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Text messages put the new Philippines president in power, but she can never work "those little phones"
Published 19 February 2001
On the flight out, an excited young woman from Surrey tells me this will be her first time in the Philippines. She's going to recruit nurses for her mother-in-law's private nursing agency in Bristol. I try to explain to her that every nurse who leaves the Philippines for Britain helps undermine the Philippines' health service that bit more. But she's not convinced. She tells me her company gives each nurse a signing-on fee of £2,500. So it's good for Britain and for the Philippines, too, she says proudly.
Manila is a vast concrete sprawl, permanently shrouded in a grey haze, but at the moment it's very proud of itself. The newspapers are jam-packed with advertisements taken out by major companies proclaiming their support for the new outburst of people power. They feature pictures of the events at the Edsa Shrine, which tens of thousands of ordinary Filipinos occupied in an act of defiance that finally prompted their corrupt president, Joseph Estrada, to resign. The overthrow of Estrada has been called the "text message" revolution: the people were mobilised by text messages on a million mobile phones.
We fly to Mindanao, 500 miles south across the Philippine archipelago. It's a beautiful tropical island, but it's caught up in a murderous civil war, and everyone has guns. I'm here to look at Oxfam's work, which includes providing clean water and sanitation for 40,000 local people who have been displaced by the fighting. I'm also researching stories for the Amnesty/Oxfam "Cut Conflict" campaign. It's now five years since the Scott report, and yet we still don't have new legislation to combat the flood of arms circulating round the world. Mindanao is the perfect place to show the havoc caused by a mass influx of weapons. I talk to a woman whose son and brother were dragged off by the army and were never seen again until, three weeks later, their bound bodies were found floating down a nearby river. The vehicle used to take them off was a Simba, designed in Britain but manufactured over here. I'd never realised that local licensing meant the specifications could be altered so radically. In Britain, the Simba is a respectable armoured personnel carrier. Over here, it has three machine guns mounted on it and is a vehicle of terror.
We're travelling with a reporter and photographer from the Daily Express, which is supporting the "Cut Conflict" campaign. They are very nervous about what's going to happen to them now Rosie Boycott has been shown the door. There are lots of worried phone calls home.
I visit the local university. There's a notice on the front gate saying, "Please deposit your weapons on entering". I ask the dean if she's angry that so many of her former student nurses end up supporting the British health system. She isn't. Apparently, her government spends so little on health that half her students are unemployed. She's very pleased for them if they get a lucky break in Britain. Was my young woman from Surrey right, after all?
I'm squatting on the rusty hotel fire escape by the side of a portable satellite dish doing a live link to Jim Naughtie on the Today programme, 8,000 miles away. He asks me whether, as a member of the Labour Party National Executive Committee, I'm here to expose the contradictions in Robin Cook's ethical foreign policy. I find the question irritating. An ethical foreign policy takes time to put in place. Lots of opposing interests need to be addressed. Anyway, gun control's too important for political point-scoring. I'm hoping that he'll ask me about the letter the AEEU has circulated to every Constituency Labour Party, warning them not to vote for me in the NEC elections because, it alleges, I'm anti-union and opposed to the Labour Party-trade union link. The charges are mischievous and totally baseless. Unfortunately, Naughtie doesn't ask me the question, so I make a mental note to crowbar a rebuttal into my diary for the NS.
Back to Manila, and the Oxfam team are cock-a-hoop because we've got a half-hour interview with the new president, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. She tells us she is bowled over by the work Oxfam has done in Mindanao and we leave convinced that it's going to be a major player in resolving the island's developmental problems.
The president is a very impressive woman, razor-sharp, tiny, friendly, beautiful and remarkably candid. She's already setting up peace talks with the Mindanao rebels, and says she is right behind the "Cut Conflict" campaign. She thinks a reduction in arms can make a significant difference to Mindanao's future. I ask her whether text messaging really was as important in the overthrow of Estrada as people claim. "Oh yes," she says. "In the Philippines, text messaging has replaced political organisation." I ask her if she used text messaging herself during those fateful days. "No," she says, "I can never work those little phones. But at the height of the crisis, every time I fell asleep at night I'd be woken up by my husband furiously pressing those silly little buttons." What a great meeting! But when we get back to the hotel our celebrations are cut short. There's a message from London. Our Express reporter may be out of a job. I'm not too keen on journalists as a breed, but he's a good man. Tomorrow we fly home, him to an uncertain future, me to a camera and a row of muddy trenches.
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