographical illogic of this land being part of their island nation, but were not foolish enough to concede the territory to Malaysia and incur the wrath of Mindanao Muslims.

So the dispute gets faded and tattered and irrelevant through disuse, much like China's nine-dash map. The one that says the whole sea is theirs.

The Philippines is now working actively to get Filipinos living in Sabah duly registered as Philippine citizens, with passports. There are as many as 300,000, or possibly more, migrant Filipino workers in Sabah working the farms there. According to a Wikileaks memo from the U.S. Embassy in Malaysia, Malaysia considers the farm workers, most of whom are Muslim, to be a source of potential trouble if they become politically restive. Some think there may actually be as many as 750,000 Filipinos in country illegally. This could crystallize as a huge issue if Mindanao gains greater autonomy. Muslims in Sabah may want it, too. Some Malaysian officials consider Muslim migrant workers burdens because they use social services and are prone to violence. But agricultural businesses need the workers.

JoeAm's distillation

I have for some time had trouble with the notion of a state within a state, as a greatly autonomous Southwestern Mindanao would be. This Sabah matter clarifies for me the risks associated with granting special rights to a given religion. If greater independence is granted Muslims on Mindanao, the demand for independence will shoot directly to Malaysia in the belief that Muslims should also control their own destiny there.

Give an inch, lose a mile. And on and on, the infestation of violence spreads.

Strange way to honor God.

I grant the Aquino Administration kudos for working quietly behind the scenes to try to strike a framework for agreement with Muslim groups that fits within the Constitution. To find a way for peace to arrive and with it, commercial development and jobs and wealth.

But I fear it won't work.

It won't work as long as those of faith believe their faith stands above other faiths or the secular state. And, therefore, non-believers are to be subjected to scorn and discipline.

What rights would a Catholic in an autonomous Muslim Mindanao have? People like Ben K and Bong V argue for a "final solution" that has the mass deportation of non-Muslims from the autonomous region. Do you realize how Hitlerian that is? Ethnic cleansing all over again. In 2012. In the Philippines.

Oh, the Philippines will work out its deal with little regard for what JoeAm thinks, for sure. But whatever they come up with will not work. And Malaysia will pay the price, too.

Face it, we will be fighting extremist Muslims until moderate Muslims take over the job of disciplining their kind, and teaching their brothers . . . and their sisters . . . the virtues of compassion and courtesy toward those who are not Muslim . . .

It is best to define the border of the Philippines clearly, a 200 mile line around the land, give up claim to Sabah like China needs to give up the ancient 9-dash map, and defend the State with guns and drones against those who are headstrong and uncivilized.

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References:

 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sabah

http://globalnation.inquirer.net/40455/philippine-embassy%E2%80%99s-passport-mobile-teams-in-sabah-until-june-30

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jabidah_massacre