SARA DUTERTE'S IGNORANCE

 BY BA IPE

SARA Duterte's proposal to require mandatory military service for every Filipino citizen of training age is laudable but not feasible. She favors the creation of a huge standing army, which is unsustainable given the current fiscal position. The outstanding debt of the national government could reach between P13 to P14 trillion, when his father ends his term on June 30. The heavy borrowings will trigger economic issues, which make her suggestion unrealistic to pursue.

Since current fiscal policy favors debt repayment over delivery of services to our people, thanks to Presidential Decree 1177, a marcosian creation, the priority is pay the huge public debt of the national government, lessening the public funds for mandatory social services like education, public health, and disaster mitigation. This situation further lessens additional services like mandatory military service. Where will Sara get the money to finance the mandatory military service? That is the question.

The Philippines is rich in guerilla traditions. Since the Spanish colonial era, those recalcitrant leaders used guerilla tactics to face the Spanish armed brigades. The likes of Sumuroy, Tamblot, Dagohoy, Silang, among others resorted to form guerilla groups, which used guerilla tactics against the Spanish forces..

Even the millenarian groups of Apo Ipe, Papa Isio, the Colorums, or even the Sakdalistas, had guerilla groups to harass the American colonial forces and the paramilitary Philippine Constabulary. When the Japanese invading forces came, we had the various guerilla groups – HMB, Marking Guerillas, among others, which cleaned the country to the Japanese forces when the American forces led Gen. Douglas McArthur arrived in 1944.

Now, we have the NPA, which employs guerilla tactics to face AFP. They have been unconquered since its creation in 1969.

We had standing armies during Emilio Aguinaldo's time and when the Japanese invaded us in 1941, but they lost miserably to enemies. Aguinaldo's army lost to invading American forces, while the USAFFE forces surrendered in Bataan in 1942.

Because of the richness of our guerilla traditions, then Defense Secretary Renato de Villa, in an interview I had for the Philippines Free Press in 1991 (it was our cover story during those days), said the country’s defense strategy has to be recast to acknowledge the use of guerilla tactics to fight potential enemy.

I remember de Villa telling me that the standing army does not have to be very big because we don’t have enough resources to support a big army. It should approximate the size that it could deliver lethal blows to the enemy when they attack us and come over to our country.

But we should have strong militia fores that could be used automatically to become guerilla units that would use guerilla tactics, de Villa said. Our terrain favors this approach, he said.

Although Sara is listed to have obtained some courses and training at the National Defense College and she is registered as a reserve officer, she hardly knows our defense requirements.

Apparently, her statement is her way to ingratiate herself to the defense and military establishment. Its election time and she needs their support by hook or by crook, even by half-truths and lies.