The Philippine Star
Tuesday, November 5, 1996
By The Way
By MAX V. SOLIVEN
Just because the Philippine Airlines "strike" is temporarily over, the President and his APEC planners mustn't relax. The wildcat strike staged by the Philippine Airlines Employees’ Association (PALEA), under the coordination of "former" communist rebel Filemon "Popoy" Lagman and his leftist phalanx of lawyers and strategists, may have only been the dress rehearsal for a more widespread "industry" walkout to come — on the very eve of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit.
The PAL management negotiators were very tight-lipped about the details of the negotiations which brought the PALEA strikers back "to work" — for the moment. None of them would talk to this writer or to the rest of the media about the intimate details of the last-ditch discussions.
They even refused to reveal the venue of the "talks' which began at 9 p.m. Friday, in an undisclosed place in Metro Manila and went on until agreement was reached 5 p.m. Saturday. Their fear: "Baka ma-ABB kami." That's what one of the panelists admitted to a friend, who passed the information on to me.
What did the nervous PAL management official mean by that cryptic remark? He was afraid that the New People's Army liquidation unit, the dreaded “Alex Boncayao Brigade," might assassinate him!
And why not? When the management group, headed by PAL Vice-President for Legal Affairs Antonio Ocampo sat down with the so-called PALEA group, the negotiator (to their amazement), wasn't PALEA President Alexander Barrientos, but former ABB “chief” Popoy Lagman. Now, what business had the former NPA rebel to do with the "demands" of the PALEA union members since he isn't an employee of PAL, nor is he their lawyer. The only “connection,” perhaps, was that the PALEA belonged to the federation he has been organizing among strategic labor unions all over the place.
Can you beat that? Lagman, who headed the butchers of the ABB (until he "allegedly" fell out with them) was “forgiven” by the government and is now permitted to openly go about "mobilizing" labor unions! He claims to have hung up his "Mao cap," but the mischief he's been up to suggests that the class struggle is far from over.
***
The trouble with the radical leftists is that they were too publicity-hungry to miss a photo opportunity. And so, they showed up to openly consort with the PALEA strike leaders, who were led by Barrientos. The fellow has obviously been trying to grow a Stalin-type moustache, but let's face it: outside of the Japanese and a few hirsute northern Chinese, we Asians are not impressive, by racial characteristic, in the bigote department.
Among the modern-day revolutionaries who even posed for the photographers side by side with Barrientos and the PALEA wildcatters was Renato Constantino, Jr. of Sanlakas, the leading light of the so-called Manila People's Forum, who has been trying to get the Ramos government to allow East Timor rebel spokesman Jose Ramos- Horta into the country before and during APEC, so that Indonesia's Suharto would be discomfited.
When FVR and his Cabinet Cluster "E" slammed the door on Ramos-Horta, the Constantino group attempted to entice his fellow Nobel Peace Prize awardee. East Timor Roman Catholic Bishop Carlos Filipe Ximenes Belo to come to Manila as their main speaker instead. As they expected, his Political Eminence Jaime Cardinal Sin and the Catholic bishops joined the outcry to permit Bishop Belo to come during APEC — but the noisy bunch were dumbfounded when it was Bishop Belo himself who calmly
announced that he was "too busy" to come.
Why the leftists and communists are so eager to derail the APEC summit is quite clear. They want to show to the world that Ramos and the present government are weaklings, too wishy-washy to restrain protests and demonstrations during even a major international event.
I like the final defiant touch of the PALEA legal counsel, Atty. Arno Sanidad, long- known as a champion of leftwing causes. He cheekily wore a red T-shirt when telling the reporters and media-persons at a PALEA press conference (before they caved in) that the PALEA strikers would stand firm and refuse to return to work.
Don't be deceived, however, that all is now quiet on the labor front. They're mobilizing for the Big Push on November 22. Mark that date on your calendar. It's coming.
