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In Yogjakarta last month, students often asked me why our “people power” uprisings were peaceful. In contrast, the upheaval that led to the overthrow of the Suharto regime in 1998 was pockmarked with violence. Security forces shot at students. Establishments owned by the ethnic Chinese were burned and looted, residents killed, and women and girls raped. Today, more than four years after Suharto’s downfall, self-styled advocates gang up on media establishments to protest unfavorable reports. Goons descend on shops and conduct “sweeping” operations, sparing the owner from further loss only if paid for their trouble.

Indonesian and Nippon Foundation fellow Benny Subianto says that in fact three or four books have recently been released , all addressing the issue of political violence in Indonesia. Scholarship on Indonesian violence has virtually become an industry.

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So how to answer the question that begged for a comparative perspective? To begin with, our socio-political processes are certainly not devoid of violence. We’ve had our share of massacres before, during and after Marcos. Every year in July, demonstrators trooping to Congress as the President gives her/his State of the Nation Address are blocked. Insistent protesters are doused with cold water from fire trucks, and get a beating or two from baton-wielding anti-riot police. We have our own self-styled bandits who kidnap people and then charge them for board and lodging.

But it is true that our two people power mobilizations were relatively peaceful. Some pickpockets mingled with the crowd, but no looting of stores and shops took place. Soldiers and the police were sent to the scene but they refrained from shooting at the people. APCs actually stopped to avoid running over people, and their drivers coyly accepted the flowers handed out by the protesters. What a contrast to a news clip several years back on CNN where an old Russian woman tried to stop an APC, holding up a flower. The APC just sped on forcing her to step aside.

Since violence during mass rallies are usually provoked, most often by agents of the state, an explanation may be found in the fact that over the years of resisting dictatorship, Filipinos have built up a formidable network of groups with fairly solid organizational bases. Coordinative structures are put up for mass actions, even or especially for those as broad and spontaneous as EDSA 1 and 2. Groups police their own ranks against the dubious agent provocateur – so much so that if anyone gets a beating from the crowd, it must be the infiltrator with the tell-tale firearm tucked under his shirt. Organizational discipline is observed among members, such as staying in line, knowing your marshals, sticking to your buddy, and keeping in pace with the march.

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In contrast, under the “floating mass” policy of the Suharto’s New Order, people were forcibly depoliticized and autonomous mass organizations, quashed. When the unraveling began, students hurriedly built up their organizations and networks but the operative rules and organizational discipline were not in place. The momentum was too fast for anyone to put some semblance of order and control, the way we had more or less organized food distribution, the daily programs made up of speeches and songs, and marshaling as soon as the crowd assembled at EDSA.

A deeper examination would be needed to explain in terms of the difference between the Marcos and Suharto regimes, and even Erap’s short-lived administration, at their final moments (Marcos was sick and may have been too weak to order the loyal military to shoot. Or maybe he was counting on the US to stick by him and when it didn’t, just wanted a safe exit?). Or the difference in the roles played by our military and the police, and their self-perceived legitimacy to stay in power at all cost.

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Others might want to venture for explanations along cultural lines – whether popular culture or political culture. For instance, was it machismo or religiosity that made women and nuns and flowers and statues of the Virgin Mary and the holy rosary succeed in halting soldiers?

Not all will buy the explanation put forth by the astrologer of Gilda Cordero-Fernando in the latter’s article published by Inquirer last 17 November. To the astrologer Georgina Solina, the Filipinos are such highly evolved and heroic souls, evoking higher forces and invoking the supreme values of justice and the need for change. At EDSA, we supposedly reached a higher frequency, levitated to a third dimension, and entered a protected state that made us safe from destruction. This supposedly explains why EDSA was so peaceful, and only the Pinoys could do it.

Well, I didn’t know souls have nationalities. And I wonder why we don’t get together once more and tune in to a frequency that will catapult all the trapos in our midst to Mars and beyond.

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Looking for classics on Pinoy pulitika?

Here’s an ideal quote reflective of the lohika of Pinoy pulitika. From minority leader Vicente Sotto III, on the deal between administration senators Franklin Drilon and Renato Cayetano to split the term of the senate presidency between them: “We are not involved in that agreement. As an oppositionist, we will always be an opposition. In other words, when we see the door open, we will enter.”

Our philosophy professors can easily spot the holes in this statement using formal logic. But obviously this “open door policy” is part of the survival strategy of Pinoy politicos.
On a somewhat different but still relevant note, one is reminded of the Vietnamese and Chinese who are fond of saying, when the social ills resulting from their open market policies are brought up: “When you open the window, even the flies come in.”

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Pinoy politicos as commercial models? The last one to join the club is no other than former police chief now senator Ping Lacson, who has just proclaimed his intention to run for president in 2004. Among male politicians, alcoholic drinks seem to be the favorite medium to get that extra mileage, with huge professional fees (presumably) to boot! (In a typically gendered division, women politicos end up endorsing laundry soap. Toothpastes, on the other hand, seems to be gender-neutral, with both male and female models like Loren Legarda and Orly Mercado smiling their way through.)

Others who have endorsed hard drinks or beers in the past were Bong Revilla and Noli de Castro. FPJ has appeared in a beer ad, long before all this talk about running for president. The three were, however, media perso-nalities first before becoming politicians; by endorsing they gave the products a boost. With Lacson it could be the other way around – the product implanting him in the consciousness of all the full-blooded males who enjoy the drink. After all, as an ex-tough policeman, they must be his natural constituency.

And as if to court the organized women’s vote as well, Lacson also announced he will support the use of contraceptives. But is this a battle he is waging to support women’s reproductive rights or another macho fight with the moral bigwigs of the Catholic church?

Abangan.