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Philippines near Robert de Ocampo, former finance secretary of the Philippines, said protests over the adjourned impeachment trial of President Joseph Estrada has brought the country the "closest it's ever gotten to civil clash" since World War II.
chaos, experts here say
The situation 'may be
too hard to control'By Rosemarie Bernardo
Star-Bulletin"This has unleashed forces that may be too hard to control," said de Ocampo at the Center Asia Pacific Executive Forum held at the East-West Center yesterday.
The Philippine Senate indefinitely adjourned Estrada's impeachment trial Tuesday. Senators concluded the trial could not continue after 11 prosecutors resigned.
Estrada, a former movie actor, was elected president of the Philippines in 1998. Allegations began to surface in October when Ilocos Sur provincial Gov. Luis Singson accused him of taking nearly $8 million in bribes from illegal gambling lords and $2.5 million in tobacco tax kickbacks.
Walden Bello, sociology professor of the University of the Philippines, said in an interview before a University of Hawaii reception yesterday, "The leadership of the state and the leadership of crime in the country are one.
"Basic technical governance has disappeared under Estrada," Bello said.
Like de Ocampo, Bello expects the people of the Philippines "will be extending their peaceful protests to civil disobedience.
"Once that happens, then the country will be paralyzed until the man resigns."
"Ever since he took office, it's been one scandal after another," said Bello, president of Akbayan, a nationalistic party consisting of teachers, businessmen, farmers and urban poor people who live in shantytowns.
Bello said he and members of Akbayan asked for the president's resignation in March 1999 after information surfaced about Dante Tan, controlling shareholder of a gambling company, BW Resources Corp., who manipulated the trading of BW stock to benefit himself and his friends, which included the president.
"I have no doubt that he will be removed from office. It's just a question of days or months," said Bello.
Dean Alegado, ethnic studies professor at the University of Hawaii at Manoa, said, "Once again, the country is in turmoil."
Despite the country's urgency, Alegado praised the Filipino people who are committed to insisting on better reform.
Clerks, secretaries and banking executives were risking their careers to expose the things that were going on, said Alegado.
Roland Casamina, president and chief executive officer of House of Finance Inc. was disappointed by the abrupt end of Estrada's trial.
Casamina, who has been following the impeachment trial on a daily basis, questioned the trial process. "I was hoping that all the evidence was to be shown in court in open instead of suppressing it to prove if the president's guilty or innocent," he said. "Now we'll never know what it is."
People, businesses and the economy in the Philippines are suffering because of this crisis, he said.
"It's gonna get worse and worse in the next few months."
State Senate President Robert Bunda agreed with Casamina. "The more you suppress information and keep it away to gloss over evidence, the worse it gets," Bunda said.
"People are already skeptical."