Tag Archives: Marcos

Qwertyman No. 85: Epilogue to a Novel

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Qwertyman for Monday, March 18, 2024

IT WAS in 1986, shortly after EDSA and my arrival in the US for my graduate studies, that I began thinking about what would eventually become my master’s thesis and my first novel, Killing Time in a Warm Place. It was published by Anvil in 1992 when I came home to resume teaching after completing my PhD. 

For those who’ve never heard of it, the novel is a semi-autobiographical account of coming of age during the Marcos years, from the point of view of a Filipino who makes the traditional journey from island to metropolis to the world at large, becoming, in the process, a kind of political chameleon. 

I had sent the first draft directly to several US publishers—my first try at getting a book published abroad—and one of them, Alfred Knopf, responded. They were interested, they said, but they needed some revisions. I knew very little about the book publishing industry then; I had no agent, wasn’t sure what lay ahead, and was in a hurry to see my book out, so I passed on Knopf—which turned out to be a titan in literary publishing—and went with Anvil, which had barely just opened.

I haven’t regretted that decision, although the Knopf deal, had it pushed through, would have been a tremendous break, not just for myself but for Philippine literature as a whole. I could understand that after EDSA, US publishing was hungry for books from and about the Philippines, so that opportunity was there, but I was also impatient to be read as a novelist by my fellow Filipinos, after having written short stories and plays. 

Anvil published the book in many printings and editions over the next two decades, as it got on the syllabi of college teachers who were looking for a novel in English on martial law, alongside Lualhati Bautista’s iconic Dekada 70. This has been my greatest reward and satisfaction from this book—knowing that somehow, it helped some of my countrymen understand what they went through.

It took a while for the novel to gain some traction overseas. In 2010, it was published in the US by Schaffner Press in a dual edition with my second novel, Soledad’s Sister. In 2012, it was translated into Spanish by Maria Alcaraz and published in Barcelona by Libros del Asteroide under the title Pasando el rato en un pais calido.

A few months ago, I received the happy news from my publisher Anvil that Killing Time was being picked up by the German publisher of Soledad’s Sister, which had apparently been doing well in the German market. So now the book is being translated into German, hopefully for a launch by Transit Verlag in time for the Frankfurt Book Fair this October, leading up to our big Frankfurt Guest of Honor year in 2025.

But I didn’t write this column just to tell you about the story of a book—rather, I wanted to say something about the story of its story.

In a message to Anvil a few days ago, my German publisher requested that I write a short epilogue to the novel, given that it’s been more than 30 years since it first came out, and that many things have happened since to the world and the Philippines—the Internet, Trump, and fake news, among others. 

So I sat down and wrote the short piece below, which I’m sharing with you since it’s highly unlikely that you’ll come across, or understand, the German translation of this epilogue if and when the new edition comes out. Here goes:

I began writing this novel in 1986, shortly after the downfall of the Marcos regime. That happened because of a massive uprising in Manila’s streets that made headlines and became a kind of model for peaceful anti-authoritarian movements worldwide. I proudly took part in that revolt, and felt the euphoria of liberation after more than a decade of martial law. It was a moment I would often return to and savor as the Iron Curtain fell and as various and largely non-violent revolutions took place elsewhere, including the Arab Spring.

I thought then that the best thing I could do was to write a novel that would try and explain how and why people fell under the spell of a dictatorship, as they did under Nazi Germany—not sparing myself, having been complicit in its later actions as an employee of the regime. I wrote it—in English—in America, mainly to fulfill my graduate school requirements, but also to celebrate our hard-won victory and share the good news with the world.

Almost four decades later, the seemingly unthinkable has happened: the right is back in power, not only in the Philippines but in many places we had thought to be reformed democracies. The optimism sweeping the planet toward the end of the 20th century has given way to a darkening horizon, a hardening of hearts, a closing of minds. Our most basic freedoms and values are under stiff and unrelenting assault, from forces we now realize had never really been vanquished but had merely been lying in wait, biding their time, seeking an opportunity for revival amidst the excesses of late capitalism.

And once again I am hearing the siren song of despotism, and see the eyes of people glazing over in the desperate desire for quick relief from their troubles, for quick salvation. I hear the march of boots, to which many young citizens—their ears plugged by loud music—seem indifferent. Even among many of their elders is a renascent yearning for the simple discipline of strongman rule.

I see all these and I wonder if I should write a sequel, an update for the new century, but what would be the point of repetition? My novel was supposed to be about the past. Why is it so suddenly pertinent again?

Qwertyman No. 64: The Death of a Crony

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Qwertyman for Monday, October 23, 2023

WHEN A friend asked me, about 15 years ago, if I would meet with another friend of his who wanted me to write his biography, I almost fell off my chair when I learned who my prospective subject was.

“It’s Rudy Cuenca,” I was told. 

I knew who he was, of course—a “Marcos crony,” which had become an almost generic term at one point, there being so many. I had actually met the man once before, on a bus trip to the Pahiyas festival in Lucban arranged by the late Adrian Cristobal. My first impression had been a surprisingly positive one: he was polite, urbane, funny, hardly the obnoxious and domineering person I had imagined a crony might be.

Still, he was who he was, and I didn’t know that writing a book about his life was the right or smart thing to do. I has already written Wash SyCip’s biography, and that man was almost saintly, or sainted by the acclaim of his peers and juniors. A Marcos crony was something else.

“How can I work with someone whose boss put me in prison?” I told my friend. As a student activist, I had spent seven months in Bicutan under martial law.

“Just meet with him, listen to what he has to say,” he said. “No commitments, no promises.”

And so I did. “I have a story to tell,” Cuenca told me over coffee. I knew what he was saying: he had been privy to the Marcos regime’s internal workings, and had been one of the President’s closest golfing buddies, but, at one point, had found himself fallen from favor, eased out of the inner circle by a more unctuous lieutenant. As stories went, it was irresistible. 

I took a deep breath and told him in so many words what I’ve said to many other clients since: “I’ll help you tell your story, but I won’t lie or lawyer for you; your story will speak for itself. What I leave within quotation marks will be you speaking, not me. I’m under no illusion that you will tell me everything you know, but to the extent possible, I’d appreciate your being honest with me, so I can tell your story the best way I can.” He agreed. What followed was Builder of Bridges: The Rudy Cuenca Story, co-authored by a former student of mine, Antonette Reyes. It was published by Anvil Publishing in 2010 and became a finalist for the National Book Award the following year.

