Ambassador Ricciardone’s Press Conference at GEM
Davao, Oct. 7, 2004

AMBASSADOR RICCIARDONE: Thank you very much. This is just the right setting for me to have a summing up contact with most of the press corps here, although I hope some of you will be able to join us in my next two stops afterwards.

I came to Davao for a number of reasons. Not least, I guess, is it’s because it’s become fashionable as I mentioned to several of you the other day. At first the President came and the Latin American Ambassadors—several of them, and then my colleagues from the Organization of the Islamic Conference came—all in the past few days. And now here I am finally, so I thought I’d better catch this train before it leaves the station and I’m the only in Manila who hasn’t come to visit Davao. Actually, I’ve made many trips to Mindanao because this is where a lot of success stories are going on. I’m an optimistic person. I ‘m a person who has faith in people and faith in God and country and in us, in our ability to do things together. The Philippines is important to the United States. Mindanao is important to the United States. Davao is important to the United States. And really that’s why I have come. We’re opening a Virtual Consulate here to improve our connection, our communication with the people of Mindanao as a whole, and Davao in particular. I’ve come to collect success stories, which I collect around the Philippines. They feed my faith in this country. They feed my optimism about this country. They also feed my t-shirt collection. As a result of this trip I have eagle t-shirts, I have durian t-shirts and now I have a durian polo shirt that I’m wearing to join you today.

It’s a good to time to be in the Philippines. It’s a good time to be in Mindanao. Next week, Andrew Natsios, our Administrator of the United States Agency for International Development will come to the Philippines and he’ll spend several days in Mindanao as well. I’ll be coming back to join him. Later, we’ll talk about his program next week when the time comes.

Just to go over some of my visit here—some of the success stories I’ve been witnessing and celebrating with people. When I first arrived, apart from opening a cute little exhibit of American Roadside Architecture, I went to visit WOW Mindanao, an exhibit of the handicrafts. I helped with some weaving—I hope I didn’t hurt the products that were being made at the time—and saw some of the indigenous people’s work and crafts and dances and music. It was wonderful. The next day I went off and I visited a number of other sites. I went to the Visayan Foundation where I saw a wide cross section of people. Both from the central government, from the local government, from the ports authority, the ship owners and others, combating a terrible crime in the world—a terrible evil of modern day slavery, trafficking in persons—which is something we’re very pleased to support.

Today I went to the CLIC program where I saw in an outlying village young students of a mix of indigenous people, tribes, mostly Muslims, being connected to the world, to the Internet, to the CLIC program—one of the ones that Charlie just kind of touched on very briefly. Later on today I’ll be visiting a nurse-midwife clinic, a Well-Family Clinic where we have helped by training nurses, not to become nurses—they’re already nurses—not in medicine, but in business. How to run a business. How to run a payroll. How to keep patient records. How to keep quality standards. How to treat your customers. How to treat your patients and grow your business. By doing that, we help keep nurses here and we provide better medical services to the communities and we provide better livings for these nurses so they don’t have to go to Saudi Arabia or the United States. These are the kinds of things we like to help because after we help and support, we can step away. We don’t create dependencies. All these things that Charlie showed here are designed to unleash people, make them not need us anymore. Not need Manila. Not need the central Government. Not need foreign assistance. But unleash their own capacities and grow them. Give new skills to the students, through the Internet, through teacher-training, through enhanced educational opportunities—these are all things that I think are very exciting. It’s part of modern diplomacy. It’s what I believe in.

When we talked about the Global War on Terrorism people think about the military. The military has an important component, I salute them, they do important things and I’m proud to support them. But the real key to stabilizing the world and making a better life for people is the development work we’re doing here. So that’s why I’m proud to be here, to salute all the people in GEM and all our partners. As Charlie pointed out, what GEM is about is working with the private sector here, working with local government units. I salute all of you. I’m very, very touched and moved to see the great work that people are doing in Mindanao and Davao in particular. With that, if you want to have a conversation we can begin it here, and then I hope you’ll stay and have a sandwich.

Q: Good afternoon, Mr. Ambassador. Whatever happened to the 30 million-dollar supposed aid that the U.S. will give, if the Philippines and the MILF sign a peace agreement? I think it will be turned back to your treasury and that it needs another act of Congress?

