IT must be borne in mind that the paramount obligation of the government to draw up a cohesive national security strategy to ensure that the safety and security of the people and territory (air, land and sea) is of the highest priority in all circumstances.
Yet, none of the candidates seeking the highest office of the land is even talking about national security, a serious problem that has a correlation to the economic life of the nation, in particular, and its survival, in general, except Vice President Jejomar C. Binay and his running mate, Sen. Gregorio B. Honasan II, a highly decorated army colonel who played an important role in the 1986 Edsa uprising.
Consider the following:
- The country today is riven by three types of continuing rebellions. First, the reformist rebel young officers in the armed services who are the most dangerous, having access to organic weaponry, other war materiels, and who continue quietly to operate inside the government; Second, the Moro separatists in Mindanao; and third, the communist insurgents, who are separately and violently stalking the countryside and some urban centers, oftentimes manifesting themselves in terrorism, ambuscades, political assassinations, banditry, kidnappings and revolutionary taxation.
- Some government officials are loudly and shamelessly proclaiming in various local and international fora that they are fully committed to stifle insurgency and terrorism without realizing that the country is the only one today in Asia or probably throughout the Western World without a clearly-defined national security law of its own.
This is so because the Ramos administration on September 22, 1992, naively repealed the country’s only national security law, Republic Act (RA) 1700, otherwise known as the Anti-subversion Law.
The repeal, in effect, decriminalized subversive organizations, created a security vacuum and saw the resurgence of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), the expansion of the Communist Party of the Philippines and its armed wing, the New People’s Army, the birth of the extremist Abu Sayyaf, and the intrusion of the dreaded Al Qaeda and Jemaah Islamiyah terrorists.
What is left in our law books to suppress subversion and rebellion is the antiquated Revised Penal Code, which, in Article 147, penalizes subversive and rebellious acts for only six years in prison and imposes a fine not exceeding P1,000 ($21) for founders, directors and presidents of associations totally or partially organized for the purpose of committing any of the crimes punishable under the Code.
The new Anti-Terrorism Law, or the Human Security Act (RA 9372), remains untested because of its serious flaw on the side of enforcement and prosecution of terrorist suspects.
- The Philippines has now one of the highest number of armed rebels (the United States and the European Union classify them as terrorists): 15,000 Moro separatists in Mindanao (MILF, Abu Sayyaf and others) and 7,000 communist guerrillas operating elsewhere in the country.
They total 22,000 terrorists, making them one of the highest concentration of armed combatants in any part of the world, with their own flags, constitutions, territories, and armed forces, all in violation of the Constitution.
Their combined strength is the equivalent of 44 light infantry battalions or more than 50 percent of the Army’s total strength of 81,000 officers and men.
- The police and military organizations are top heavy with identical multilayered command structures that are complex, confusing and expensive to maintain.
- The government since 2001 had already spent more than P800 billion for these organizations with no end in sight to the deteriorating national security and public-safety situations.
- An enormous foreign and domestic debt estimated at more than P5.9 trillion is a critical issue in national security and public safety because such a huge liability hinders economic growth, creates serious unemployment problems, worsens poverty and has the potential of triggering political and social upheavals.
It may be true that poverty does not turn poor people into instant terrorists, but a weak country, beset with lack of direction and unbridled corruption, is vulnerable to terrorism.
- The country is heavily dependent on Middle East oil. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), of which the Philippines is a founding member, commands strategic waterways, like the Straits of Malacca, Sunda, Lombok and Macassar, through which oil and trade to and from Japan and East Asian countries must move.
Philippine laws on combatting cybercrimes are inadequate. The E-Commerce Act has no equivalent for the protection of national security. The Data Privacy Act prohibits the government from eavesdropping on private electronic communications without a court order, yet private individuals can intrude into government web sites and invoke the right of information.
The National Defense College of the Philippines (NDCP), with the encouragement of Vice President Binay, is not idly and passively waiting for the situation to turn worse. After the demise of Executive Order 269 that created the Commission on Information and Communication Technology on June 23, 2011, persisted in its cybersecurity thrusts, by conducting the Forum on Cybersecurity Awareness and Collaboration (October 26, 2011); the Cybersecurity Forum (February 27, 2012); the Seminar Toward ICT Development and Cybersecurity Enhancement (June 6, 2012); and the Cybersecurity Enhancement Workshop (June 11, 2012). These are investments toward the establishment of the envisioned Cybersecurity Institute.
When the defunct CICT shut down, the NDCP’s Cybersecurity Institute started to take off. With alumni who are well versed in cybersecurity, the NDCP has the potential to become, not just a national, but also a regional center of excellence in cybersecurity education, training and practice.
To reach the writer, e-mail cecilio.arillo@gmail.com.