Clueless on Sabah, messed up on Jabidah, toothless on China

By Francisco S. Tatad

President B.S. Aquino III’s actions and utterances on Sabah have won for him not only much derision and ridicule at home and abroad but also renewed Chinese irritations against the Philippines in the Spratlys. The country does not deserve any of these.

Filipinos can only express their dismay that China has apparently decided to exploit the leadership vacuum shown by Aquino’s total mishandling of the Sabah crisis by pressing its aggressive stance in the Kalayaan Island Group, which the Philippines has incorporated within its territory.

Despite Aquino’s bellicose posture during the Philippine-China maritime standoff in Scarborough Shoal last year, he has done nothing to prevent or minimize the latest reported Chinese air and maritime incursions into what the Philippines claims to be its lawful domain.

All of Aquino’s efforts seem focused on campaigning for “Team Patay” in what promises to be a thoroughly debased process skewed in favor of his announced senatorial favorites, and on pressing his horrible official line against the followers of the Sultan of Sulu who had gone to Lahad Datu in Sabah on February 9 to press for a settlement of the Sultan’s (and Philippines’) territorial claim.

Not content with the Malaysian security forces killing as many as they could of the Sultan’s Filipino followers, charging those arrested with terrorism and other crimes, and rounding up thousands of Filipino residents, who had nothing at all to do with the Sultan’s undertaking, Aquino has directed his Secretary of Justice to study the possibility of charging those who have survived the Malaysian slaughter or escaped the dragnet with conspiracy and other crimes.

Still not content with that,  he recently tried to promulgate as unadulterated official and historical truth the most sensational fisherman’s tale, hyped in the media of the late 60s but never confirmed or documented, about the so-called  “Jabidah massacre” of  unnamed and unnumbered Muslim “trainees”, purportedly recruited by the Marcos government  in 1967-68,  for the purpose of “invading”  Sabah.

Without any evidence to back up his claim, or any rationale remotely allied to any recognizable national interest or purpose, B.S. Aquino went to Corregidor Island on the 18th of March to “commemorate”, at government expense, the “45th anniversary” of the alleged massacre, solely for propaganda purposes.

It was an extraordinary attempt to make former President Ferdinand Marcos, dead for nearly a quarter of a century, the convenient scapegoat for a problem which unnecessary official ignorance has compounded beyond all telling, and to further glorify the memory of Aquino’s late father, in whom Malacañang and the conscript media have already invested more heroic virtues than he himself ever sought to attain in his lifetime.  The attempt was as audacious as it was baseless, and it all but blew up in B. S. Aquino’s face.

Aquino sought  to promote as a historical fact the so-called 1968 “Jabidah massacre” on Corregidor Island on the basis of one rabble-rousing speech   delivered by the late former Senator  Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino Jr. on March 28, 1968.   That speech repeated what Ninoy had heard about the alleged massacre, but ultimately  cast serious doubt on the veracity of the entire tale.

Whoever wrote that Corregidor speech did an atrocious job in digesting  the referenced Senate  speech, as written and delivered, and in coming up with the exact opposite of what it says.   Obviously our machine-made President never read his father’s speech himself.  

Otherwise,  he would never have said the so-called  Jabidah massacre really “happened” and that “it is our responsibility to recognize this event as part of our national narrative.”

Indeed,  Ninoy’s speech—entitled “Jabidah! Special Forces of Evil?”—repeated allegations  of a massacre by the purported lone survivor Jibin Arula, who quickly fell under the control of Marcos’s sworn political enemies in Cavite,  but it ultimately  questioned the credibility of his narrative.

After  entertaining his audience with salacious details about how Marcos’ so-called “Operation Merdeka” was conceived, and how the recruits were shipped off to Corregidor from Sulu and finally massacred there after they threatened to walk out in protest against the delayed payment of their meager allowances,  Ninoy Aquino finally said:

“In Jolo yesterday, I met the first batch of 24 recruits aboard RP-68. This group was earlier reported missing—or even worse, believed ‘massacred’.

“William Patarasa, 16 years old, one of the leaders of the petitioners, in effect corroborated all the points raised by Jibin Arula. But he denied knowledge of any massacre.

“Like Jibin Arula, up to yesterday he claimed he had no knowledge of what had happened to their four leaders called by Major (Eduardo) Martelino last March 3. He confirmed, though, some suspicion among the petitioners that the four had been ‘liquidated’ by Major Martelino’s boys.

“One of the leaders has since presented himself to army authorities.

“This morning, The Manila Times, in its banner headline, quoted me as saying that I believed there was no mass massacre on Corregidor Island.

“And I submit it was not a hasty conclusion, but one borne out by careful deductions. What brought me to this conclusion:

“1) Massacre means, to my mind, the wanton killing of men—maybe premeditated, but definitely committed according to a previous plan.  I submit that there was no plan to kill the Muslim recruits.

“2) What would have been the motive for the ‘massacre’? Some quarters have advanced the theory that the trainees were liquidated to silence them.  But then, 24 boys have already shown up in Jolo safe and healthy. To release 24 men who can spill the beans and liquidate the remaining 24 ‘to seal’ their lips would defy logic.

“3) Jibin Arula has been telling the truth all along.  However, his fears, which in his place may be considered valid, may not be supported by the recent turn of events. Twenty-four recruits have turned up.

