It is a real pleasurable experience to be listening to military personnel speak (and/or write) in the language of the schooled among Filipinos and succeed in creating confusion in their listeners (and readers). You cannot help but laugh in ascending hilarity! And exclaim “Oh, such wondrous words of AFP intellectuals!”
First, there was a Lt. Col. Harold Cabunoc, presumably from the AFP national office, who came down to Davao City purportedly to make investigations(?) on the Lumad evacuees who have sought refuge in Haran compound of the UCCP. He brought along with him a reporter from DZRH named Bing Formento. It was this reporter who conducted interviews with the Lumad evacuees. But Col. Cabunoc himself did not show up at Haran.
It wouldn’t take long for one gifted with common sense to discern from the DZRH reporter’s line of questioning his bias and or prejudice vis-à-vis the evacuees. One wonders if he was a real media man or an AFP officer posing as a reporter. Anyway, this DZRH Formento, for all his built-in bias and or prejudice, could be the fountainhead of the wondrous words flowing from the lips of AFP’s Public Affairs Office chief Col. Noel Detoyato. He proclaimed in a press release that “the Lumad evacuees were manipulated” and attributed this conclusion to the ‘exit briefing’ of UN Rapporteur Dr. Chaloka Beyani who extensively interviewed the Lumads in Haran.
But Col. Detoyato’s wondrous words turned out to be an utter failure to comprehend the UN Rapporteur’s exit briefing who issued a clarification in the most emphatic terms that the AFP’s statement was “unacceptable…a gross misrepresentation”!
Well, these wondrous words of Detoyato came to have been planted and blossomed in the tongue of another colonel, the EastMinCom spokesperson Colonel Eduardo B. Gubat, thereby giving them scented flavor when the latter “humbly apologizes to UN Rapporteur Beyani for such oversight and for the inconvenience it has brought to the UN Rapporteur”.
But the AFP statement continued, “By reason of such statement, Lt. Gen. Aurelio B. Baladad, AFP Commander of Eastern Mindanao Command, AFP has approved his resignation as spokesperson. However, the Eastern Mindanao Command maintains that Dr. Beyani in his exit briefing described that the Indigenous People in Haran are manipulated.”
Maybe, the main source of AFP’S confusion is its officers’ posturing as men of extraordinary skills in the art of communication, especially with the use of the English language. Well, who among us schooled Filipinos does not exhibit a penchant for English as a kind of status symbol if not as a badge of distinction for being an intellectual nincompoop?
And so, there seems to be no end to the confusion as Colonel Detoyato chooses to continue to misunderstand the import of Dr. Chaloka Beyani’s words. Or perhaps, the mandate for creating confusion simply surpasses the taste of wondrous words in his own tongue and lips? Bear witness to this latest edition of the wondrous words of confusion below –
AFP: Rebels drove lumads away from home
by Jaime Laude | Philippine Star
The more than 700 lumads sheltered in a church compound in Davao City were forced to leave their homes after the New People’s Army (NPA) implemented an anti-military campaign called “bakwet,” the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) said over the weekend.
The anti-military campaign launched several months ago was aimed at humiliating government security forces involved in internal security operations.
The communist “bakwet” campaign failed in several hinterlands of South Cotabato, but succeeded in other areas, the AFP said.
“The more than 700 indigenous people (IP) at the compound of the United Church of Christ in the Philippines (UCCP) Haran left homes not because of alleged military abuses,” AFP public affairs office chief Col. Noel Detoyato said.
Detoyato said the rebels raided the villages, prompting the military to initiate actions to protect the residents and the community.
He said the insurgents exploited the military action and brainwashed the lumads into believing that government security forces regarded them all as enemies.
“We cannot just stand idly by as the IPs are exploited, radicalized and recruited to fight the government. We will do our best to secure their communities so they can return home safe and with dignity,” Detoyato said.
United Nation special rapporteur Chaloka Beyani recently visited the lumads at the UCCP Haran compound.
Beyani’s statement over the issue was misinterpreted by the military, prompting an official of the Eastern Mindanao Command to apologize.
“We urge everyone to look past this incident and work together with us and the government to resolve the situation and return the IPs back to their homes,” Detoyato said.
He said the military action on the issue is within the mandate of the AFP as the protector of the people and state.
. . .
Col. Noel Detoyato’s tales totter in their excessive heaviness such that they soon crumble and shatter into pieces anyone with common sense can easily discern as rotten rubbles of falsehoods.
Or they rattle in his tongue where they mix with malodorous juices of familiar yarns, even as his wondrous words fall drop by drop with venom.
With these wondrous words from the AFP spokespersons, it’s no wonder why confusion reigns and we are thereby divided and ruled. But this may have its springs from our success and failure in the use of the English language. From way back to colonial times our unconditional love for the English language has streamed down to present generation of Filipinos who, despite gargantuan efforts, have failed to grasp the multi-faceted nuances of the language. This has given way to doublespeak, knowingly or unknowingly.
In the case of the Military officers and men, the doublespeak arises from a force of habit—a traditional practice of American-spawned military culture. It is a legacy of US colonial rule faithfully upheld and abided by our own Filipino generals— graduates of the Philippine Military Academy , or even products of the West Point in the US.
Witness a man in uniform who, being interviewed by a television reporter in local Cebuano or Tagalog, invariably answers in splendid ‘bayabas’ English with much much effort and discomfort! Until he unconsciously utters the flipside of the truth— a startling untruth, or prevarication, or half-truth. Such is the manifest flowering of the culture of doublespeak— sweet poisonous fruit of the forked tongue.
And so, confusion after confusion after confusion ensues— all thanks to our mentally colonized national leadership who have abundantly fertilized our neocolonial essences with current neoliberal policies in all spheres of our national life.
The wondrous words of the AFP officers will thrive as a syndrome of willful deception and confusion, but more as a guise to virulently attack the progressive sectors and continue violating with impunity the human rights of the exploited and oppressed, especially the doubly exploited and oppressed among them— the Lumads.
