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================= Civilian-Military Alliance for Reforms in Society ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= The Cavaliers, the PMA Alumni Association ================= ================= Young Officers Union of the New Generation (YOUNG) ================= Restoring Democracy in the Philippines ================= Rene Jarque . USMA West Point Class 1986 ================= Rene Jarque . USMA West Point Class 1986 ================= Message To The Filipino People Armed Forces of the Philippines ================= The Last RevolutionTowards A New Philippine Order================= Sen. & Lt. Col. Gregorio Honasan ================= Corruption in the Philippine Navy Procurement System ================= A Study of Corruption in the Philippine Navy ================= |
To Our Countrymen
We, the members of the Young Officers Union of the New Generation (YOUNG) are today breaking the peace agreement YOU signed with the government on 13 Oct. 1993 to make a final stand to save the country from further ruin and continue the unfinished revolution of our forefathers, the true nationalists of the 1896 Philippine Revolution. We reached this crucial decision after much contemplation of the political, social, economic and national security situations that turned from bad to worse, after we have revitalized our organization, purged its ranks of opportunists and fake nationalists, and after we have consulted some of our elders in the military, legal profession, farmers and those from the business, church, academe, labor and civil society groups. To the uncertain and the wavering, we say, let us stand together. Let us face the present together and let us walk into the future together. Let us bring again the peace that we have been fighting for; the vision that we try to reach; and, the aspirations that we want to bring in reality. Our sacrifice and our struggle will imbue these words with meaning and bring that blessed day around. We recognized the colonial and neo-colonial circumstances which have denied us the chance to discover our national self, to establish our identity and discover how much our dignity is really worth. Because our government and many of our leaders have been weak, confused, venal, insensitive, and self-serving, foreign powers in the name of friendship have interfered in our affairs with impunity, manipulating us, playing with our lives, our country and our destiny. And, until now we are suffering from this "damaged culture" that we inherited from our colonizers. Yet, no one from our past leaders has sincerely tried to rectify these mistakes and revolutionize our present system. No one can deny that since the 1986 EDSA Revolution our masses still huddled in their hovels, hungry and dispossessed. Our bureaucracy is corrupt and inefficient. There is systems failure everywhere. There is no peace and order. The simplest public services cannot be delivered. Our military is demoralized and shot through with politics. Our judicial system does not work. The guilty go free; the innocent are framed. Our strength is vitiated by corruption and ignorance in high places. When we protest, the government responds with arrogance and brutality. Our elections are farces, contests of force and money, or sleight-of-hand spewed by computers. The Arroyo government has been characterized by callous shamelessness. It stages spurious public shows of piety and compassion. It beseeches divine providence and goes through the motions of apologizing and worshiping God in public yet committed the unforgivable sin of invoking His name to shield its depravity. How many times has it claimed credit for restoring democracy; how many times has it pledged fealty to the rule of law while it brazenly ignores the Constitution and mocking it to enable its favorites, its cronies and relatives, to continue to rob the country while our impoverished masses cope with the agony of daily survival? In the shameful tradition of the Makabebes, who betrayed the Philippine Revolution of 1896, and the even more notorious Makapilis who sent many Filipinos to their death, this government has repeatedly frustrated the honest aspirations of its people by offering its economy and political life to unscrupulous foreigners and appealing directly for their intervention to save it from the wrath of long-suffering populace with legitimate grievances. The Arroyo regime deceives its armed forces into fighting its battles of self-aggrandizement while undermining the military at every turn. It tells its armed services to fight terrorism without laws to protect them and the people. Many of our men have already died of loss of blood fighting a war they do not even understand. Occasionally, it throws the military a bone to chew on, like guard dogs to be placated from hunger and neglect. More than 60,000 of our men in uniform are living in squalors in the urban centers as well as in the countryside. It has reduced the once-proud military and police organizations into a private security force, dedicated to perpetuate its status quo. It maintains a Gestapo-like country intelligence organization not to spy on the real enemies of the State but to spy on the officer corps, rank-and file and other innocent targets. It prostituted the intelligence service of the armed forces by ordering it to tape record private conversations of some officials and individuals, which accidentally recorded Mrs. Arroyo and others, against the advice of the officers of the intelligence command just to ensure their fraudulent election. Hence, it does not only malign the reputation of the intelligence service but as well as it distorts the credibility of the entire AFP command. From