A: It’s a complicated appropriations process and funding process. And it has been widely misunderstood. When I got back to the Philippines after being away for six months early in this year, I was asked about this. And I said, ‘you know, this 30 million dollars was earmarked for a certain period of time to support a peace process. If the process is going nowhere, we’re not going to have that money available, and it will be lost. The peace process has been moving—we did lose some of that money from one appropriation, we were able to make it up through another, so that the net result is we still have a very large increase in our programs in Mindanao. We still have well over 20 million dollars worth of additional funding. The USAID program here has peaked in this past year approaching…. if you put in all of the different appropriations of U.S. development assistance—well over 90 million dollars, of which over 20 million of that was a bump up, we hope to get 30 million, it’s still well over 22 million, I think, bumped up from what we would have had in the 70 millions of dollars, to support a peace process, which I’m glad to say is moving forward, from what I can tell. We have never insisted on a signed document to get the 30 million dollars. That’s never been a condition. There’s been some misunderstanding about that. What we do insist on is peace. Not just a peace agreement. Peace. They might go together. A peace agreement is neither necessary nor sufficient to have peace, community by community. Where GEM is working now, it’s because people from GEM, 240 employees or so, can go and work with local community leaders, with ustadzes, with the ulama, with the local government units, with the mayors. They can work because there is peace. Because they’re not being kidnapped, their heads are not being cut off, they’re not being shot, they’re not being blown up, there is peace, so we can do development work. And we would like to see more of those zones of peace expand into the conflict-affected areas that you see on this map. These conflict-affected areas are areas that are vulnerable to conflict still and to strife. You know, in Arabic, the word strife carries a—the word is ‘stikna’ in Arabic—and it’s a sin, really. It means dissension, and the prophet Mohammed spoke out against it. It’s not something that Muslims – you know too many people outside the Islamic world think that Islam is the religion of violence and hate and that preaches chaos. That is not true. There are ignorant people who teach a perversion of Islam and would make it a death cult of some kind. But that’s –

Q: Call for jihad –

A: Well, a jihad – well there’s a real meaning of jihad. I’ve studied at al-Ashar. I’ve been to al-Ashar. I’ve spoken with the (inaudible). Jihad is more of an internal struggle to become closer to God and you have that in Christian tradition and you have that in the Muslim tradition. And properly understood, Islam is the divine religion that is as open to democracy and development and peace and tolerance and learning as any other religion. And there are communities in Mindanao where they live according to a true understanding of their faith and they work well with others, with Christians, with the tribes from indigenous people, we can work in those places.

If the MILF has that understanding of Islam and the late Hashim Salamat I think studied at al-Ashar- and before his death he gave us to understand he wanted to do peace and development work, not kidnapping work, not criminal work. We said, great! We will support you, we would like to see that happen. Now, we are delighted that Malaysia, the OIC seems to be driving the political process with the MILF. We’re happy to stand back do the development assistance work that we hope will underlie a peaceful environment, and we’ll be glad to do our part working with the central Government of the Philippines, with the local Government, with the local community leaders and do the development assistance. So it’s a long answer to the question but the short answer is the 30 million dollars has not gone away. We have such huge, substantial development assistance program, nationally in the Philippines, well over 90 million dollars in the pipeline through this past year. We are sustaining that and we’re very proud of the results, very optimistic about the future.

Q: Along that line where would you place the MILF now given that they’ve been asking to be de-listed from your list?

A: From what we can tell is we don’t know what the MILF is. There seem to be many versions of the MILF.

Q: You’re talking about factions within the MILF?

A: Yes. Or elements that many of which want to do peace and development work—others want to shelter, cherish, or pretend that there are no terrorists or that the Jemaah Islamiya are only a handful of people and they’re not really important and they’re not really us, or they’re not really here. They want to pretend and we can’t pretend. People need to choose. If you want to do—join, create businessmen’s associations, growers associations, fish farmers associations, and do educational improvement, that’s what we want to do. If you want to support people who are training bomb making, we’re going to be against you. If you’re going to train people in making bombs, we’re going after you. I’ll put it this way. The Government of the Philippines is going to go after you. The Armed Forces of the Philippines is going to go after you. And we’re going to help the Armed Forces of the Philippines with intelligence support and with training and night vision capabilities. Bomb makers we deal with in a different way. Bomb makers and people who train in killing are not what we’re about here in development assistance. That’s different. If some of the MILF are willing to close, give a blind eye to that, we’re not going to give a blind eye to it.