***
What we've learned is that, in yielding to the "return to work" order — at last — of Labor Secretary Leo Quisumbing, the PALEA exacted a promise from the PAL management that they would meet again in ten days, with a final session to be held on November 21. Why, that's when the countdown to the APEC gathering of November 24 comes light down to the wire. What if (when?) those talks break down? The PALEA, perhaps joined by the two other unions, FASAP and ALPAP (the pilots), will walk out again, this time involving all 9,000 personnel and workers of the rank-and-file.
Possibly even the entire roster of 14,000.
They may be joined by the two other leftist-led unions of our most strategic industries — the Manila Electric Company (Meralco) and the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLOT). This would mean no airplanes, no electricity and no telephones!
And what if the other leftwing unions which dominate land transportation, maritime travel, and other vital industries, were to join the fray? We would give the world the picture of a society in total meltdown.
As for the APEC, do you think those presidents, prime ministers and the sultan of Brunei are crazy? They would tell Mr. Ramos: "Sorry, friend, but your country is in convulsions. We're not coming to your party until you get matters under control." The APEC summit would be cancelled. Imagine the international humiliation we'll suffer. Is this scenario "fiction" — or fact? you judge.
***
In the meantime, the PALEA strike leaders are fulminating that Taipan Lucio Tan, a convenient "hate figure" (disliked by even Ramos and company), plans to squeeze them dry and fire them all anyway. They must all be mind readers. Didn't the management panel already agree to discuss a salary increase at their next preliminary session nine or ten days from now? -
Poor Tan. The new comprehensive tax measures now in the last stages of approval in Congress will hit his cigarette company, Fortune, with P5 billion in hiked taxes and his beer company, Asia Brewery, with P1 billion in taxes—and then there's what he's spending on PAL salaries and a $4-billion aircraft reflecting program. Everbody, from Malacaňang to workers, apparently think he's made of money.
What's disquieting is the strong-arm tactics that were used in the PAL "illegal" strike which disrupted the homecoming plans of scores of thousands of our people on the eve of Todos los Santos and All Souls' Day. Friends of mine who went to the airport last Wednesday night say their vehicles were "boarded" by burly men, who told them to turn back because PAL was on strike. There were actually only 350 PAL employees on the picket line, but observers counted 850 demonstrators. Where had those "extras" come from? Surely from hakot.
Moreover the presence of "former" NPA rebels at the forefront of the confrontation invests the entire affair with an added chill factor. Remember those violent strikes conducted by unions affiliated with the leftist Kilusang Mayo Uno (KMU), such as the bitter strikes staged at the Nestlé corporation despite the fact that the firm's employees and workers were among the highest-paid in the country — with a janitor drawing a salary equivalent to that of a brigadier-general? A Nestlé vice-president was murdered right in the locker room, and other officers attacked and harassed. Subsequently, a surrendered “Sparrow," an "Amazon" hit-woman, confessed to having directed the `"kill" in support of the strikers' struggle with the company management. When I met this ex- Sparrow liquidator at Camp Crame, she was briefing the PNP and the military on how the NPA and the ABB supported strike action with their muscle, which included threat, intimidation, and, as a last result, murder.
Have such forces been let loose again to disrupt the coming APEC conference? The government's "policy of reconciliation" and "amnesty" for "former" rebels, with the release of thousands of them from prison, has permitted the anti-government cadres to reassemble and resume the fight. In our cock-eyed democracy, we're the financiers of our own destruction.
Why, one former fire-breathing rebel I know, a brilliant former journalist, is now teaching in the Mass Communications department of the University of the Philippines. Brainwashing and recruiting the next generation of revolutionaries — on a government salary? Sus. Only in the Philippines!
But Lenin was right when he quipped that the capitalists will even sell them (the communists) the rope with which to hang them. Sell them the rope? We're giving them the rope, gratis et amore. We call it free speech, human rights, civil liberties and freedom of assembly.
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