I move:
That Seanad Éireann, affirming its support for the forces of democracy, national reconciliation, peace and stability in the Philippines, welcomes the efforts of the Philippine Government to promote the social and economic development of the country and its declared intention to draw up a new democratic constitution for the Philippines.
I am very pleased and, indeed, privileged to be in the position of proposing this Fine Gael motion. It is a personal pleasure for me to propose this motion today because I had the greatest privilege of my political career in January this year when I was contacted by Trócaire, the Catholic Relief Development Agency and invited to join a group of 11 other Irish people on an exposure trip to the Philippines at a most historic time and, indeed, a juncture in the political life of the Philippines. I spent four weeks there in January just prior to the election and had an opportunity to observe, in as much as one can in that short time, something of the life and realities of the people in the Philippines.
It has certainly stimulated my interest in that country. I have watched events evolve there, as, indeed, the whole world did, with bated breath in January and February and find myself opening the foreign affairs section of the Irish daily newspapers, and, indeed, today and yesterday I have been amply rewarded in that The Irish Times correspondent in the Philippines, Tom Fawthrop, whom I met while I was there, has given us very up-to-date briefing as to the current situation there.
The Philippines and the Filipinos can feel justly proud that their revolution was largely a bloodless one and was achieved by sheer weight of numbers and, what they like to call in the Philippines, "people power" because in the sequence of events that finally led to the departure of Ferdinand Marcos and his entourage it was the thousands and thousands of men, women and children who manned the human barricades in front of the tanks outside Camp Crame in Manila who finally speeded up the departure of the dictator. These people were finally rewarded with the defections of Defence Minister Enrile and General Ramos to the Aquino side which brought about a resolution of the difficulties and a transfer of power. Many people are sceptical, understandably sceptical, about what might be considered to have been a death bed conversion of Ramos and Enrile and it remains to be seen how that situation evolves and develops. I will refer to that later in my contribution.
It is understandable, in the wake of this revolution and change after so many years of dictatorship augmented by martial law, that there should be a euphoria in the Philippines about the nature of the change. Indeed, the casual observer of the scene could be forgiven for thinking that all was resolved there and that the departure of Marcos must mean a new era for the country but, in fact, anybody who examines it closely will see that the difficulties and troubles are only being addressed at this stage and that there is a long long haul back to some sort of economic stability and political viability.
Mrs. Corazon Aquino is a beloved figure in the Philippines and there is no doubt but that she has massive popular support in a personal capacity. Her husband, former Senator Ninoy Aquino was also a very respected figure. His assassination was a watershed in the political life of the Philippines. From it there was a mobilisation of people and forces which eventually led to the events of last February.
Mrs. Aquino has an extremely difficult situation to contend with because she is seen as a seminal figure and as somebody who, for this period at least, has brought together all the conflicting forces who are opposed to Marcos but it has yet to be firmly established what Mrs. Aquino stands for. Everybody knew what she was against and for that reason, because they, too, were against the dictator Marcos; rushed to support her. Many of the people I met while I was there talked of it being a time of grace for the Philippines. There was a quasi-religious dimension to the revolution and indeed the Catholic Church played a very strong role in the eventual resolution of the difficulties.
Many of the people who voted for change and for the departure of Marcos expect and, indeed, demand some sort of instant remedies to the many ills which beset the Philippines and President Aquino is faced with this most formidable challenge of meeting the demands of these people. She will need the goodwill and practical support and encouragement from all concerned people, both within the Philippines and, indeed, without and Senators will have an opportunity today and next week also to extend to that fragile democracy their good wishes and pledges of solidarity and support.
As a first step, President Aquino has established an independent commission of 48 members. She has given them very clear instructions that they must complete writing a Constitution within three months so that the Philippines can become — and these are her own words —"a full-blown democratic republic before the end of this year". At present she governs this fragile coalition under a provisional Constitution which she herself proclaimed until the new charter is written and approved of by the people. She has set in motion a promise of a Constitution on which her republic will be based. It is hoped that these 48 independent members do not get into an intense political wrangle and that they come up with a Constitution which will be a viable way forward for the peoples of the Philippines.