Q: My name is Fred Alonzo, columnist of the Mindanao Journal and the Mindanao Gazette. In the past, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo went to the U.S. and talked with President Bush. And in that meeting there were several pledges and a package of assistance to be given to the Philippines. What happened to that?

A: You’re seeing it. You’re seeing the results of it. What we don’t like to do, and we learned many years ago, worldwide, in fact one of the big functions of the United States government and USAID in particular is to apply lessons learned around the world. What worked in Egypt? What worked in Africa? What works in the Philippines so we might do it somewhere else? And what we found didn’t work, is giving sacks of cash. Giving money doesn’t work because it goes away into bank accounts in Switzerland or somewhere and it doesn’t benefit the people. So what we do is project assistance and what happened to it is what Charlie was just explaining. It translates into solar dryers, granaries, educational programs so that people learn the best varieties of corn and how to do it, how to delay your mango production to an off-season so you get a better price for it, small scale infrastructure, small culverts road, irrigation things. You’re seeing it- you’re seeing it.

It might be a 25 thousand dollar project here, it might be a million dollar project there, it might be several million dollars over four years, so you train 25 thousand former combatants of the MNLF in a LEAP program so that they can become fish farmers, seaweed farmers, rice farmers—that’s what happens to it. That’s what happened to it when development assistance started. What I did yesterday at the docks, we’re preventing young women and children from being sold into slavery. We’re rescuing them. It’s helping with computerizing the schools; it’s helping with the nurse-midwife clinics I mentioned to you—that’s what happened to the program. It’s happening.

Q: Another question is that we appreciate very much the infrastructure you have introduced especially here in Mindanao. But the problem now with the Philippine Government is that there are funds released by the World Bank, IMF, which need the Philippine money counterpart. That is the problem we are encountering—how to get that money because we need that for development of the Philippines.

A: The Government is doing a very nice initiative to organize all the donors and having a multi-donor trust fund. We cheer them on. We think that’s a good thing. We are collaborating with the government in that although we’re not inside the multi-donor trust fund and there’s a specific reason. The reason is we have a long experience and great cooperation already with a wide range of community leaders, local government leaders, the national Government itself, in established programs, so we are responding to the needs of the community and the Government as already expressed to us. We don’t want to shift gears necessarily and go in different directions unless the government, the national Government, and the local communities want to do that. So while the others are getting organized, we’re glad to work with them and collaborate, but we’re kind of staying outside.

On the question of counterpart funding, we do believe that another important lesson that we’ve all learned, by doing this around the world, is you don’t just promote what we call a cargo cult, we fly over a country and drop gifts and go away. Because actually, it’s dependencies that make people hold out their rice bowl and say— ‘fill my rice bowl,’ and we’re not into creating dependencies. We want to create independent, self-sustaining growth. Most of the donors around the world—whether the IMF, or the World Bank or ADB, or the other national donors, JBID and the Australian’s AUSAID, they all have come to understand that what you need—in the development business you need to make sure that the local people – you’re responding to local priorities. Things that the local people themselves are willing to work for and sacrifice for and keep going themselves. So very often they make counterpart contributions of some sort, whether in kind or in funding, a part of the program, and it’s been shown to work. In GEM I don’t know how we handle that. 25%? And we normally find that communities do this willingly. I just came from this CLIC program at the school. You don’t just leave a computer behind while they’re training. It will break, if you don’t take care of it, if you don’t maintain it. If you don’t upgrade it when time goes on—if you don’t pay for the software and so forth. There the Parent – Teacher Association has committed to do some of the funding itself. So it will be sustainable. So if we go away they’ll be able to replace those computers when they wear out or new ones come in. We think that’s important, and if you think about it, it’s a multiplier effect.