A college dropout, Cuenca taught himself the basics of business and civil engineering, and went on from small public-works contracts to some of the country’s biggest infrastructure projects such as the North Luzon Expressway and the San Juanico bridge. It was widely believed that Cuenca’s Construction Development Corporation of the Philippines (CDCP), then the region’s largest construction company, benefited from his closeness to Marcos, whom he had supported since his first presidential campaign.

Most interesting were Rudy’s stories of Palace life. Herewith, some excerpts from the book:

“I was a member of Wack Wack and Valley Golf for a number of years before I joined Manila Golf’s ‘Mafia’ group in 1973 with Charlie Palanca as the head man. Golf helped me gain some ground in business. I became a Marcos golfing crony around 1969. Marcos ended the afternoons at the nine-hole Malacañang course. Typically, a call came from the Study Room—either golf at 4:30 in the afternoon or party organized by the First Lady. The afternoon golf was meant to be the President’s peaceful time, but this was taken advantage of by those who wanted to get his undivided attention. The HIS and HERS were with their folders and envelopes for endorsement or approval. The HERS usually could not get to see him, so they were inserted as part of the regular golfing group.

“The Study Room was operated by Presidential Security Command personnel. Blue Ladies and cronies alike waited for this office to call them to major Palace functions. If no such call came, they would run around like headless chickens in search of that awaited invitation. One crony got the message that the President no longer wanted his company through the Study Room, obviously on Imelda’s instructions. As Marcos was the sole source of dispensation, those seeking approval tried to find parings or sponsors. Sometimes, those projects were so absurd that they were rejected outright.”

Rudy remembers that “Every morning, Marcos got a written report from Fabian Ver about what was going on in the country. But Marcos also got two more reports, one from Alex Melchor, and one more I think from Johnny Ponce Enrile. Marcos read these three reports at breakfast, so he knew what was going on everywhere. These reports contained lots of information—who was the boss of who, who went where, and even who was fooling around with who. He knew everything.”

Rudy doesn’t deny the systemic—but relatively small—pay-offs that got projects approved and claims processed and released in the ‘50s, ‘60s, and ‘70s. But he also says that they were amateurs compared to today’s pros, and that the scale of greed has grown exponentially. “In the old days, nobody asked you to give,” he says. “If you did, you gave them dinner. Today, people are told outright and up front what they’re expected to pay, and those amounts are outrageous. No advance payment, no contract.” 

When asked why, for example, Philippine roads seem visibly inferior to those of even other Southeast Asian countries like Malaysia, he says: “It’s simply a matter of greed. In Malaysia there’s also corruption—I’ve lived there, I should know—but the thieves there make their money by overpricing the materials. Here in the Philippines people are extraordinarily greedy. Not only do they overprice, they also steal the materials. The cement’s deficient, the gravel’s deficient. So the thing crumbles that easily.”

Rodolfo Magsaysay Cuenca’s passing last week at the age of 95 reminded me of how many stories about Ferdinand Marcos and martial law remain to be told. Fifteen years ago, it might have been considered safe for the members of that generation to spill their secrets (or justify their choices—no one will deny that these biographies are essentially self-serving), but the present dispensation will likely make people think twice about being so candid. 

I will leave it to more qualified scholars and more intrepid journalists to sift through the material and annotate the margins of my Cuenca biography, but I feel privileged to have listened to the man and to put him on the record. By any measure, it was a remarkable life. (In an even stranger twist, another crony approached me after I had done the Cuenca book, wanting me to do the same for him—the late Herminio Disini, of Westinghouse fame. I completed a draft but had to walk away, and the book never came out—but that’s another story.)

(Photo from riles.upd.edu.ph)

Qwertyman No. 59: Counterintuitive

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Qwertyman for Monday, September 18, 2023

ON MY way to NAIA to catch a flight early one morning a few weeks ago, I snapped out of my half-sleep when I heard a song on the radio station that my Grab driver was tuned in to. I hadn’t heard it in almost half a century, and I was surprised to realize that I still knew the lyrics—not that I sang it back then, but because it was inescapable, flooding the airwaves with its bootstep optimism: “May bagong silang, may bago nang buhay, bagong bansa, bagong galaw, sa Bagong Lipunan!” The only difference—and what troubled me even more—was that it was a new arrangement, sung by a solo male voice, obviously a remake for a new generation. We were back in 1973, and whoever was behind that broadcast was making sure we knew it.

But of course, despite all the ironies that have been pointed out with the accession of another Marcos to power, and all the parallels that both the Junior and his detractors have drawn with the Senior’s reign, 2023 isn’t exactly 1973. The convenient conclusion would be to assume that Marcos Part II would be a replay of Marcos Part I—and many Filipinos, myself included, warned of that possibility in the run-up to the May 2022 election. But is there any possibility that President Ferdinand E. Marcos, Jr. might want to break out of his father’s mold and be, to some extent, his own man?

As soon as I say that—and before I get social media all riled up with my seeming revisionism—let me add that it’s the dramatist in me that appreciates the classic bind that Marcos Jr. must find himself in. Drama is premised on the possibility of character change—and even if the character reverts to his old self in the end, a brief flirtation with one’s opposite can be revealing.

In political caricature, characters are reduced to their extreme and basest versions—black and white, sinner and saint, damned and blessed. Oversimplification makes for effective propaganda, just so you don’t forget who the enemy is and which side you’re on. In realist drama, we move beyond types to explore the complexities of human character, taking the individual as a compound of many different—and sometimes even conflicting—traits and predispositions. Thus (goes the playwright’s conceit), no one is totally good or totally evil; the inner monster and the inner angel are in constant contention, and depending on the specific circumstances, one side will prevail at some key point that then defines that character for the history books. 

Motivations are key to what characters ultimately become—or decide to become, as personal agency and moral responsibility attend every important decision we make. Pride, love, honor, greed, revenge, and lust are powerful motivations, and often get the better of characters who are well aware of right and wrong, but who succumb to what’s been described as “human nature.” The good can become the bad; there’s a whole category of English Renaissance drama called “revenge tragedy” where, like Hamlet, a virtuous hero aggrieved by injustice plots to gain retribution, only to be so consumed by his vengeful passions that he becomes the very evil he condemns.

Now back to Marcos Jr. I’m trying, as the playwright and screenwriter I once was, to see him as the protagonist of our present play, shorn of my personal biases. Improbably—though some would say inevitably—he’s back where his father was, and with the weight of history on his shoulders. He’s firmly seated in power, and has all the opportunity and the resources to do what he wants. 