Meanwhile, there is a guerilla war raging in the country. Again I am indebted to Tom Fawthrop and his reports in The Irish Times giving the most up-to-date information on that war. This guerilla war severely threatens Mrs. Aquino's position and her hopes for peace, stability and unity in the Philippines. The left-wing guerilla army is known as the NPA — the New Peoples Army — and is approximately 20,000 members strong. It operates largely in the rural areas on a fairly skilled type of operation over rugged terrain. It is helped, fed, and assisted and supported by the rural people, many of whom I met, because during the course of my stay in the Philippines part of the exposure literally was that you lived with the rural people in the countryside and slept on their bedding of coconut matting and shared food at their table. So I am under no illusions about the harsh reality of their lives, nor am I under any illusion about the practical support they give to the New Peoples Army in the rural areas. I am convinced that it is a fairly potent force and one that must be reckoned with in the course of political life in the Philippines.
The NPA have indicated a wish for dialogue. Of course, they want certain basic minimum demands which are largely ones of structural change, redistribution of wealth and land reform. The Government are demanding that they would lay down their arms as a basic requirement. This is a precondition which the military are demanding so the fragile authority of Mrs. Aquino is being undermined, on the one hand, by the NPA and, on the other hand, by the hard line policies of her military, who, to say the least, are unenthusiastic about any posibility of a compromise with the beleagured NPA.
In The Irish Times of 3 June 1986, Tom Fawthrop stated that there was a raging military offensive taking place in Cagayan Valley, that is in the province of Northern Luzon, involving bombing and straffing of villagers by helicopter, gunships and fire fights. This followed on an announcement on 12 May from General Ramos ordering more aggressive military action against the NPA. In The Irish Times today, Tom Fawthrop again wrote an even more up to date account of what was happening. In that he said that General Ramos had ordered a field commander to discard any local ceasefire agreement with the NPA or, indeed, the Muslim Rebels in defiance of the civilian Government's policy of reconciliation, dialogue and peace. Over 800 people have been killed in the guerrilla warfare since February, 1986. Indeed, I came upon a victim of such an operation while I was in central Luzon Province and it was a very disturbing sight indeed. I was given some idea of the oppression on the people from the NPA, on the one hand, and then the military who are poured into an area, on the other, to contain the incursions of the NPA.
President Aquino's hopes for peace, reconciliation and dialogue, therefore, are being very much threatened internally because there are continued human rights violations by the military. Indeed, the guerillas are most suspicious of the new democracy and these are two strands which are quite polarised and which have to be dealt with. Her Minister for political Affairs, Antonio Cuenco has admitted that the NPA may be confused by the conflicting statements coming from the Government, because you have President Aquino, on the one hand, talking about peace, reconciliation and dialogue and ceasefire and the laying down of arms and, on the other hand the military who are part of that Government are adopting a hard line approach and going on the offensive. So conditions for stability certainly do not obtain at present.
The revolution, it is true to say, was largely Manila based and largely occurred among the middle classes. Again, to quote Tom Fawthrop, who is an acknowledged expert on Far Eastern Affairs and is particularly knowledgeable about matters in the Philippines, he talks about a heady atmosphere of freedom in the capital. He goes on to state, and I can understand it, having been there, that that concept of the new democracy has not percolated down into the poverty stricken provinces because there the military oppression and the presence of the NPA continue. The offensive that occurred last week in Cagayan was a dismal failure. There were heavy casualties among the military and civilians and General Ramos was forced to admit that the Philippines may become another Vietnam or Cambodia. That is a most devastating possibility and one that we would all be well to be aware of and concerned about here. One hopes, of course, that that will never happen.