Another lesson we’ve learned, and President Bush has spoken about this, we’re very keen on reducing debt to developing countries. President Bush has made this a priority of the United States and one way to do this is through grants, not loans. The United States Agency for International Development for a long time has gone out of the loan business and has only done grants. The important part of those grants is very often counterpart funding. But that’s kind of earnest money. It proves that the local people that had a national Government wanted sufficiently to come up with a little bit of funding for their own. So that we match it four to one.

Q: With all these developments taking place from the grassroots in the countrysides and based on the briefings you had—when we had the community and other leaders of Davao, what more do we need to do, to cushion the impact of un-peace in the areas especially in the villages. How do we spell development when the peace process is still far beyond our reach? What would you suggest that people from the grassroots must do to help the Government and your effort and other countries efforts to make all these things go through all these years without having had the feeling of being dependent on the aid and grants from other countries?

A: Thank you for asking, but we don’t have all the answers. One thing we know again from one of the lessons we’ve learned around the world is that the local people really have the answers to the questions you’ve asked. Because the local people know best what directions they want to go in the future. They know best what they want their village or city to look like in three years, five years, ten years. What they want for their children. So it’s not for us to say here is what your city must look like and here is how you must get there. But what we’re good at, I think, is offering examples and knowledge of how different experiments have worked out in different parts of the world.
One of the things that we found to be very successful and works here, works in Mindanao, works in the Visayas. We’re doing it also in Luzon and parts of Manila, is micro-financing. It’s an idea that has caught on. It turns out people can do a lot—and they decide what they want to do we don’t tell them—people can do a lot with very small amounts of money and it turns out that people are basically honest, what do you know! And especially women are very good entrepreneurs and are very good at paying back loans, and are very good at teamwork and encouraging each other to pay back loans, so here’s what we can do. We can provide some training in the idea, we can show existing banks, rural banks, how they can make money and be self-sustaining and wish to do this. How they can make a profit by getting into the small loan business. We show them how to make sure they get 95-96-98% re-payment levels which is way higher than in the commercial world for larger loans in the Philippines, and make them want to do it. And then this idea catches on, spreads like wildfire, and becomes self-sustaining. That’s not American money that’s being loaned, it’s existing money of the banks. We provide little bits of input, in training, maybe how to do accounting on a computer—something like that—we just show people what has worked elsewhere, they decide they want to try it in their communities and it works. So we do things like that. We believe the private sector, very often, is the key to making things work. We’ve seen that go in different directions in other countries, and as Charlie mentioned it, part of what we’re doing is helping businessmen get together

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….Filipinos often ask me, what do we need to do, oh great United States of America, you with all the answers? And I hope you’ll be happy if some of my answer is that you are already doing the right things. You are doing the right things. That’s what we’re seeing here. You are providing more success stories. You are providing more examples we can use in other countries. In fact we took this LEAP program here, we made a CD of it a CD-ROM and it’s been broadcast here in the Philippines, in Mindanao and also nationally. We have spread that lesson learned all around the world because it works. Filipinos are doing things right. You are doing things in an exemplary fashion that is taking communities that formerly had much of its adult talent wasted on killing and insurgency and turning it into productive pursuits and if you look at this CD, it’s only a half hour, it’s worth watching if you haven’t seen it, we’re showing that in other countries. I’ve given it to the Secretary of State, Colin Powell, and I’ve given it to the people at the White House. I gave a copy to President Arroyo, personally, because it’s great—it’s something the Philippines is doing right and answering your own question.

Q: Though the U.S. government is supportive of the effort of the Philippine Government in making a peace agreement with the MILF there is still this one issue that the MILF would like to settle with the U.S. and this is the inclusion of the MILF in the list of terrorists. They’ve been asking—they don’t want to be included in that—though it was not one of the reasons why they stopped to pursue the peace agreement. But I would like to know how the U.S. Government is addressing this request of the MILF?

A: We don’t usually put groups on or off this list. It’s a designation under U.S. law and regulation and has specific consequences. It prevents us from issuing visas, it prevents us from allowing certain kinds of financial transactions, and indeed we then go ahead on the basis of inclusion in that list, to work with other countries to prevent financial transactions and travel by those people. We listen to what groups who are on the list or off the list and may be getting on it, what they have to say. Words do matter. Words matter, so we listen to their words. But actions also matter, and sometimes the words and the actions don’t go together.