Independent and even critical observers I’ve spoken with have noted how generally cautious Marcos has been, so far, to avoid the kind of issues that will bring masses of people out onto the streets. Yes, the legitimacy of his election remains under serious question (something his handlers still have to convincingly address), but the “single IP” finding hasn’t been as politically incendiary as it probably would be in a more tech-savvy society (no, our appetite for TikTok and Facebook doesn’t count for tech-savvy). Yes, he travels and spends too much, but people—his 31.5 million, real or not—expect that to come with being a Marcos. Yes, he’s backed terribly risky if not silly ideas like a sovereign wealth fund and price ceilings, but again he knows that the economics of it will go over most people’s heads. 

On the other hand, he’s made all the right noises with regard to Chinese expansionism, in a dramatic and popular break from his predecessor. In our porma-conscious society, he looks and sounds more presidential than that predecessor who felt choked by a necktie and visibly lost in a roomful of younger, more articulate world leaders. Like his senior, Marcos Jr. understands imagery and pageantry. His rambling ad libs have been his bane, so he stays on script in his major speeches. He made some inspired and popular Cabinet choices such as the late lamented Toots Ople, although he quickly undermined any suggestion of sagacity with the appointment of the likes of Larry Gadon. 

Clearly he’s not going to repudiate his father’s legacy. His camp will continue to move to revise history and gild the rust and the rot of martial rule. In his recent speech before Singaporean businessmen, he couldn’t resist crowing that the Philippines’ 7.6% growth rate in 2022 was last achieved in 1976, “under my father’s administration.” Thanks to a DepEd edict, Filipino students will no longer learn about the “Marcos dictatorship” but simply “dictatorship,” which would be like talking about World War II without ever mentioning Hitler. The mechanical erasure of Marcosian martial law will be pushed forward by such measures as Sen. Robinhood Padilla’s proposed law designating September 21 as “Unsung Heroes Day,” to honor anti-communists.

But again the playwright in me wants to ask, is there room or possibility in Marcos Jr.’s character to make a clean break from the past and start over as his own man—or will self-interest, political habit, and family pressure prove too strong to overcome? One fellow columnist told me that his sense was that BBM was out to rehabilitate the Marcos name, to do better than his dad. Can that happen without admitting and making restitution for the wrongs of the past? We sentimental Pinoys will understand if the son will never speak ill of the father, but can he go beyond that to repair the damage done and build a bridge of trust toward his detractors—such as by releasing all political prisoners, squashing red-tagging, and putting the government’s massive intelligence funds to better use? Can and will he risk his political alliances to effect good governance?

Or will it be—to use that word that Executive Secretary Bersamin picked in his letter terminating Finance Undersecretary Cielo Magno for her unsolicited lesson in economics—too “counterintuitive” to do the right thing and accept wiser counsel? Only time and Ferdinand R. Marcos, Jr. will tell.

Qwertyman No. 15: The Next UP President

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Qwertyman for Monday, November 14, 2022

AFTER FOURTEEN straight Mondays of producing what I’ve called “editorial fiction”—make-believe vignettes meant to poke fun at the issues of the day, the prose version of editorial cartoons—I’ll take what will be the occasional break to engage more frontally with a concern of deep personal and professional interest.

Over the next few weeks, the Board of Regents of the University of the Philippines will select the 22nd president of our national university to succeed President Danilo L. Concepcion, whose six-year term ends in February next year. (Let me add quickly, for full disclosure, that I was President Concepcion’s Vice President for Public Affairs until I retired in 2019, and held the same position under former President Francisco Nemenzo in the early 2000s.)

Whether or not you graduated from UP or have a child or a relative there, this is important for every Filipino, because—like it or not—UP produces an immoderate majority of the people who make up our political, economic, and social elite. Its leadership, therefore, is a matter of national consequence. Since its birth in 1908, UP’s alumni roster has counted presidents, senators, congressmen, CEOs, community leaders, artists, writers, scientists, and, yes, rebels and reformers of all persuasions. 

There are six candidates on the BOR’s ballot, some of them, to my mind, more qualified—beyond what their CVs say—than others. The Board of Regents has eleven members—the CHED chairman, the incumbent president, the chairs of the Senate and House committees on higher education, the alumni regent, three Malacañang appointees, and three so-called sectoral (faculty, student, and staff) regents; it will take six of them to elect the next president. 

Whoever that choice is, he will be certain to have a challenging six years ahead, especially considering the present political regime, which he will have to contend and to some significant extent work with. UP remains dependent on the national government for its budget, for which it has to make its case before Congress every year, like any other agency. 

Prickly issues will face No. 22. There’s been a lot of loose talk lately about UP’s standards supposedly falling, with too many cum laudes graduating even as its international ranking has reportedly dropped. Indeed these should give rise to public concern, but there’s more to it than meets the eye, and UP’s level of service to the nation (think PGH in the pandemic) hasn’t flagged.

Historically, the relationship between the Philippine president and the UP president has been a testy if not an acrimonious one—most notably that between Quezon and Palma—because of the university’s role as social critic. But Malacañang now has much to do with choosing the latter through the power wielded by administration representatives on the BOR. What the Marcoses will do with UP remains to be seen; will the next UP president, for example, be given free rein to pursue the martial law museum project that’s already been approved for construction? It may not be the most important item on the agenda—more support for research and faculty development should be, if we want to shore up our ratings—but it will be strongly indicative of how the Palace will deal with Diliman.

What I’ve observed is that the role of the UP president has greatly evolved since Palma’s time. While many of us would like to see an ideological firebrand at the helm, UP is a broad and diverse community whose survival and growth will require keen diplomatic skills to negotiate between the university’s external and internal publics. (And yes, even firebrands can do that, against all expectations; Dodong Nemenzo did.) University presidents worldwide have increasingly been more of resource generators and managers than thought leaders—perhaps boring, but they deliver the goods. What’s important is for them to be able to practice and defend the academic freedom that also allows the university to become the best it can be. I pray our regents will bear that balance in mind in its deliberations.

ALSO, A word on my chosen approach to editorial commentary. I know that some of you can’t make heads or tails of my fictionalized renditions of our political and social culture, but I think you will, with just a little more effort. Maybe it’s the literature professor in me, but I believe readers should be challenged to figure out the sense of things, and not just have it served to them on a platter. 