Meanwhile, President Aquino has declared that the root causes of insurgency are in the economic conditions and the social structures that oppress the people. Certainly from my observations that is a completely accurate viewpoint. She wants to have a six month's ceasefire leading to an assimilation of the guerillas into normal society and the legalisation of the Marxist political parties which of course, will be and is being resisted by the military elements in the Government. Those military establishment elements have ordered the scrapping of all local de facto ceasefires and an all-out offensive has been launched. All of this clearly undermines President Aquino's authority and makes clear the very difficult and almost impossible task she has to face and the danger of her Government splintering.
The NPA adopt the attitude that the military are trying to pre-empt peace talks by launching a nationwide offensive. So President Aquino is caught in this pincers movement between the hawkish elements in the army and, again, it must be stated that she has not, to date, been capable of purging the army of those hawkish elements and, indeed, almost exists because of the support which she is receiving from people like General Ramos. On the other hand, the NPA are making demands that she cannot instantly or, indeed, easily satisfy.
Those are the immediate problems but also I should like to refer in the course of my contribution, to the enormous structural difficulties which exist in that society. They were largely created and then ignored by General Marcos and they demand immediate and urgent attention from the new regime. In the course of my visit to the Philippines, I had an opportunity of living among the urban poor in Tondo, which is a large slum on the outskirts of Manila, a shanty town, rather like many of the shanties which have sprung up in central and southern America and, indeed, as I said earlier I moved among the fishermen and the farmers and the agricultural poor out in the provinces.
It is important to remember that the population of the Philippines is an enormous one and is growing rapidly. Again, this is part of the difficulty. There are some 55 million people there at the moment. About 50 per cent of the labour force is either unemployed or under employed which, again, points up to an enormous problem. The infant mortality rate is shocking, 62 out of 1,000 babies die before reaching the age of one. The nutrition level is extremely poor. The daily meals of the average Filipino household remains deficient in protein, vitamin A, thiamine, riboflavin, calcium, ascorbic acid and iron. I shared some of these meals so I have a very keen appreciation of the paucity of the diet. I saw children who, at home, I would expect to be in the age range of one to two, but in the Philippines were three or four. That for somebody coming from the western world is an extremely disturbing experience.
Despite all that there is an enormous cheerfulness, a tremendous friendly outgoing quality among the people. They were certainly very keen to talk about their difficulties and discuss quite openly their various problems with visiting strangers. It is true to say that the poverty level is deepening there and that the majority of the people have a real feeling of powerlessness, though one hopes, since the succession of President Aquino, that that feeling of powerlessness is lessening somewhat.
There is an enormous burden of foreign debt. At least $26 billion is owed. That is a most daunting task and makes our own debt problems seem infinitesimal in contrast. The debt crisis can be traced to a number of fundamental factors. There is the perpetuation of historic colonialism and certain patterns that flow from that in the economy. There are tremendous class inequalities. I had read about this sort of thing but to perceive the inequality between the haves and the have-nots is a very moving experience. The middle class or upper class housing areas in the capital, Manila, are palatial. We do not have the like of these areas here in Ireland. Even our very best residential districts pale into insignificance compared with the affluence of some of the housing areas in the Philippines. I think they were called villages. When they are contrasted with the shanties, where there is deplorable poverty, it is a mind blowing experience to come across it.
Part of the fundamental difficulties that have brought about the crisis are those of domestic elitism and a distorted set of economic priorities. One saw, under the Marcos régime, the extraordinary follies built and created along the lines of giving the people bread and circus games. There were beautiful theatres, cinemas and centres of culture. But, of course, the poor people, who form the majority of people in the country, could not hope to aspire to enter any one of these places. The economic priorities that led to the spending of money on these follies must be questioned and one feels confident that under the present Government of President Aquino that such distortions will not recur. The economy, as a result, is dependent, it is undercapitalised and underdeveloped and it is rife with social inequalities which must be addressed by President Aquino.
The whole world was made aware of the corruption that was rife in the Philippines. Government and public institutions made the public purse their own personal treasury. We all know of the millions and millions of dollars that were siphoned out of the country by Marcos and his cronies. All that has to be attended to and I think President Aquino is making vigorous efforts in that direction.
