Development policymaking is hard enough as it is – the Philippines after so many decades of so many development plans is a case in point. Now the military wants to take that over as well? The government’s whole-of-nation approach where the military hijacks governance will just make the country’s maldevelopment worse.
Authoritarian
creep
Pres. Rodrigo
Duterte’s authoritarianism of course started with a big bloody bang
– the thousands of urban poor he had killed in a show of
intimidating force. The militarist takeover of government took a
little bit longer but is well underway. The transformation has a thin
veil of legality but the nation is as far away from real democracy as
it has ever been.
The Duterte
administration’s brand of militarism started with the National
Security Policy (NSP) 2017-2022 it released in April 2017.
Conspicuously, national security was defined broadly to “[encompass]
virtually every aspect of national life and nation-building” where
“economic development and security are inextricably linked”.
While conceptually
valid, in retrospect these were less a sign of vision than gross and
insidious ambition. It is difficult to credit a military
establishment notorious for human rights violations, unwarranted
violence, lying and deceit with having positive long-term
aspirations. On the other hand, the appetite for dictatorship is
easier to see.
The National
Security Council (NSC) prepared the NSP. This collegial body includes
many Cabinet members and legislators but is really dominated by the
security sector – especially by the Armed Forces of the Philippines
(AFP) and the Philippine National Police (PNP).
The broad definition
of national security was immediately used to give the military and
police an entry point into everywhere else in government. Executive
Order (EO) No. 16 was released simultaneously with the NSP. This
directed that “all government departments and agencies, including
government owned and controlled corporations (GOCCs) and local
government units (LGUs), shall adopt the NSP 2017-2022 in the
formulation and implementation of all their plans and programs which
have national security implications”. This is a far-reaching
mandate because, according to the NSP, virtually everything has
national security implications.
This was followed by
the National Security Strategy (NSS) in 2018. The NSS was prepared by
National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon and presented as a
“blueprint [to] foster better coordination, synchronization and
cohesion of government functions”. Its sweeping strategy included
“the combined, balanced and effective use of the instruments of
national power, namely: political and legal, diplomatic,
informational, intelligence, economic, and military and law
enforcement”.
Ominously, Pres.
Duterte called for Filipinos to “stand behind our national security
apparatus” and “strengthen the foundations of a secure, peaceful,
modern and prosperous Philippines”. Towards this, the president
gradually appointed 73 military and police officials to civilian
positions in at least 46 agencies. There are now more military and
police officials in government than at any time since the Marcos
dictatorship nearly 50 years ago.
They were made heads
in 38 of these as Cabinet secretaries, director generals,
chairpersons, executive directors, administrators or presidents. As
it is, former military and police officials account for 11 of 50
cabinet and cabinet-level officials or one-fifth of the Cabinet.
Authoritarianism
now
All this fell into
place when Pres. Duterte issued EO No. 70 in December 2018 creating
the so-called National Task Force to End Local Communist Armed
Conflict (NTF-ELCAC). The EO invoked the armed conflict to justify
creating the task force and institutionalizing a “whole-of-nation
approach” that will “integrate and harmonize the various efforts
of the whole of government and of all sectors of society”.
Pres. Duterte is
National Task Force Commander and chairperson with Esperon as vice
chairperson. This places Esperon second only to the president at the
top of an expansive organizational structure encroaching on virtually
every government agency that matters, reaching from the regional to
the barangay level nationwide. They preside over 18 Cabinet officials
and two private sector representatives.
The high-level task
force includes the secretaries of national defense, interior and
local government, and justice as well as the AFP chief of staff, PNP
director general, National Intelligence Coordinating Agency (NICA)
director general, and Presidential Adviser on the Peace Process.
Propaganda is handled by the Presidential Communications Operations
Office (PCOO) Secretary.
To cover
socioeconomic development concerns, the group also includes the
secretaries of economic planning, finance, budget and management,
public works and highways, agrarian reform, education, and social
welfare and development, as well as the Presidential Adviser for
Indigenous People’s Concerns, National Commission on Indigenous
Peoples (NCIP) chairperson, and Technical Education and Skills
Development Authority director general.
The 17 regional task
forces (RTFs) under the NTF-ELCAC are each chaired by a Cabinet
Officer for Regional Development and Security (CORDS) designated by
the president. The military and police officials in the Cabinet are
handy for this — eight (8) of the 17 Cabinet members appointed as
CORDS are former military officers: Esperon (NSA), Carlito
Galvez (Presidential Peace Adviser), Eduardo Año (DILG), Gregorio
Honasan II (DICT), Roy Cimatu (DENR), Eduardo del Rosario (HUDCC),
and Delfin Lorenzana (DND).
The RTFs supplant
regional structures in place and merge the existing Regional
Development Councils (RDCs) and Regional Peace and Order Councils
(RPOC). RDCs are the highest policy-making and direction-setting
bodies for overall socioeconomic development in the regions. The RDC
is composed of all governors, mayors, and development-related line
agency regional directors. Upon EO No. 70, RDCs are also adding
active military and police officials as special non-voting members.
RPOCs take up major
issues and problems affecting peace and order. RPOCs are also
composed of all governors, mayors, peace and order-related line
agency regional directors, plus AFP commanders. Similar task forces
are organized at the provincial, city/municipal, and barangay level.
In effect, all these far-reaching multi-stakeholder bodies are put in
a direct chain of command under the NTF-ELCAC and the national
security adviser. This cumulatively amounts to hundreds of task
forces nationwide and potentially even thousands if barangay efforts
are counted.