We’ve fallen into the groove of letting others reach our conclusions for us, so all we need to do is nod affirmatively. Whichever side of the political fence you’re on, that only contributes to sloppy, second-hand, copy-paste thinking. In my pieces, I try not focus on just one person or one target—other and sharper columnists can do that. I’m more interested in the culture of our politics—in the way groups of us think and feel about what’s in our best interests—and in our complicity in bad governance. Sure, we have rotten eggs in high public office—every administration has had them. At this point, I’m much less bothered by the fact that we live in a world of despots than by the fact that we (or many of us) put them there, we keep them there, and we just pinch our noses when they stink.  

Another columnist (who actually writes wilder fiction than me and my feverishly imaginative friends) even complained that fiction has no place in the op-ed page. Excuse me? All fiction is opinion, and always has been; the critical commentary of fiction even preceded journalism. In earlier times, our op-ed pages even offered poetry—political commentary in verse—at a time when our poets were patriots, and our patriots were poets. Sadly those times and those exceptional commentators are gone, replaced by hacks producing not only dishonest and soulless but dishwater prose. 

I’m not a poet, so the closest I can get to that is fiction, which pretends that some things happened that didn’t (but then again, in another sense, really did—and that’s what some readers find confusing). One thing I must confess I do like about fiction is that, unlike factual commentary that readers today tend to forget after a week, a good story sticks around. Sadly for its implicit targets, fiction is forever. You can shoot me dead, but my work will survive me—and, for that matter, you.

Hindsight No. 23: An Unsolicited Draft (2)

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Hindsight for June 20, 2022

(Photo from philstar.com)

LAST WEEK, I indulged in some wishful thinking to imagine what a truly different and refreshing BBM presidency would be, with the rosiest inaugural speech I could confect. This week, as we edge closer to the real inauguration of Ferdinand Marcos Jr. as our 17th president, I’m going to try my speechwriting hand one more time at a grimmer version of what he might say. 

Again, friends, this is all fun and games, a finger exercise, not to be confused with the real draft that a roomful of gifted (and expensive) wordsmiths, some of whom I probably know, are probably toiling over this very moment. (For those who missed last week’s installment, again, please look up what “satire” means, and smile.) This is what you get from a fictionist posing as a political pundit, with no spicy gossip to share and no entrée to the corridors of power. 

And so, meaning no disrespect to No. 17, here we go with the kind of speech his most ardent followers, some more BBM than BBM, might want to hear. His language won’t be this fancy, of course—his dad’s would have been—but since this is make-believe, let’s turn up the volume.

My countrymen:

Let me thank you, first of all—the 31 million of you, most especially—for entrusting me with this loftiest of honors. Not too long ago, our opponents laughed when one of you presented the prospect of my presidency as “an act of God.” 

I seem to hear no laughter from that corner now. Instead I hear the anguished sobs of defeat from those who cast themselves as the angels of the good, and us as evil incarnate, an army of witless orcs streaming across the plain. Why, they may be asking, has their God forsaken them? Could it be that in their self-righteousness, they forgot that pride is the most capital of the Seven Deadly Sins, because it usurps God’s judgment and arrogates unto oneself the inscrutable wisdom that He alone possesses? 

How could they have presumed that they were right and we were wrong—that you, my faithful friends, were  bereft of all moral discernment in selecting me as this country’s leader for the next six years? Put morals aside—they called you stupid, unthinking, unable to make intelligent decisions on your own behalf. 

But let me ask anyone who cares to answer: is it not a supreme form of intelligence to vote to win, to choose someone who offers the best hope for your survival, to cast your lot with someone who has proven his ability to endure, to bide his time, and then to seize the right opportunity and prevail over a motley legion of adversaries? With this victory—our victory—you have vindicated yourselves, and you can stand proudly before anyone—before any priest, any professor, any employer, anyone who ever lectured you about right and wrong, or pushed you down to your humble station—and declare: “You have nothing to teach me. I won.”

And let me tell you something else: it is not only the unschooled, the hungry, and the unshod that I have to thank for today. All over the country, I found doctors, lawyers, businessmen, teachers, and community leaders who may not have been as vocal in their support, perhaps for fear of persecution by the pink mobs, but for whom the name “Marcos” promised the return of discipline and progress to our benighted country. Now I say to you, my dear brothers and sisters: “Step out. Step up. We have a Strong Society to rebuild, and you will be its vanguard.”

But let us be magnanimous in triumph. To anyone who voted for someone else, even the most rabid of my detractors, I offer the hand of unity. “Unity” was the overarching—indeed the only—theme of my campaign, and I pledge today to ensure that it will be far more than a vapid slogan. 

National unity is every Filipino citizen’s choice: you are either for it, or against it. Any Filipino who rejects our generous invitation to unity and insists on treading the path of unbridled individualism and anti-authoritarianism will only have himself or herself (note how we observe gender sensitivity in our Strong Society) to blame. Self-exclusion by these disuniters—let’s call them DUs—will mean their willful abdication of social services and other resources that can be better devoted to patriotic citizens.

To this end, I am creating a National Unity Council—to be chaired by the Vice President, with representatives from the DND, DILG, NTF-ELCAC, CHED, DepEd, and NCCA—to formulate a National Unity Program that will be undertaken at all levels of government, from the LGUs and the military to our schools and cultural agencies. Its aim will be to forge and promote a truly Filipino culture, based on a truly Filipino ideology, that de-emphasizes conflict, promotes discipline and conformance, and upholds respect for duly-constituted authority. For this purpose, for example, we will practice mass calisthenics, sponsor competitions for patriotic songs extolling unity and discipline, and conduct workshops and seminars for the proper identification of DUs at the barangay level and their subsequent re-education and reintegration. We will review our curricula and our educational materials to ensure that they contain only our best stories as a nation, to instill pride in our people and to remind ourselves that, as my father said, this nation can be great again. 

Half a century ago, we stood on the edge of that destiny, in a bold experiment that would have transformed the Philippines into a bastion of democracy against communism and a beacon of development in Southeast Asia. That dream was thwarted by a perverse alliance between the CIA and the communists and their Yellow cohorts that resulted in my family’s forced exile. Today we resume that march to greatness, and we will brook no more interruptions, no more distractions, no more needless delays. A society’s strength radiates from its leader, and I vow to be that leader for you, so help me God.