While this collective greed may seem in a way so extraordinary and surprising to us, to an extent that it is almost humorous — indeed, it was the focus of many cartoons in newspapers during the course of the revolution — it must be remembered that what it actually did on the ground was to deprive the Filipino people of so much of their own wealth which could have been ploughed back into their economy to create a better way of life for them and to give them a possibility of enterprise. This exploitation of the nation's wealth and the surrender of its sovereignty proceeded under the coercion of martial law at the time. The people were deprived of basic rights and freedoms. It is true to say that their humanity, in the course of all of this, was diminished. President Aquino has a job now to restore their morale, to restore their confidence and restore that damaged and diminished humanity. I think that a power based on violence, oppression and martial law is one that undermines severely the morale of a people. That must be one of President Aquino's prime considerations.
The Filipino people need now the widest possible democratic space in which they can be enabled to respond creatively to the complex transformational problems that confront their country at this time because it is now a decisive juncture in the life of the Philippines. One can only wish Mrs. Aquino well in her mammoth task. Only in freedom can the Filipino people proceed to participate fully in the very, very difficult decision making which lies ahead of them. They have to resolve the existing economic injustices and they have to assert their nation's sovereignty because for too long the Philippines has been regarded as something less than a democracy. I hope I will have time to speak briefly about that. They will have to come to terms with decision making about the presence of the US bases in their country and the dominance of the United States in their state. They will have to learn to relate to the world community with equality and dignity, which has not been their good fortune to do until now.
In the little time remaining to me I should like to make some references to the bases. No discussion of the Philippines would be complete without reference to the bases. The country hosts two of the largest United States bases, that is, outside the United States itself, the Subic Naval Base which I visited while I was there and Clarke Air Force base. The Pentagon sees these bases as being absolutely irreplaceable in their scheme of things. So you have had a difficult situation in the attitude of the United States towards the Philippines. On the one hand, you have had the thinking of the Pentagon which sees the scenario in terms of world strategy and then you have had the thinking of the State Department which has favoured political change and reform initiatives. Of course, the Pentagon has been wary of these political reform initiatives, fearing their impact on the presence of the bases. President Aquino has a difficult decision to make but she has decided she will meet that decision when the leases for the bases run out and when they come up for review which will be in the nineties.
Meanwhile there is an increasing body of opinion in the Philippines which is deeply unhappy about the presence of the bases because it sees them as having a very adverse effect on the life of the country. It is true to say that the moral fabric and the social cohesion of the areas around the bases have been very damaged by the presence of these bases because these areas surrounding the bases — I saw them and visited them — have been turned into large camp towns with gambling and prostitution and vice.
I should like to comment particularly on what the presence of these bases has done to the women of the Philippines. They have been demeaned and degraded and the pride of the Philippines has been deeply affected by the presence of these bases. Filipinos, who are nationalists and who are thinking, have come to recognise the fact that there is a price to pay for the presence of these bases. We in the Western world, who look to the defence strategy of the United States, must not be allowed forget that that defence strategy means that somebody somewhere pays a price. Certainly, my experiences in the Philippines have opened my eyes to the very real price that is being paid in the Philippines because of the presence of those bases. I hope that the Minister, in the course of his contribution to this debate, will make some reference to the bases and to his view of them.
I should like to conclude by quoting from a distinguished Senator, José Diokno, whom it was my pleasure to meet in the Philippines. This man loved his country with a palpable passion. He took time to meet with us and to speak with enormous affection and concern about his country. He called it:
an "independent" country that is not sovereign, a "democratic" country whose people are not free, a state that is not yet a nation, a rich land filled with poor people.
That sums up the Philippines I had an opportunity to see in January this year — a country filled with the most delightful people, a beautiful blend of Spanish, Chinese, Malayan and indigenous people, a people with hybrid vigour because of all those strains and development, a country of enormous potential and one that all people of goodwill should wish well for and for its President in her task of bringing about national reconciliation, peace and stability.
