That was a fascinating thing WikiLeaks revealed recently, which the Inquirer picked up last Monday. The one about former US Ambassador Kristie Kenney’s take on Cory Aquino.
Kenney’s cable to the US State Department was dated July 2, 2009. It noted that Cory was deathly ill and had little hope to recover. “Revered as a hero for taking the reins of power at a difficult moment in Philippine politics and at a time of great personal loss, President Aquino leaves behind an incomplete transition to democratic governance that, while marked by great personal freedom for Philippine citizens, never seems to have properly taken root in the institutions that must handle the difficult task of governing a diverse and divided society.”
Coming from a very high moral ground, Kenney said, Cory had her reputation as a moral crusader tarnished by her association with “dubious political figures such as President Estrada” after she fell out with Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. That made her only “a partial icon of morality.”
In any case, the morality alone did not go very far. “(Cory’s) moral leadership, while coming at an important time for the Philippines, never fully compensated for her weak leadership style.”
You’d almost give an arm to know what the US Embassy’s current assessment of P-Noy is. But I’ll leave that for another day.
Kenney’s assessment of Cory is precious for two things.
The first is what it says about Cory. Which was almost totally refuted less than a month later after Cory died and changed the face of the country all over again. Practically the only thing Kenney got right was that Cory had one foot in the grave and would soon have both of them there.
Evidently, though Kenney was the one US ambassador who made it a point to try to get along with the Pinoys, or be seen as such, gracing radio shows and appearing at one point in Wowowee, she never really had a clue about the Pinoy. At least though she knew enough about the culture to use it to her advantage—she passed herself off wonderfully as “magaling makisama,” “marunong makihalubilo sa masa”—she never knew enough about it to understand it.
Certainly the nation did not see Cory as merely a partial icon of morality when it turned out to grieve for her when she died. It did not see Cory as someone whose reputation as a moral crusader had been tarnished when a throng trekked for miles to bring her to her resting place while the heavens wept. Kenney’s assessment is particularly richly ironic in that if there was one thing Cory—or her death—did, it was precisely to transform the equation into a moral one. It was precisely to distill the situation—one the Pinoy could intuit or feel very palpably, if not see in stark outline—into a battle between good and evil. Between Cory and Gloria, between the promise that was her son and the curse that were Gloria’s spawns.
It wasn’t just Cory who died that day, Arroyo did too. The one going straight to heaven and the other straight to hell.
But far more interestingly is what Kenney’s cable says about herself. Or about the US Embassy. Or about the US position on the Philippines. You really have to thank WikiLeaks for giving you a glimpse into the American government’s mind.
Kenney’s proposition that Cory had a “weak leadership style” may be arguable, but the US Embassy has always had a weird concept of what a leadership style that is not weak is. Under various ambassadors, that embassy staunchly supported Ferdinand Marcos, even trotting out then Vice President George Bush (Dubya’s father) to toast Marcos’ adherence to democracy. Under Kenney that embassy supported Arroyo, the ambassador being constantly seen in Arroyo’s company in various functions, official and social.
Cory never really allowed democratic governance to take root in the institutions that must handle the difficult task of governing a diverse and divided society? Well, not for lack of trying. And certainly not for being an impediment to it. Unlike Kenney, unlike the US Embassy. They did not help, they obstructed.
What institution could be more vital to uniting a divided country, to integrating a diverse society, than elections? What institution could be more pivotal to democratizing a feudal society than elections? Yet Arroyo spoke to Garci, and though the Filipinos, including Cory, were up in arms about it, the American ambassador was deathly quiet about it. Yet Arroyo stole the vote, and like the bishops under Archbishop Fernando Capalla who said, “Everybody cheats anyway,” Kenney found nothing wrong with it.
Of course she could always have said that it was not her business to judge the country. But it was not her business either to make it look like “friends kami ni Gloria.” Of course she could always have said that it was not the US Embassy’s business to meddle in the affairs of the country. But if so, what was she doing in Kuala Lampur to witness what would have been the creation of the Bangsamoro Republic?
The reason I qualify Kenney’s failure to appreciate the depths of the public anger against Arroyo with “unwittingly or not” is that it was largely intentional. No one could possibly have missed the Pinoys’ detestation of their fake president. Quite simply, as her predecessors did with Marcos, she couldn’t care less. In fact, Arroyo, like Marcos, was eminently preferable in that a Filipino despot who needed American support to survive could be expected to reciprocate—in ways that redefine the fabled Filipino hospitality. Arroyo was perfectly willing to give up Muslim Mindanao for that support. Kenney herself was just upholding a time-honored American diplomatic principle: “We don’t mind that she’s an SOB, so long as she’s our SOB.”
That was what made Cory, who wasn’t, weak.