Hindsight No. 22: An Unsolicited Draft (1)

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Hindsight for June 13, 2022

(Photo from philstar.com)

HAVING HAD a hand in crafting presidential speeches and messages for many decades now, I thought I would give it the old try and produce an unsolicited draft for our presumptive President’s inaugural speech, just in case he wants to broaden his options. 

In fact, I’ll write two drafts: (1) for this week, the win-them-over version, representing a radical departure from what his detractors expect from him, a total refashioning not only of the Marcos image but of its substance as well; and (2) for next week, the thunder-and-lightning version, which those who dread the imminence of another Marcos presidency probably hear in their nightmares. (And before the trolls feast on me, kindly look up “satire” in the dictionary and double your erudition in three minutes.) So here we go.

My countrymen:

I acknowledge that I have come to this high office with much to prove, not only to the 31 million who have invested their hopes in my presidency, but also, and just as importantly, to the 81 million more who could not and did not vote, or preferred another candidate. Having chosen “unity” as the theme of my campaign, I am now obliged to realize that ideal and to take concrete steps that will prove the sincerity of my ambition.

Many of you know me only as “the dictator’s son,” a privileged wastrel who squandered your hard-earned money in youthful frivolity, a man bereft of substantial ideas and a genuine vision for our country’s future. Today I shall aim to correct that impression, with the adoption of several key measures that should smoothen the road to national reconciliation. 

As far as I am concerned, the time for rancor and divisiveness ended on May 10. I take the overwhelming mandate you have given me not as a license to persecute my enemies, but rather as a vote of confidence in my dream of unity. I will use this historic opportunity to address and reverse the injustices of the past, to chart a new course for our people and for my family, and to direct the energies and talents of my supporters to positive, nation-building pursuits. At the same time, I ask my detractors and former opponents to set our differences aside, and judge me for what I will do, and not what you thought I could not.

I am under no illusion that the measures I will announce will please everyone, not even within my own family. To those who were expecting a shower of favors and largesse, that will not happen. Henceforth we shall eschew political patronage and favoritism, and adopt merit and performance as the measure of one’s fitness to serve, which I hope will compensate for any personal shortcomings of mine in this respect.

Today I am announcing seven important measures that should set the tone for my administration.

First, I am directing the abolition of the PCGG, because it will no longer have a function, having been created to go after the assets of my family said to have been ill-gotten. Here before you today, I am signing a check to the Philippine treasury in the amount of P203 billion that should settle our tax liabilities once and for all. (Pause for ceremonial signing and applause; hold up signed check for cameras.)

Second, I am directing the abolition of the NTF-ELCAC, and replacing it with a People’s Peace and Development Council that will coordinate with NEDA and be its citizens’ arm in the planning and implementation of community-based development programs. All funds appropriated for the NTF-ELCAC will be transferred to this council. I am also pleased to announce that this PPDC will be headed by none other than my esteemed fellow candidate, former Vice President Leni Robredo, whom I thank deeply for responding positively to my invitation. (Pause for VP Leni to rise and acknowledge the crowd’s applause; go over and shake her hand for photo opportunities.)

Third, I am asking Congress, as their first priority, to pass a law abolishing political dynasties. My relatives to the third degree now occupying elective office will not serve beyond one term. None of my relatives to the third degree will be appointed to any government position, in any agency or GOCC, under my administration.

Fourth, for greater transparency and accountability, I am directing the immediate release of the SALNs of all government officials, both elective and appointive, above Salary Grade 28 or bureau director. My own SALN will be published in all major news media and online within 48 hours. I am also granting a blanket waiver to enable the appropriate government authorities to access information on all my personal accounts.

Fifth, as a gesture of reconciliation, I am directing the immediate release from detention of former Sen. Leila de Lima. Her persecution has gone on long enough. Furthermore, I will direct the Secretary of Justice to review all cases of political detention and to expedite the release of the individuals concerned. National unity cannot be achieved if those we wish to unite with have to speak through prison bars. 

Sixth, I will adopt a pro-Filipino foreign policy that will assert our sovereignty over what has been rightfully ours, and resist all encroachments in unity with ASEAN and our other multilateral partners. My first visit will be to China to impress upon their leadership the seriousness of our intentions. Incidentally I am appointing former Justice Antonio Carpio as our ambassador to China, given his mastery of the issues and his desire for their peaceful resolution.

Seventh, I am personally guaranteeing the academic freedom of the University of the Philippines and of all other universities and colleges in the country, toward which I am directing the establishment of a P100 billion endowment fund for UP that will help ensure its fiscal autonomy and help it achieve even greater excellence. In token return, I will request our esteemed historians and political scientists from that university to write a revised and updated Philippine history that will faithfully and factually record the period of martial law, leaving no stone unturned, as well as the aftermath leading to my election. This history will be taught in all high schools. 

Unless our people fully understand our past—and unless I myself confront and accept its dark reality—they will not appreciate the significance of what I am doing today, in the spirit of reconciliation, restitution, and redemption. Never again, so help me God.

Hindsight No. 19: Plot and Character

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Hindsight for Monday, May 23, 2022

(Photo from philtstar.com)

WITH THE counting all but over—setting aside some issues not likely to change the outcome—it’s clear that our people have spoken, and that, by a 2-to-1 majority, they have chosen Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to lead this country for the next six years. 

It’s no huge secret that I, among many others, voted for somebody else. Of course I’m unhappy, but what I feel doesn’t really matter much in the scheme of things. Given that the life expectancy of the Filipino male is 67.26 years, I’m already on borrowed time at 68 and would be lucky to see the end of this next administration, let alone the one after that. I’ve told my mom Emy—who voted at age 94 and who shed tears of dismay and disbelief when the results rolled in—that living for six more years to vote one more time should now be her goal. Just surviving will be her best revenge.

I wonder how it is, however, for the young people who took to the streets for Leni and Kiko, believing that they would make a difference. They did, although not in the way they expected, to ride a pink wave all the way to Malacañang. They realized, as we ourselves did ages ago, that money and machinery are always heavy favorites over hope and idealism, and that issues, ideas, and the truth itself can be made to look far less important than image and message, if you can buy the right PR consultant.

They will also have learned, as has been pointed out by other commentators from both sides, that it wasn’t all disinformation—that Marcos Jr. appealed to the genuine desperation of the poor with a promise of relief, however illusory. Since most of Leni’s young supporters were visibly middle-class, first-time voters, it was a rude but necessary awakening to the realities of class politics in this country, which politicians of all kinds—none of whom have to worry about where their next litson baka is coming from—have learned to negotiate and manipulate. 