The NTF-ELCAC’s
seemingly disproportionate budget of just Php522 million belies its
influence. All the memorandum circulars implementing EO No. 70 are
clear that “the budgetary requirements for the implementation of EO
No. 70 may be authorized chargeable against the respective LGUs and
agencies in accordance with EO 70”. Regular agency budgets are put
at the service of the NTF-ELCAC.
The NTF-ELCAC is
fully up and running. The first RTF-ELCAC was organized in CALABARZON
in February 2019 and the first provincial PTF-ELCAC in Cavite in
March soon after. The national task force approved its National Plan
in its first meeting in April 2019, held in Malacañang.
Other regions and
provinces followed suit to organize their respective task forces.
One-day island group summits of regional task forces were held in
Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao in October to all culminate in a national
summit with Pres. Duterte.
This year has
already seen a frenzied surge of EO No. 70 implementation-related
activity at every level of government across the country. This has
gone far beyond armed conflict areas and the government’s
militarism has intruded into schools, urban poor communities,
offices, media, embassies, international agencies, and elsewhere. A
National Capital Region (NCR) task force was even created in
September 2019 even if there are no signs of armed conflict or
insurgents in Metro Manila. The NCRTF-ELCAC is a hammer and
activists, critics and political opposition are the nails it will be
used on.
Hijacking
development
EO No. 70
implementation includes weaponizing the law and criminalizing
dissent. But it also in effect enables the military to hijack
socioeconomic development policy for its militarist ends. Having
construed national security and addressing the roots of armed
conflict expansively, the national task force is broadly “authorized
to evaluate, modify or integrate policies and programs” of
government according to its plans.
The recent midterm
update of the Philippine Development Plan (PDP) 2017-2022 is a case
in point. This is regularly done for PDPs but there was something new
this time around. Supplementary guidelines were issued to RDCs to
“integrate” the NTF-ELCAC’s Cluster Implementation Plans in the
updated regional development plans (RDPs) and regional development
investment programs (RDIPs).
Accustomed processes
were overridden and the NTF-ELCAC gave the RDCs plans to “mainstream”
in the update. Regional planning committees were assigned to clusters
as defined by the NTF-ELCAC, all of which had military officials from
the defense department and AFP as members.
The national task
force members include 18 government agencies. The various program
clusters of the NTF-ELCAC implementation plan include most of these
and 38 others, for 51 agencies in total. At least some of these
agencies have created NTF-ELCAC “steering committees” to
implement EO No. 70 and operationalize the national task force within
their respective departments.
The problem with the
national task force and the extensive machinery it creates is that it
is, underneath a lot of development-speak and bureaucratese, still
just another military scheme driven by a narrow-minded enemy-focused
military mindset. It is essentially the Duterte administration
identifying ‘enemies’ and using the full force of government
against them.
EO No. 70 is not the
military suddenly genuinely getting insights about the roots of
underdevelopment and, much less, suddenly having the skills set to
address this. The military is using the task forces to command
resources for community programs, welfare services, and the like for
its narrow counterinsurgency and anti-activism purposes. This muddles
decision-making and prioritization according to actual development
needs.
EO No. 70 is also
being used to justify State security forces cracking down on
development NGOs, people’s organizations, and all civil society
groups whose advocacies the administration deems overly critical and
putting it in a bad light. More to the point — the government is
using all its political, legal, diplomatic, informational,
intelligence, economic, military and police resources against any
perceived domestic political opposition. In short, using all “the
instruments of national power”.
The Duterte
government is systematically going after organizations of workers,
farmers, urban poor, youth, teachers, indigenous peoples, environment
advocates, alternative media, cultural workers, disaster responders,
and even researchers. Freedom of expression, freedom of assembly and
even freedom of thought are under siege with the government deciding
and enforcing what is and is not acceptable.
This gravely sets
back prospects for real and democratic development. Curbing civil
society suppresses a crucial check on government, stifles fresh
development ideas upholding the rights of the majority, and
constricts people’s participation in governance.
What is it all
for?
At one level it is
the Duterte administration coming down hard on the strongest voices
against its authoritarianism, corruption, and policies enriching
elites at the expense of the people. It is the Duterte clique putting
down organized opposition to its self-serving agenda to stay in power
and enrich itself.
But it is also much
more than that. The Duterte government has come but, as with others
before, it will also go. Unfortunately, what is happening is also the
State pushing obsolete neoliberalism forward by eliminating obstacles
to the market and to capital dominating every aspect of Philippine
society. The groups being attacked have their own stresses and
versions but nonetheless share a vision for a more just, humane and
democratic Philippines.
This is
consequential for the country’s political and economic prospects.
We are in the middle of the Left and social movements violently being
put down, under a thin veneer of rule of law, to increase the power
of capitalists, landlords, and political elites. Activists are
targeted because their clear politics, concrete organizations, and
advocacies, threaten the ruling class’s grip on power.
The ruling class
embraces the Duterte government because it increases their wealth and
profits: tax cuts on the rich and big corporations; infrastructure to
keep the comprador economy humming and to preserve real estate
wealth; privatization of transport, water, health and education; wage
repression; land monopolies; and market- and capital-friendly
policies all around.
The Philippines is
in dire need of reforms and the sheer scale of the problem demands
system-wide thinking and massive mass movement solutions. Yet the
heavy-handed authoritarianism and military meddling in governance
will just stoke even more unrest. This includes polarizing the nation
and actually fueling the radicalism, and revolutionary armed
struggles, that the Duterte administration is so fearful of. ###