We hear good things in the MILF even after the 911 attacks in the United States, they condemned it, you could check their website at the time they condemned the attacks, that’s good. They’ve condemned other attacks and yet elements of the MILF carried out the attacks. So which is the real MILF? Please stand up. Are you the MILF that condemns bombing of the airport in Davao and Sasa wharf, or are you a piece of the MILF that does those things? Which MILF are you? Are you the MILF that hides people from the Jemaah Islamiya who train in bombing and killing? Or are you with the MILF that says ‘we’re against bombing and killing and we’re getting the Jemaah Islamiya out, we have nothing to do with them and we don’t want them among us.’ This is what confuses us.

If it’s the MILF of Hashim Salamat, who before he died wrote a letter to President Bush and said we are not a terrorist group. We are for peace and development and we welcome the help of the United States in doing that. If you’re that MILF not merely are you not likely to be in our terrorist list—we’d be glad to do whatever we humbly can to support you in your political pursuits of the legitimate rights of your people. Because the people of Mindanao do have legitimate grievances over time, over history and in a democracy, there ought to be a peaceful and legal way of pursuing those rights. And not only do we not have any objection, we’re sympathetic. We will listen to those and if we can, as outsiders, play any useful role in advising or training people in conflict resolution, we would be honored to participate. But if you’re going to preach kidnapping and bombing, then, that’s terrorism, and we have to oppose that, and we will not issue visas to people like that. We will not countenance financial transactions or support to people like that. We will work with other countries to prevent you from having financial transactions across borders and we will work to strengthen the Armed Forces of the Philippines and the Philippines National Police in going after bombers and kidnappers. So I guess it’s hard to give an easy answer because we don’t know yet exactly what is—when you say the MILF, which MILF is it?

Q: May we know your assessment on the Government support system on the various development assistance you have implemented in Mindanao? Do you still see the issue on transparency and good governance as something that should be strengthened by the government? Does it still matter in your decisions to implement development programs in Mindanao?

A: Yes, it does. It’s fundamental. Governance is extremely important. I would say every foreign policy speech that President Bush makes or that Secretary Powell makes, that almost every one—they speak out against corruption on the negative side and in a positive way they speak out in favor of governance. You probably have heard of the Millennium Challenge Initiative of President Bush under which we are devoting—if Congress will give us the money—another 15 billion dollars over the coming five years. It is a premised on three basic things. Countries will be eligible for this extra development assistance based on good governance, number one. That means anti-corruption efforts, governing wisely, we say. So right up there is it’s number one. Number two is freeing up the economy, opening economic opportunity, doing what the GEM program is doing, working with businessmen’s groups. Helping our young people get the skills to participate in a world economy and the local economy, that’s the second thing. The third fundamental premise of our development assistance under the Millennium Challenge Initiative and it really guides what we’re already doing through USAID, is investing in people. We want to help those governments that invest in their human talent and that means education, and that means public health, and we’re helping around the edges. But the lead has to be taken by beneficiary governments at the national level and at the local level, so those are the three sort of major criteria that President Bush has articulated—he announced it in Monterrey in March of 2002, that shortly after I had arrived here, and that has been guiding our development assistance. Really those same principles have been guiding our development assistance all along but the President brought them together in a Millennium Challenge Initiative and has put additional money behind it and we hope the Philippines will prove eligible in the second round of countries that are selected. Good governance is absolutely vital, essential, fundamental to continuing the program and advancing it.

People are disappointed in the results of the ARMM, quite frankly. We hear this from the MILF, for example. We hear this from many people in the ARMM. People had great hopes for the ARMM. What was the problem under the previous leadership? Lack of good governance. The question one of the other gentlemen asked, where did all the money go? It was not transparent, it was not accountable. It did not go to the priorities of the people. We don’t want to make those mistakes. So we are working to train the ARMM people now how to account for the money that they spend, how to get the priorities of the people. What does each community really want? What will they put their own resources into in counterpart contributions? How do you make sure that any money won’t just be stolen? That will just breed cynicism. No one will follow leaders that are believed to be thieves. By the way, it’s one of the great sins in Islam to steal. So, you had an excellent question. Thank you very much. I hope I have I reassured you that good governance remains the basis, one of the three bases of our development assistance.