Defeat, it’s been said, can offer more lessons than victory, and while we may have metaphorically won in some significant respects—chiefly the aggregation of “middle” forces not tied to any traditional political party into a burgeoning progressive movement—there will be much to review and refine in the years ahead. This very dissociation of the Kakampinks from the old parties and their command structures, for example, was a blast of fresh air for many volunteers, but also a liability for operators used to the old ways.

Understandably there’s been much wringing of hands and gnashing of teeth in the trenches, in the desire to meld seething resistance with grudging acceptance. I see it in both young and old activists—the young, because they’re heartbroken for the first time, and the old, because they didn’t expect to find themselves facing a Marcos all over again. The bashing and taunting they’re getting online from galleries of screeching monkeys doesn’t help. 

Being one of those old fogeys, I tend to be more subdued in my reaction to Marcos Jr.’s victory, and advise my young friends to cool down, ignore the bashers, and steel themselves for a complicated and challenging future. As someone who went through and survived martial law—I was eighteen when I was arrested and imprisoned for alleged subversion (although I was never charged or tried in court, just locked up for the state’s peace of mind)—I can offer them living proof that we can survive dictators and despots, with faith, resourcefulness, and courage. My parents survived the Second World War, and many other people have gone through worse.

I’m neither predicting nor wishing that a Marcos presidency will be bound to fail. I’d hate for the country to suffer just to prove a point. Besides, whatever I think today won’t matter one bit to what will happen. Whatever Marcos does, he will do so of his own will, by his own nature, out of his own character. What that character really is will emerge in the crucible of crisis—and crisis is the only thing the future guarantees, whoever the president happens to be. Beyond and regardless of the propaganda for and against him, Mr. Marcos Jr. will have ample opportunity to display what he would not have us glimpse in a public debate, and that revelation will do more than a million tweets calling him a thief or praising his acumen.

Speaking of character, I had an interesting discussion last week with an old friend, a renowned professor of Business Administration, who brought up the possibility of “luck or destiny” to account for the Marcos victory. He added that luck was an important factor in business, and that he would flunk a student who thought otherwise. 

I disagreed; as a teacher of creative writing, I said that I wouldn’t accept “luck or destiny” as a resolution for a student story. We’d call it deus ex machina—a helping hand—which thwarts the logic of the narrative with an artificial and improbable ending. I know: it happens in real life, but not in good fiction. As Mark Twain says in one of my favorite quotations, “Of course fact is stranger than fiction. Fiction, after all, has to make sense.” 

Whether factual or fictional, stories are really less about events—the plot—than character. The plot is simply there to enable character development. Things happen for a reason: to test and reveal our character, to show ourselves and others what kind of people we really are, with dramatic clarity and inevitability.

If you’re wondering why I strayed from the May 9 election to a mini-lecture on writing, it’s because we can look at that election and its aftermath as a long and continuing narrative that will establish our character as citizens, and as leaders. The next crises—the post-pandemic economy, China’s ambitions, a crackdown on civil liberties, getting deeper in debt—will come to try us. That’s the plot. And when that happens, Bongbong will be Bongbong, and all Filipinos—31 million of them, especially—will see exactly what they bargained for.

So if you’re still smarting, just chill, recuperate, get back to something you enjoy doing, and let this drama take its course. Like my mom Emy, endure and survive. Give Marcos Jr. a chance to achieve his “destiny,” which could yet be everyone’s best education.

Hindsight 14: Weaponizing the Youth

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Hindsight for Monday, April 18, 2022

ONE OF the most troubling episodes of the war now raging in Ukraine happened a couple of weeks ago not in Kyiv or the eastern region—where ghastly atrocities have taken place—but in Penza, a city in western Russia. A 55-year-old teacher named Irina Gen was arrested after a student reportedly taped her remarks criticizing the Russian invasion; the student’s parents got the tape, and turned it in to the authorities, who went after Ms. Gen. She now faces up to ten years in prison for violating the newly minted law against “spreading fake news” about Russia. Earlier, in the city of Korsakov, students also filmed their English teacher Marina Dubrova, 57, for denouncing the war; she was arrested, fined, and disciplined.

That the Russian state is punishing its critics is nothing new. It’s reprehensible, but you expect nothing less from the place and the party that invented the gulag, that frozen desert of concentration camps where millions suffered and died over decades of political strife and repression, mainly under Joseph Stalin. 

What I found particularly alarming was the role of students as informants, a virtual extension of the secret police that are the staple of repressive societies. This, too, is nothing new. Throughout modern history, despots have drawn on their nations’ youth to lend a semblance of energy and idealism to their authoritarianism, ensure a steady stream of cadres, and at worst, provide ample cannon fodder.

In Russia, the Komsomol rose up in 1918 to prepare people between 14 and 28 for membership in the Communist Party. Four years later, the Young Pioneers took in members between 9 and 14, and just to make sure no one who could walk and talk was left out, the Little Octobrists were organized in 1923 for the 7-9 crowd. 

The Hitler Youth was preceded and prepared for by youth organizations that formed around themes like religion and traditional politics, and it was easy to reorient them toward Nazism. An all-male organization matched by the League of German Girls, the Hitler Youth focused on sports, military training, and political indoctrination, but they soon had to go far beyond marching in the streets and smashing Jewish storefronts. Running short of men, the Germans set up a division composed of Hitler Youth members 17 years and under, the 12th SS-Panzer Division Hitlerjugend. It went into battle for the first time on D-Day in June 1944; after a month, it had lost 60 percent of its strength to death and injury.

Chairman Mao relied on China’s teenage cadres—the Red Guards—to unleash the Cultural Revolution in 1966 against the so-called “Four Olds” (old customs, culture, habits, and ideas, which came to be personified in elderly scholars and teachers who were beaten to death or sent off to prison camps for “re-education”). 

Under Ferdinand Marcos Sr.’s martial law, the Kabataang Barangay was created by Presidential Decree 684 in 1975 to give the Filipino youth “a definite role and affording them ample opportunity to express their views.” That sounds innocuous enough, and indeed the KB would go on to engage in skills training, sports, sanitation, food production, crime prevention, and disaster relief, among other civic concerns, under the leadership of presidential daughter Imee. 

