Carlos Conde

Carlos H. Conde covers the Philippines for GlobalPost. Since 2002, Mr. Conde has been a freelance correspondent for the New York Times and the International Herald Tribune, covering all aspects of...

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Carlos Conde's Notebook:

August 3, 2009 21:34 ET

'Yellow fever' once again grips the Philippines

It was unlike anything the Philippines has seen in many, many years: tens of thousands of Filipinos lining up in the streets to catch a glimpse of the casket of Corazon Aquino, the former president who helped restore democracy from a dictatorship, who died on Saturday from colon cancer at the age of 76.

The reverence and respect many Filipinos have for Cory, as she is more popularly and fondly known here, was evident everywhere. People were dressed in anything yellow. They flashed the L sign — for "Laban," or fight, Cory's battle cry against the dictator Ferdinand Marcos that led to his ouster in 1986 — as the truck that bore her casket inched past the multitude of grieving Filipinos. They sang "Bayan Ko (My Country)," the anthem of the movement against Marcos, tears flowing from the eyes of many.

On Monday, Cory's remains were brought from a Catholic school in a Manila suburb to the Manila Cathedral, a few dozen kilometers away. As the procession moved, Filipinos got out of their homes, schools and offices to pay their respects.

On radio stations, the song “Tie a Yellow Ribbon 'Round the Old Oak Tree” has been playing endlessly as well. According to Aquino lore, the song was the favorite of Benigno Aquino Jr., Cory's husband, who Marcos threw in prison.

The arch enemy of the dictator, Benigno had requested that Filipinos tied yellow ribbons anywhere they could on the day he decided to return home from exile in the United States. On that day, Aug. 21, 1983, he was shot dead even before he could get off his plane. That plunged the country into turmoil, marking the beginning of the end of the two-decade-old rule of Marcos as Cory, the homemaker and reluctant leader, was thrust into the public stage, leading the charge against the dictatorship.

Benigno's funeral march had turned into an outpouring not just of grief but outrage against Marcos. The sheer number of people who joined the procession was key in galvanizing the opposition to the dictator.

In the past few days, Filipinos once against are out in the streets, mourning the demise of a leader whose name is now synonymous with  integrity in public service, who nursed Philippine democracy back to health, who — despite her failures as president (and there were many) — showed that Filipinos can rise to the challenge of protecting freedom.

May 14, 2009 18:53 ET | Updated: May 14, 2009 18:55 ET

Another Filipina claims rape against another US soldier

MANILA — A 22-year-old Filipino woman came out on Thursday alleging that she had been raped by a man whom her lawyers identified as an American soldier serving in the Philippines.

The alleged rape inside a Manila hotel on April 19 would have occurred only four days before the Philippines’ Court of Appeals overturned the conviction, also of rape, of another U.S. serviceman.

The earlier case had rankled Filipino nationalists and the new one, they said, only reinforced their belief that the so-called “unequal alliance” between Washington and Manila must end. The lopsidedness of this relationship, they said, was embodied in the Visiting Forces Agreement that governed how U.S. troops conduct themselves on Philippine soil which, they argued, favored the Americans more than the Filipinos.

In the new case, the accuser of the U.S. Marine, whom lawyers refused to identity and whom was given the alias “John Jones,” said he befriended her on April 10. The woman — calling herself Vanessa — said that more than a week later Jones met her at a bar in a swanky shopping and entertainment complex called The Fort, a former military base that is a stone’s throw from the American cemetery, where U.S. soldiers who fought here during World War II are buried.

Jones, Vanessa said at her press conference here Thursday, tricked her into believing that friends were waiting for them at a hotel in nearby Makati City. It was there, she said, that Jones raped her.

Her lawyer, Evalyn Ursua, and a Filipino women’s group called Gabriela said Vanessa had immediately reported the matter to the authorities, and that she had checked into a clinic. They said Vanessa had marks on her neck consistent with the violence she described, and that results of the tests indicate rape.

Jones, Ursua said, had allegedly written the words “from JUSMAG/Balikatan” in his hotel registration. JUSMAG stands for Joint U.S. Military Assistance Group, a unit of the U.S. military that provides organizational and security assistance to Washington when dealing with Manila on military matters. Balikatan is the name of the joint military exercises between the U.S. and the Philippines.

Despite the claims, however, Vanessa is reluctant to file a criminal complaint against the Marine. According to Ursua, Vanessa was discouraged by the case overturned four days earlier.

In that case, the Filipina, called by her alias Nicole, accused U.S. Marine Lance Corporal Daniel Smith of raping her in 2005 while in the Philippines for the Balikatan exercises.

Smith was convicted in 2006, but the Court of Appeals, in a decision seen by nationalists as kowtowing to the interests of Washington, set the Marine free.

Further, the court that convicted Smith had ruled that he be imprisoned at the Philippines national penitentiary, but Washington resisted and fought for custody. The Philippine government later allowed the U.S. Embassy to detain the Marine within the embassy’s premises in Manila.

“This only shows why the Visiting Forces Agreement needs to be abrogated,” said Emmi de Jesus of Gabriela, of the rights group Gabriela.

The U.S. Embassy did not issue a statement on Vanessa’s allegations. Nationalist groups are preparing for massive protests on May 27, the 10th anniversary of the Visiting Forces Agreement.

March 31, 2009 07:35 ET

Philippines' Abu Sayyaf threaten 3 hostages, worry entire country

MANILA — The pixelated video shows three individuals sitting on the ground surrounded by men in camouflage uniforms, with bandoliers of M203 grenades slung across the chests of many of them. Most of the men had ski masks on.