“I went to Sulu with a sworn statement of Jibin Arula. I checked out everything Jibin Arula had told me—the description of the camp, the names of the boys—and everything that Jibin Arula had told me checked out.

“It must be emphasized here that Jibin Arula never said that the four were murdered. All he said was that they were taken by Major Martelino and never returned.”

In the 45 years that have elapsed since the alleged massacre reportedly took place, no grieving widows, fathers, orphans or siblings had surfaced to protest their kin’s brutal murder, or to claim financial indemnity for any of the victims,  in the same manner that the “human rights victims” in the communist insurgency against Marcos  had claimed, and been awarded, “damages” by an external American court.

And against B.S. Aquino’s claim that it was the  alleged “Jabidah massacre” that triggered the Moro National Liberation Front’s  secessionist rebellion in the South,  there is no mention of that extravagant claim in any MNLF document or  in the political discourse of its most responsible leaders.

Rereading Ninoy’s speech after 45 years, or reading it for the first time today, one necessarily has  to wonder:  If Ninoy Aquino doubted the veracity of the massacre story,  why did he choose to repeat it in his privilege speech and spread it on the record of the Senate?

Was it simply to satisfy a natural craving for  publicity? Or did he  just want  to blow the cover off a top-secret state project which he could not allow Marcos to pursue, even in the name of  national security?

To Marcos, the most damaging and therefore unacceptable part  of Ninoy’s “expose” was not his repetition of allegations which could not be independently confirmed, and which he himself doubted,  but rather his disclosure of the alleged existence of  “Operation Merdeka,” a secret state project to infiltrate Philippine government agents inside  Sabah.

That disclosure was deemed irresponsible and dangerous, to say the least, and risked, among other things, possible  armed confrontation with Malaysia.

In a democracy, the government has a right to undertake state security projects to protect its sovereignty, territorial integrity and other national interests. It has a right to count on  every official or citizen, even when he or she is identified with the political opposition, to protect and safeguard the secrecy of such project.

A responsible official, on getting wind of any such project,  would instantly recognize his duty to protect the national interest .  Should he have any doubts or questions in his mind,  he has a right and a duty to demand that the responsible officers concerned, including the President and Commander-in-Chief himself, tell him, in the strictest confidence, what the project is all about, if they did not  want him to talk to  the press instead.

This was what Aquino was expected to do, but did not.  His first impulse was to deliver a privilege speech in the Senate, and in the process inform the Malaysian and  British authorities,  the other parties in interest, of what he suspected Marcos was up to.  He faulted Marcos for keeping the reported project “secret,” and its objectives  “known only to himself and a handful of his confidants.”

There is  reason to believe there was a national state security project called “Operation Merdeka.” But it is so silly to suggest that its objective was to “invade” Sabah. No country uses a handful of amateurs to invade another country, unless it was to film a wacky movie about an invasion that failed.  It is more reasonable to assume the objective was to infiltrate propaganda agents into Sabah.

Given  the Philippines’  legal claim to Sabah,  lodged in 1963 after the Sultan of Sulu ceded his sovereignty over the territory to the Philippine government, such a project would be fully in keeping with the national interest.  Marcos did not have to announce it in a press release,  and no opposition leader had any duty to expose it to the media, or any foreign government.

The unasked—and unanswered—question, therefore is, was Aquino  acting as a patriot when he exposed the project’s purported existence?  Or was he acting  solely in his own interest,  regardless of its potential injury to his own country’s interests and the consequential benefits to  Britain and Malaysia?

In the only interview I ever had with Marcos  in Makiki, Hawaii, in July of 1987—seven years after I left the Cabinet, and a couple of months after  Cory Aquino’s  senatorial slate ran away with 22 of the 24  senatorial seats in the  elections that year—the exiled fallen leader was completely dismissive of Aquino.

Curious why he had not been more lenient and accommodating to Aquino during martial law, I reminded him that in their June 21, 1977 conversation  in Malacañang,  which I witnessed, Ninoy  had asked to be made  special envoy to  the MNLF and the Islamic countries in the Middle East.  Marcos’ reply to me sharp:  “Ninoy  was never a political rival. He was an enemy of the State.”

Now, in his inept summarization of his father’s speech, B.S. Aquino says Marcos had ordered the recruitment of Muslim trainees to “sow chaos and destabilization” in Sabah, so that  “in the midst of the chaos, the Marcos regime would then find a way to claim Sabah for the Philippines.”

After all the blood that has been spilled in Lahad Datu and Samporna, it is absolutely cruel to see so much ignorance spouting out of so high a source. The Philippine government, for Mr. B. S. Aquino’s information,  lodged  its Sabah claim not in 1968, but in 1963, first with Britain, with whom we held one round of diplomatic talks in London,  and then with Malaysia, after it incorporated Sabah as one of its 13 states.

How  can we expect any intelligent word from government on this issue when the President himself does not  have the slightest notion what it is all about?  How in Heaven’s name did we ever get to have such a president who is clueless on Sabah,  messed up on Jabidah, and toothless on China?

fstatad@gmail.com

http://manilastandardtoday.com/2013/03/25/clueless-on-sabah-messed-up-on-jabidah-toothless-on-china/