At the same time it was clearly designed to offset leftist youth organizations like the Kabataang Makabayan and the Samahang Demokratiko ng Kabataan by drawing on the same membership pool and diverting their energies elsewhere—more specifically, into becoming the bearers and defenders of the New Society’s notions. (Full disclosure: I was an SDK member, but my younger siblings were KB.)

I would never have thought that the “Duterte Youth” meant something else, but it does; evidently, it’s just shorthand for “Duty to Energize the Republic through the Enlightenment of the Youth Sectoral Party-list Organization.” Organized in 2016 to support the Davao mayor’s presidential campaign and later his policies as President, the Duterte Youth have affected quasi-military black uniforms and fist salutes. Its leader, Ronald Cardema, reportedly brushed off comparisons with the Hitler Youth by pointing out that the Germans had no patent on the “youth” name, which he was therefore free to use. (Uhmm… okay.)

Adjudged too old to represent the youth in Congress (his wife Ducielle took over his slot), Cardema was appointed to head the National Youth Commission instead, from which perch he then directed “all pro-government youth leaders of our country… to report to the National Youth Commission all government scholars who are known in your area as anti-government youth leaders allied with the leftist CPP-NPA-NDF.”

I acknowledge how Pollyannish it would be to expect young people and even children to be shielded from the harsh and often cruel realities of today’s world. The war in Ukraine, the Taliban in Afghanistan, and the pandemic are just the latest iterations of conflicts and crises that have turned 12-year-old boys into executioners in Sierra Leone and child miners in Bolivia, Madagascar, and, yes, the Philippines. 

Their enlistment in political causes—of whatever orientation—is another form of maltreatment or abuse for which we have yet no name, but few governments or anti-government rebels will let them be. Their minds are soft and malleable, their fears obvious and manipulable, their rewards simple and cheap. With the right incentives and punishments, it can be easier to turn them into monsters or machines than to safeguard their innocence. They can be weaponized.

I’ve mentioned this in another column, but there’s a scene in the classic movie Cabaret, set in the Nazi period, where a handsome and bright-faced boy in a brown uniform begins to sing what seems to be an uplifting song about “the sun on the meadow.” But as it progresses we realize that it’s a fascist anthem which is picked up by ordinary folk with chilling alacrity. Watch this on Youtube (“Tomorrow Belongs to Me”) and then look at your son or nephew, or the children playing across the street. If you want, you could vote to have them marching and singing a similar tune in a couple of years.

(Photo from Rappler.com)

Hindsight No. 13: The Imperfect Good

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Hindsight for Monday, April 11, 2022

The Good and Evil Angels 1795-?c. 1805 William Blake

I’VE RECENTLY come across a number of posts online by people complaining about the “self-righteousness” of campaigners for a certain candidate to explain why they might, or will, vote for the other guy—yep, the tax evader, debate dodger, academic cipher, political under-performer, and, if the surveys are to be believed, our next President. 

Now, I can understand their irritation. Nobody likes to be told they’re wrong to their faces, or have the truth shoved down their throats. 

I can just hear someone muttering: “How can you be so sure of your manok? Don’t you know she’s an airhead, lost in space, a Bar flunker, an unwitting decoy for the (choose your color—Reds or Yellows)? There may not be much I can say for my bet—and okay, I’ll admit I don’t really know or care what he thinks because he’s not telling—but I prefer him to your insufferable assumption that you and your 137,000 friends are torchbearers for the good, the right, and the just. (And you’re such a hypocrite, because I know what you pay your maids, which isn’t more than what I pay mine, but at least I don’t pretend to be some crusading reformer.) To be honest, it’s you I can’t stand, not since you put on that silly all-pink wardrobe and plastered your gate and walls with pink posters. But guess what—you’ll lose! All the polls say so, and I can’t wait to see you crying your eyes out on May 10.”

Whichever side of the political fence you’re on, I’ll bet my favorite socks (which I haven’t worn for the past two years) that you know someone on the other side who’s thought of or verbalized what I just wrote. The forthcoming election has become a test not just of friendships, but of how far some of us are willing to pretend that all politicians are the same, all opinions are equal and should be equally respected, XXX number of people can’t be wrong, and that whoever wins, democracy will, as well.

This presumes a parity of political, financial, and moral power that just doesn’t exist and probably never did, at least in this country. The playing field is far from even. It’s been horribly distorted by disinformation, vote-buying, intimidation, and who else knows what can happen between now and May 9 (and the days of the vote count, after). The dizzying game of musical chairs that preceded the final submission of candidacies to the Comelec last October (resulting, ridiculously, in the ruling party being frozen out of serious contention for the top two slots) was but a preview of the seeming unpredictability of Elections Ver. 2022. I say “seeming” because there may be outfits like the former Cambridge Analytica that will presume to be able to game everything out and bring a method to the madness that will ensure victory for their clients.

What we know is that this will be the first presidential election, at least in recent memory, where the presumptive frontrunner refuses to be questioned about important issues, faces legal liabilities that would crush anyone less powerful, campaigns on little more than a vapid slogan, ignores China’s encroachment into Philippine territory, claims to know next to nothing about his parents’ excesses, and takes no responsibility for them. Even more alarmingly, his lead in the polls suggests that these issues don’t matter to many voters, thanks to miseducation and disinformation. 

So, no, not all politicians are the same, and not even all elections are the same. But for all its surface complications, May 9 truly and inevitably comes down to a simple choice: that between good and evil—between those who stand for truth, freedom, justice, and the public interest and those who side with falsehood, dictatorship, oppression, and corruption. If you can’t distinguish between the two, or refuse to, or prefer to obfuscate the matter by repackaging it into, say, a war between families or between winners and losers, then you have a problem. 

This isn’t just self-righteousness; it’s righteousness, period. You can’t justify preferring evil because of some perceived shortcoming in the good. It’s in the nature of things that “the good” will forever be imperfect, forever a work-in-progress. It can be clumsy, patchy, plodding, long drawn out, and sometimes, if not often, it will lose skirmishes and battles to the enemy; fighting for it can be wearying and dispiriting. On the other hand, evil is well thought-out, comprehensive, well-funded, and efficient; it can attract hordes to its ranks, and promise quick victory and material rewards. Evil is often more fascinating and mediagenic, from Milton’s Lucifer to Hitler and this century’s despots. But none of that will still make it the right choice. 

Commentators have pointed out that Volodymyr Zelensky, Ukraine’s embattled president, may not be the shining hero that the media has served him up to be, because he had repressed his enemies before the Russian invasion and had established links with neo-Nazi groups. Now that may well be true, although it will be hard to believe that the Zelensky that emerges out of this crisis—if he does—will be the same man he was before.

