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Friday, May 13, 2005
Roperos: Straightening up the AFP
By Godofredo M. Roperos
Politics Also
Almost a week ago today, at the airport in Manila on the way back to Cebu, I bought a copy of the May 9 Time magazine because of an interesting blurb about the Philippines on its cover. It read: “The Philippine Military: Poor Morale and Endless War.”
However, I was not able to read the magazine until the other evening because my eldest grandson, Leon Philippe, got hold of the magazine first.
My grandson is taking up chemical engineering at UP Los Baños. But having been an officer of the citizens’ army training corps at the Cebu City science high school where he just graduated, he was interested in the state of our armed forces.
Going through the Time magazine report, I would not be surprised if he was discouraged and demoralized, if not entirely “cleansed” of any illusion about joining the AFP. If you ask me, it is as if nobody cares about it at all.
Even if we consider the 7-page report as half-truth or exaggerated, some of the things could not be expunged from our sense of reality as thinking and reading citizens.
All along, we have been taking our military as an institution sort of exploited during the martial law years, having allowed itself to be utilized to prop up a military rule in the guise of a “mass-based democracy.” Martial law left the AFP in tatters.
Here are some rather denigrating excerpts from the report:
“If the deterioration and corruption in the military aren’t halted, soldiers might be inspired to rebel against the government again, as they did in 2003.” The key word there is corruption, the root cause of the AFP’s being decrepit.
“…The Philippine military is in need of intensive care. No nation in Asia has so many serious festering internal security problems. A major reason the Philippines has never become an Asian Tiger is the seemingly ceaseless havoc caused by bombings in its capital, firefights in the jungles…If the country can’t control its Communist insurgents, Muslim separatists…and terrorists who sneak in from neighboring Indonesia and Malaysia, it will continue to repel investors and hemorrhage development opportunities.
“…Washington is taking the sorry state of the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) seriously: since the war on terror began, it has stepped up training programs and boosted military aid, which currently runs at about $86 million a year…Keeping the country terrorist-free is the job of the personnel of the AFP, and they’re in battle almost every day of the year, fighting the same wars some of their fathers and grandfathers fought—often with the same rusty guns…
“…In the 1980s, the military had 80 functioning helicopters. That number shrank to 10 last year, before the military started getting more choppers from Singapore and the US. (One of the US helicopters crashed last week, killing all nine aboard.) The Philippine Air Force has three C-130 cargo planes for ferrying vehicles, supplies, troops—and carrying coffins from battle zones. Only one C-130 is flown at the moment; the other two are used for spare parts. The army’s M-16s date back to 1972 and needs to have the barrels replaced: many are no longer capable of shooting straight…”
But what puzzles me is why the report never mentioned how our politicians never gave a hoot about the state of the armed forces. But the excerpts are enough to make my arm hairs stand on end when I think of what might happen to the AFP, with the equipment and kind of morale it has, when confronted by a well-equipped and battle-prepared soldiers of a neighboring nation.
(May 13, 2005 issue)
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