Why Arroyo seeks an Obama audience

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W.SCOTT THOMPSON

2009/07/29

WHY is the 14th president of the Philippines, Gloria Arroyo, going to Washington for a 30-minute meeting with the water-walking American president? The easy answer is that she's tried four times so far to meet him, to get some burnish off his shine, to help with her rock-bottom image back home.

She even all but broke into a prayer breakfast in Washington to which heads of state were not invited (other than the host president), in hopes of a meeting. She flew all the way from Dubai on hearing of the breakfast, got herself attached to a congressional delegation, and then didn't get even a minute with Barack Obama.

She reportedly chewed out the Philippine ambassador for not being camera-ready to show the folks back home how close she came.

Now, as an American I don't like to say it, but visits by or to an American president are always valuable back home. Bill Clinton, planning a visit to Africa and choosing Ghana as main stop, wouldn't commit to the visit until strongman Flt Lieut Jerry Rawlings had publicly committed to stepping down after the impending elections. Once there, Clinton put his fingers back in the fire to get another commitment. Rawlings did indeed step down.

Everyone in Manila is hoping that's the real reason why Obama is receiving Arroyo. She just refuses to commit to ending her term next June peaceably. Oddly, the American embassy thinks she won't make a fuss (something small like martial law, locking up all the opposition, for example) and they may know things that I don't. Or they are asleep on the job.

There's good reason for her to want to linger at the palace, where she also spent four teenage years during her reformist father's presidency. Believed to be the most corrupt president in Philippine history, according to popular polls, Arroyo knows she can be slapped with multiple criminal charges the minute she surrenders immunity.

And not just in Manila but elsewhere, like San Francisco, where she and her husband reportedly own properties, and injunctions can be laid against questions of laundered money.

Now what does Obama know about all this? The president might only get a 15-minute briefing from an assistant secretary in these circumstances, because the president already has a feel for Southeast Asia. But one thing he's sure to hear about is a CIA report alleging that her husband bagged a vast amount of money in the Middle East, intended for Filipino development, and promptly handed over half of it, for safekeeping, to his brother, a congressman.

He forgot that his sister-in-law is a Phil-Am Californian, where property is divided 50-50 in case of divorce. So what did the wife do? According to this report, she sued for divorce, leaving the "First Gentleman" with the choice of going after the money and thus revealing its source, or just writing it off. But that's just for starters.

Obama will know of the report of a highly regarded jurist, Phillip Alston, that the almost 1,000 "disappearances" of non-governmental organisation workers and journalists ("extra-judicial executions" is the term he used) in the provinces didn't pass the straight-face test at the palace; that nothing like this could have happened without some blessing from on high.

"Soldiers don't go around killing civilians just for the hell of it," an elder statesman in Manila commented -- and he's a retired general at that. "They'd only do that if pushed from the top."

Obama, of course, is concerned with terrorism, and there's revolution still in the Muslim parts of Mindanao, with long arms reaching into al-Qaeda. And the Philippines is an important and long-time ally of the US. But to argue that this is why Obama is seeing Arroyo doesn't pass the straight-face test either. Not for a 30-minute meeting; not even a "working visit".

What's happened is that, in contrast with Indonesia where high-level prosecution of corruption is moving steadily forward along with the economy, the Philippines is being dragged lower and lower: its place on the world corruption index has fallen precipitously, there's an atmosphere of impunity at the top, and investors are running scared.

Last week, I briefed a group of European bankers, and the only thing they wanted to know was whether Arroyo would step down. They are correctly calculating that if she doesn't, all hell will break loose here, with the economy careening accordingly.

No president has ever had lower popularity ratings. But Arroyo is safe from impeachment by a compliant House of Representatives. Everyone's willing to let her sit out her term, if only because everyone is tired of "people power" in the streets.

But if she breaks ranks and declares martial law on some trumped-up reason (like the recent bombings, widely believed to have been planted to condition the population) or finds another way to trump the constitution, everyone will once again pour out into the streets -- and this time it will be bloody.

The writer is professor emeritus at the Fletcher School of Law & Diplomacy, Tufts University