But none of that excuses Vladimir Putin’s murderous rampage, nor elevates his moral standing, nor permits us to turn our eyes away from the carnage in the smoking rubble. The “Western media” and “Big Tech”—the favorite targets of despots, denialists, and conspiracists—may have their problematic biases, but only the radically lobotomized will accept the alternative, which is the Chinese, Russian, and North Korean interpretation of what constitutes journalism, and of an Internet within a net. 

We cannot let the imperfections or even the failures of the good lead us to believe that evil is better and acceptable. You don’t even have to be saintly to be good. If you’ve led a life of poor decisions, making the right one this time could be your redemption. There are far worse and darker crimes than self-righteousness in others.

Hindsight No. 12: The Color of Danger

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Hindsight for Monday, April 4, 2022

TWENTY-FIVE YEARS ago, I took on the first of what would become many biographical assignments: the life story of the Lava brothers. In many ways, they remain the most fascinating of my subjects, brilliant men with PhDs and other advanced degrees from such schools as Columbia, Berkeley, and Stanford who, despite their upper-middle-class origins, were counted among the most dangerous subversives in the 1950s and 1960s. 

Three of them—Vicente, Jose (Peping), and Jesus—became general-secretaries of the Partido Komunista ng Pilipinas. Never Party members, Horacio and Francisco (Paquito) were nationalists and civil libertarians who served in high government positions—Horacio as one of the new Central Bank’s top economists and Paquito as chief legal counsel of the Securities and Exchange Commission, which he helped organize. (A sixth brother, Pedro, also became a Party member in the US but died before the war.) 

I remembered them last week when I read the reports of bookstores being splashed with red paint and of a certain government official spewing the same substance out of her mouth. No, I’m not going to defend Vicente, Peping, and Jesus Lava against Red-tagging; they were proud communists to the end. 

What has stuck in my mind from the many interviews I held with Peping and Jesus in their home in Mandaluyong was a moment with Peping—who, when I met him in the mid-1990s, was a frail and white-haired old man. Peping had graduated salutatorian from the UP College of Law in 1937 and his thesis, hailed by Dean Vicente Sinco as the best they had ever received, was published by the Harvard Law Journal. In his dotage, Peping seemed stiff, dour, and humorless, but as a young man he had played the banjo, with “Always” and “Five-Foot-Two” among his favorites.

At some point, I asked Peping: “Among all the figures in history, whom do you admire the most?” Without batting an eyelash, sitting ramrod-straight in his wooden chair, he answered: “Stalin and Marcos.” 

The mention of Joseph Stalin, the Soviet Union’s brutal dictator for over 30 years until his death in 1953, was disturbing but not surprising. The PKP looked up to the Soviet Union as a model, and some of its members had been trained there, although the Lavas themselves downplayed the connection, citing the Philippines’ greater affinity with the Chinese experience. Upon his release from prison in 1970, Peping had gone to Moscow, and then to Prague, where he and his wife lived for the next 20 years. Clearly, even if Stalin had long been officially repudiated in Russia, he left a deep and positive impression on Peping. 

What I didn’t expect—although it would make sense in retrospect—was his admiration for Ferdinand Marcos, whom he had never personally met. Why would Peping Lava, a hardcore Communist, admit to being a fan of yet another dictator, whose martial-law regime was responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of so-called “enemies of the State,” many young and idealistic revolutionaries among them?

The answer might be found in the relationship that Marcos cultivated with the old Left, including a meeting between Marcos and representatives of the Movement for the Advancement of Nationalism (MAN) in 1968. Negotiations between Marcos and the PKP leadership reportedly followed, resulting in the release of Peping in 1970, and of Jesus Lava and Casto Alejandrino in 1974; Luis Taruc had been released even earlier in 1968. (The PKP had been decapitated by the arrest of Peping and many leading members in 1950, followed by the arrest of Jesus in 1964.) 

The Lavas were convinced that, despite all his liabilities and abuses, Marcos was a nationalist at heart who was aware of, and opposed to, American imperialist control over the country’s economy and politics. The Americans, not Marcos, were the main enemy. (Peping believed that the Americans were responsible for the deaths of Ramon Magsaysay, Claro M. Recto, and Ninoy Aquino.)

They were attracted by his “independent” foreign policy, especially his diplomatic overtures to China and the Soviet Union. Citing international sources, they even surmised that their release had been a precondition attached by the Soviets to rapprochement with the Philippines. Jesus Lava would contend that as of 1974, the PKP had entered a “negotiated political settlement” with the Marcos administration and had therefore been legalized. (Meanwhile, breaking away from the old PKP, Jose Ma. Sison had “re-established” the CPP in 1968, and it would be his CPP-NPA-NDF combine that Marcos would go after under martial law, as would Marcos’ successors.)

If any of this sounds familiar in light of our recent history, you win no prizes. When Rodrigo Duterte came to power in 2016, my old friends on the Left bubbled over with excitement, believing they had found a trustworthy ally who was prepared to unfriend America in favor of rosier relations with China and Russia. I was dismayed then by what I thought was fatal naivete, or miscalculated opportunism; he played them, not the other way around. 

Today, with such instrumentalities as the NTF-ELCAC and even education officials at the vanguard, going against the Reds is back in fashion. The “threat” they pose is allegedly serious enough to warrant billions in the budget for anti-subversion programs, never mind that the CPP-NPA’s military significance has been severely diminished over the past 40 years, and that we need that money for more pressing concerns. 

Never mind, too, that Russia and China—the erstwhile centers of the global Red revolution—are now universally condemned as oppressors of their own people and aggressors beyond their borders. Stalinism is back with Vladimir Putin, and Xi Jinping is trying to out-Mao Mao. (And another Marcos threatens to return to Malacañang. Peping Lava could feel right at home today.) Our government says it hates communists with a passion, and yet the best it can do is remain “neutral” in Putin’s war on Ukraine, and “realistic” in dealing with China’s encroachments on Philippine territory. 

All this leads me to conclude that the old Marxism-Leninism—which is barely recognizable in today’s Russia and China—is no more than a bogeyman, and even the government knows that. Red-tagging just happens to be a convenient cover to attack the real enemy: the liberal middle forces now at the forefront of reform and of democratic regime change. The color of danger is pink, not red.