Q: I am Mr. Gil Abarico, a columnist of the Mindanao Daily Mirror, an insider and correspondent of the Manila Bulletin. Last night, you disposed of the statement of the militants about espionage—very, very nice. But would you care to elaborate on this, Mr. Ambassador. My second question is, I would like you to comment on what you think is the scenario that’s coming up in the U.S. presidential elections?

A: On the militants and their flag burnings and all these sort of stuff, I guess it is part and parcel in a democracy. People are free to believe what they want to believe. I guess people are free to be as evidently they are, afraid. I’m saddened by that. I’d like to think that people would not be afraid of the opportunities and the challenges and even meeting the threats of our modern world. I’m saddened that they think the United States poses more of a threat to their interests than opportunities or help, because we believe what we are about is partnering with people here. Helping people who are doing good things. There are people who feel threatened I suppose, by changes in the world. Many of the people who cal themselves so-called militants here have an ideology that I think of as Rip Van Winkle ideology. You know what I mean by Rip Van Winkle? It’s an American story of a man who fell asleep for whatever it was 20 years, a hundred years and woke up and the world had changed and he was all confused.

The ideology that maybe so-called militants preach is from professors who are now getting elderly and living in the Netherlands or somewhere- they’ve been away from their country, they haven’t seen the changes, they haven’t seen the opportunities. They haven’t seen the dynamism of the this country and they’re still saying the things they said in the 1960’s and 70’s and that language is obsolete. It just no longer applies. We’re all kind of in the same boat here, facing the challenges of globalization. Americans are debating it—to take the second part of your question, our presidential candidates are debating—what do we do about globalization? How do we stop the loss of American jobs? How do we protect America from the threats of—how do we protect America from the Philippines and China who are taking our jobs? It’s a sort of reverse imperialism. People have fears all over the world and worries about the modern world. And you can shrink from those and protest and get angry and try to become a hermit state. I guess that language that many militants are preaching is the language of ‘let’s all be North Korea and protect ourselves from the world. Let’s all be like Albania was before Albania came out into the modern world. Let’s all be like Eastern Europe was before they threw aside the simple-minded communism of a century ago.’ Boy, only North Korea is left to talk that way. China is emerging and China doesn’t talk that way anymore. So I feel bad when so-called militants here want to become hermit states instead of reaching out and taking the hand of partnership with local government units, with teachers, with universities, with the central government, with foreigners like us if they wish, who want to help build their communities. But it’s a democracy and they’re free to protest and God bless them and God bless the Philippines for being a free country and many people do that. It doesn’t bother me at all.

On the presidential elections in the United States, I don’t know whether Filipinos find this entertaining and educational and inspiring as Americans do. We’re all caught up in it and I hope for at least a greater than usual voter turnout in the United States. I suspect it will. Americans this season seem to care more about our elections and I hope it will lead to a greater participation, whatever the outcome in terms of our choice. As an American I always hope to see more Americans participate in voting than we normally do. Americans tend to be fat and happy and complacent, thanks to all the riches and peace that we’ve had at home. As a foreign service officer who lives around the world, I know we cannot take those things for granted so I hope many more Americans will participate because the choice is important. I think I’m prohibited by law as a public official from doing any campaigning so you’re not going to get me to do anything that sounds like an endorsement of one or the other. I’ve served President Bush very proudly and loyally. I think he is a strong leader, I think he just wanted to step up to the opportunities of the world. He looks at the world in terms of opportunities of the world without fear and with a lot of faith in humanity and in our country. I think likewise Senator Kerry is similarly motivated, and has a positive vision of America and the world. I think no matter what the results on Nov. 2, you won't see a dramatic shift in American foreign policy in one direction or another. You probably will see differences of style and differences of emphasis but I don’t think, our relationship with the Philippines for example, will be shaken, on the contrary, I think they will remain strong. I think our programs in Mindanao will remain robust and strong. I think and our security assistance will remain strong. I think we’re not going to abandon the people of Iraq even if Senator Kerry is elected. I think we are going to stand strongly with them. I think our alliances are going to be strong around the world. I think we’re going to be working to make sure our relations with China are friendly and productive even if we’re rivals in some way. I don’t see a lot of big changes in foreign policy in particular.

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