by Larry Henares, Jr., Philippine Daily Inquirer, May 5, 1988
ON a summer day in the United States, while Imelda Marcos was having shopping spree in New York, a thin man dressed as Kermit the Frog and a rather large lady dressed as Miss Piggy approached the lobby desk of the IMF in Washington DC. Followed by a snickering crowd of Filipinos and Americans, they asked to see the IMF managing director Delarosiere.
The guard stammered a request to see their identification cards, and the crowd giggled. “Asshole! Can’t you see I am President Marcos of the Philippines?” shouted Kermit the Frog. “And I am the First Lady!” screamed Miss Piggy. The crowd roared with laughter.
At that point the entire security force of the IMF swooped down on the two Muppets and threw them bodily into the street, while the crowd chanted anti-Marcos and anti-Imperialist slogans. Thus did the spiny gentleman with a small moustache named Walden Bello, and the portly woman with a stout heart named Charito Planas, and their motley crew of human rights activists strike a blow for freedom.
Walden Bello (“The Development Debacle”) and Sheryl Payer (“The Debt Trap”) achieved renown by exposing the IMF-WB as the Enforcer and Collection Agent of American bankers, like those of Mafia loan sharks who shoot the knee-caps of those who don”t settle their debts. But it was Walden who provided massive documentary evidence of the villainy of IMF-WB and betrayal of Technocrats in Third World countries.
* * *
Focus for a moment on Walden Bello. During martial law, Walden became a legend, a combination Batman and Robin Hood, because of his ability to secure copies of secret inter-office memos, confidential notes and drafts of country reports from within the closely guarded premises of the World Bank itself.
How did he do it? Walden himself won’t say, but our friends in the States including some in the World Bank are replete with stories of our hero’s exploits.
So thin you could almost hear his belt-buckle play tunes on his spine, Walden was said to have inserted himself into the narrow slit between the floor and a locked door. But the real truth is even more amazing. Walden and his associates would saunter into the WB offices, ties in disarray, coat and attache case in hand, pretending to be some of the many officers coming back from Kenya or other foreign missions. Late in the afternoon and during Sundays and holidays, they were allowed in and had all the time to xerox secret documents.
They also had a network of informants from among the 600 Filipino employees and American friends with old-boy ties from Harvard, Princeton and others.
* * *
The World Bank panicked, brought in the FBI, coded all documents, and instituted a security system and elaborate bureaucratic procedures that cost more than $1 million. WB officials are forced to go downstairs to meet guests who are not allowed up. A bank official named Dale Hill was trailed and harassed just because she once attended a meeting where Ninoy spoke.
Benito Legarda, one of the IMF-WB officials, recounted how by coded documents the FBI traced the leak to an American friend of Walden, who was fired because he is one of the co-authors of “Development Debacle.” Apparently no one bothered to look up the table of contents of the book. The man according to Walden was innocent, a victim of injustice, and the flow of purloined documents continued unabated.
Today, Walden and his associates disdain the labor-intensive ways of getting materials from the World Bank, and employ more sophisticated methods.
* * *
The world famous Walden Bello is the son of the man who lives in an island in the middle of Laguna de Bay, and is one of the great Ateneans that Ateneo does not like. An Atenean all the way from grade school to college (AB ‘66), he worked with Father Frank Lynch SJ in Ateneo's Institute of Philippine Culture, which Walden later found to be receiving huge amounts ($500,000) of grants from the US Defense Department through the Office of Naval Research.
In 1971, bothered that Ateneo has become an instrument of American Imperialism, Walden exposed this abomination in the press, and left to pursue his studies in the Princeton University where he got his PhD degree in political sociology.
In 1975, the Philippine Embassy confiscated his passport without the courtesy of explaining why. And the legend of Walden Bello, anti-Marcos activist and nemesis of the World Bank, began.
No comments:
Post a Comment