the first day, the Arroyo government has steered by one direction alone, that of private gains and mindless arrogance. For more than four long, unhappy years, it has drifted, with neither will nor ability to govern, muddling through all our national crises, setting a record of corruptions, incompetence and clumsiness. The solutions it has offered have been short-sighted, meaningless palliatives and rhetoric that leave the people more frustrated than ever. In only two things has it excelled: the enrichment of its clique and self-congratulations. Mrs. Arroyo violated her promises not once but many times. Corruption, immorality and greed for power dictated her presidency. Her penchant for power intoxicates the democracy that we cautiously safeguarded for many years. The "hello Garci" tape scandal is nothing compared to the huge sums of money from jueteng, drugs, smuggling and kickbacks that changed hands between the first week of May 2004 presidential elections and the last weeks of June after the elections at the house of Mrs. Arroyo in La Vista, Quezon City, where bags of money, computers, printers and telefax machines were distributed to some COMELEC officials, including regional directors led by Garcilliano and in the presence of a defeated governatorial candidate from Northern Luzon, Lilia Pineda and security officers, many of whom expressed disgust over the incident. In another occasion at Clark, Mrs. Arroyo herself, assisted by her aides and some politicians, distributed bags of money to superintendents of schools from Northern Luzon and Central Luzon. What is more unconscionable is that they did not spare the Marcos money that had been declared by the Supreme Court as public funds and are intended to ameliorate our hapless farmers in the countryside under the Land Reform Program. Over P3 billion was stolen and went to the pockets of unscrupulous politicians! They cannot deny this because we have witnesses and highly incriminating pieces of evidence that will send them to jail the rest of their lives. This is not the right time to read a bill of particular. That will come later. Only a few days ago while the political crisis was evolving, Mrs. Arroyo apologized to the national and appealed to the public support her presidency and the rule of law. Her admission has only added to the confusion and further bear out her insincerity. Her conscience has become so compartmentalized she does not realize that the very men and women she asked for help were the same men and women victimized by her government's corruption, arrogance and incompetence. These are the same men and women who have suffered years of dashed hopes. Daily, they contend with Arroyo's mismanagement, extravagance and arrogance. They suffer the high prices and the low wages. They suffer the scarcity of jobs. They suffer the absence of transportation, water shortage, and high fuel prices. They suffer the breakdown of law and order, moral decay and endless salvaging. Yet this regime has the gall to ask for help the very people they continued to deprive of their rights and their dignity. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo even asked them to die for her government and her brand of democracy. But will they, these people on whose tongues linger the acrid of disillusion and betrayal? On the other hand, YOUNG members offer the country, not the tarnished vision of EDSA 1986, cheapened beyond recognition, but the revolutionary spirit of 1896 and its noble dream, a dream filled with a fierce yearning for change: true independence, a sovereign nation, a just and wise government, genuine nationalism, respect for the law, freedom in its best sense and reconciliation. It offers an alternative transition revolutionary government that will revolutionize the present system; a government that will represent the masses and serve the people at its best. A need to reengineer the entire bureaucracy the will call the abolishing of the Congress, which has been the instrument of the President in her fraud. In short, genuine democracy as the Filipino revolutionaries of 1986 installed but only fleetingly enjoyed before decades of subjugation, tyranny, and pretense that saw our resources exploited and our values warped and perverted. Realizing that radical and not just incremental changes are needed to save our country, YOUNG members are calling all men and women who believed in our race, who remember the proud beginning of our history, who believe, as we do, that Filipinos are capable of courage and sacrifice, to act now, not later, to bring down the Arroyo government and save the country from further ruin! To our friends and guests from foreign lands: We respect your sovereignty, your individuality and your business interests. We implore you in the name of our country not to interfere with our internal affairs. To our friends in the media: We ask you to be fair in your reporting. Let no one doubt this article of faith and covenant with our people and country. For we will fight fire with fire those who will stand in our way and undermine our determination to create a just, wise, efficient and stable society throughout the land. We cannot tell you, for the meantime, who we are, how many we are and where we are but in time we will do so as some of our forces are still busy gathering intelligence information, infiltrating centers of power of the Arroyo government and carefully assessing its forces on the basis of their morale, command system, fighting capability, intelligence and materiel supplies. Rest assured, we will win this battle. May God bless us all!
Lt. Col. Arsenio
Alcantara Asst. Director Julian Dimaapi, NBI
July 21, 2005
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