The three individuals in the video taken last week in a jungle hideout are Mary Jean Lacaba, a Filipino, Eugenio Vagni, an Italian, and Andreas Notter, Swiss. They are workers of the International Committee of the Red Cross who were abducted by the terrorist group Abu Sayyaf on January 15 in Sulu province, in the southern Philippines.

The three hostages had unmistakably worried looks on their faces. And as the men shouted "Allahu akhbar! Allahu akhbar!" in unison, thrusting their rifles into the air, the three looked straight into the camera, as if pleading for mercy.

On Tuesday, the same pathos was repeated, albeit less jarringly. Filipinos were glued to their television sets as a senator, Richard Gordon, who also heads the Philippine National Red Cross, openly wept and pleaded to the Abu Sayyaf to release the hostages. "There's no glory in what you are doing," Gordon said, looking right into the cameras during a press conference.

Only a few minutes after Gordon's plea, the deadline set by the Abu Sayyaf (2 pm Manila time, or 0600 GMT) demanding a full military pullout from Sulu province would lapse and there had been no word, three hours later, whether the terrorists had made good on their threat to kill by beheading one of the Red Cross Workers.

It was good news, of course. But the Abu Sayyaf, if anything, managed to impress upon Filipinos that they are still a force to be reckoned with and that, regardless of the much-vaunted Washington-supported campaign to eliminate them, they will be with us for a long, long while. Once more, the Abu Sayyaf, which is on the U.S. terror list and which is responsible for the most horrific terror attacks in the Philippines, look so potent and this country feels like a hostage.

March 13, 2009 07:04 ET

Filipino fast-food giant Jollibee moves in to New York

Jollibee, the Philippines's largest fast-food chain, holds the distinction of having vanquished McDonald's in the Philippines — it's the only chain to have done so anywhere in the world, so the legend goes. It did this not so much by copying the McDonald's menu, but by adjusting its products to suit the taste of Filipinos — a strategy that, for some reason, McDonald's failed to do even when it was clear that it was being stung.

This week, many Filipinos were understandably proud that Jollibee opened its first store in New York. Although there are Jollibee stores elsewhere in the U.S. where many Filipinos live, its entry into New York was significant perhaps because New York — Queens to be exact — is much more culturally diverse than, say, Daly City in California, where a fourth of the population is Filipino.

The early reviews weren't raves, but they were encouraging. The New York Times said Jollibee's peach-mango pie "is worth the wait." The Village Voice called its visit to the restaurant "a fun excursion."

It is perhaps worth pointing out that Jollibee isn't just moving in to McDonald's territory. The company, one of the largest in Asia, is putting up stores in other countries as well. It already has 10 stores in Vietnam and promises to build more. The company also has other store brands (Chow King, Chinese food; Greenwich, pizza and pasta; Red Ribbon, cakes and pastries) that are expanding around the world, particularly where Filipinos are present. In China, it bought a local fast-food chain, Yonghe King.

To many Filipino migrants, the sight of the Jollibee mascot — a bee  in a loud red and yellow suit — must be quite comforting, no matter that on its menu there's only one food item (the Palabok Fiesta — rice noodles with sweet sauce and fish flakes, pork, shrimp and a slice of boiled egg) can be considered truly Filipino.

Ronald McDonald must be sulking right about now.

January 23, 2009 08:30 ET

Grim economic news

The announcement on Thursday by Intel Corp. to close its production facility in Cavite, a province just south of the capital, and four other plants in Malaysia and the U.S., signaled to many Filipinos the beginning, as one report put it, of a wave of job losses in the Philippines' electronics sector, a key export earner.

Intel Corp. said 1,800 Filipino workers will lose their jobs, adding more bad news to an already grim economic environment. Labor officials said 60,000 workers in the country's information-technology or electronics sector could be lost this year because of the crisis. Electronics accounts for 60 percent of the country's export earnings.

They also said that as many as 34,000 workers have already been laid off or are now working reduced hours. One business newspaper calculated that 15,000 Filipino workers lost their jobs in the past 45 days.

Apart from rising domestic unemployment, coupled by the return of thousands of overseas Filipino workers recently fired from their jobs abroad due to the global recession, the Philippine economy is not expected to perform as well as it did in recent years. According to the National Economic Development Authority, GDP was only 4.5 percent last year, the worst in seven years.

The World Bank said the Philippines will be significantly hit by the crisis and projected GDP growth this year at a measly 3 percent, or 3.5 percent tops. Compare that to the 7.2 percent in 2007, the best in three decades.

Exports, which account for 34 percent of the country's GDP (down from 50 percent in 2000), is expected to drop drastically in the coming year. Indeed, in the first three quarters of 2008, exports grew by only 2.4 percent, compared to the 6.1 percent in the same period in 2007.

Personal consumption expenditure for 2008 is projected at 4.6 percent, according to Ibon Foundation, an independent economic think tank, while government consumption has fared even worse.

“These are the signs of a frail Philippine economy poorly equipped to deal with crisis: a narrowing productive base for generating jobs and incomes, weakening ability to consume and even invest, limited political will to substantially pump-prime, and undue dependence on exports and remittances,” Sonny Africa, Ibon Foundation's research head, said in a statement. “The risk is real that the downturn that started to worsen in the last half of 2008 is the beginning of another long period of stagnation and recession.”