kenny hodgart


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The messiah friend of President Duterte

This article can also be read at Asia Times

Their Sunday service has just ended and I’m trying to talk to some of the worshippers making their way out of the Southorn Stadium in Hong Kong’s Wan Chai district. Sonny, a middle-aged man who calls himself a Preaching Club Member and wants to know my purpose, seems keen on stopping me. As it happens, he has quite a lot to say for himself – both about the church to which he belongs (‘The Kingdom of Jesus Christ, The Name Above All Names’), and about the prospects for my own salvation (basically, unless I become a “Kingdom citizen”, they’re not good, I think).

Sonny has known the sect’s leader, Pastor Apollo Quiboloy, for many years, he says. Pastor Quiboloy claims to be the ‘Appointed Son of God’ and has amassed considerable wealth and power in the Philippines in recent decades. So what kind of man is he, I ask. “He is just an ordinary guy, but there is something special from within,” Sonny insists. “Many, many people love the pastor. He is the one who encouraged our good president (Rodrigo Duterte) now to stand up and make the Philippines better.”

Earlier, video of a sermon given in Davao City by Pastor Quiboloy (who claims to have dreamt 17 years ago that Duterte, his long-time friend, would one day be president) had been relayed live on two large screens. As he waxed on about how it has pleased God to make him wealthy – when he had nothing in life, he shouldered that burden with equal grace – I couldn’t help but notice that many of the women around me seemed more concerned with browsing Facebook on their smartphones.

Admittedly, it’s an entirely different story when the music gets up. At the Kingdom’s Southorn services, a full choir and half an orchestra, perched in front of a giant print of two golden staircases ascending into the clouds, occupy one end of the basketball hall. The congregation, around 1,000-strong and composed largely of Filipina domestic helpers immaculately attired in pristine white dresses, can’t seem to get enough of the hymns – jaunty gospel numbers laden with endless euphoric key changes.

It would be tempting to describe the effect as Stepford-ish. In truth, there is something rather touching about the sense of personal and collective pride on display. And even if it’s hard to fathom the appeal of their curiously un-spellbinding figurehead, there’s no obvious sense of anyone having been actively coerced into attendance. Annabel Arroyo, a woman in her mid-30s from Mindanao who has been attending for four years but only submitted to being baptized last December, tells me: “The church is our community. I came because I had friends who came and they talked to me about it.”

Pastor Quiboloy’s ministry is, nevertheless, by most definitions, a cult. And like most cults, its unsavory facets – more of which at length – do not lurk far beneath the surface.

In Hong Kong, The Kingdom of Jesus Christ is listed, along with a legion of similar-sounding Christian churches, on the Inland Revenue department’s register of Tax-Exempt Charities, although it does not have a permit from the Social Welfare department to collect money in public. Nor indeed do either of two philanthropic concerns – The Children’s Joy Foundation and the Sonshine Philippines Movement – related to the church. Women claiming to collect for these programs are a common sight on the streets of Hong Kong Island’s busiest nightlife districts, but the church denies any knowledge of their activities and when approached by the Asia Times they were evasive about any links to Quiboloy’s sect. Rumors abound that they are “on the make”.

Quiboloy set up The Children’s Joy Foundation, its website states, in 1998, “to help feed, clothe, and send to school” destitute children. Meanwhile, donations to the Sonshine Philippines Movement are directed towards “the complete restoration of man and his environment” – and there are details online of its reforestation programs and rebuilding work in communities devastated by typhoons. What’s clear is that these endeavors are no mere ruse. “The pastor has helped many poor people,” says Rose, a member of the church for 18 years who says Quiboloy put her through school in Davao. “He paid for everything – because he is a very good person.”

Where his benevolence ends and his personal wealth begins is not so apparent. Suffice to say that, having risen from poverty, being the messiah has made Quiboloy a very rich man – besides occupying a large estate in the foothills of Mount Avo, near Davao City, he was able to lend Duterte his private jet and helicopter during the former Davao mayor’s recent, successful bid for national office.

As Quiboloy tells it, God came to his mother in the form of a cloud after he was born, declaring “That’s my son.” He left the United Pentecostal Church to start preaching his own gospel in 1985 and now claims to command the allegiance of four million tithed followers (meaning they give the church a tenth of their income) in the Philippines and two million more overseas, in addition to reaching 600 million viewers worldwide through his TV station.

In a rare interview with a mainstream media outlet, he told ABC News, in 2010, that every member of his Kingdom shares in his wealth and is welcome to stay at his mansion. In explaining, however, that the Almighty had revealed to him in 1983 that he wanted Quiboloy to own a jet, he also made it clear that each of us ought to accept what is apportioned to us. “If it is not God’s will for me to have these things I have, you can take it away,” he told his interviewer. “It is God’s will that we follow… If he wanted me to live like a rat, if he wanted me to live in wealth or in poverty, it does not matter to me. Put me there and I’ll be happy as long as it’s God’s will.

My own attempts to score an interview with Quiboloy were met with friendly suspicion then ultimately rebuffed after I complied with a request to submit a list of questions to his office. I’d wanted to sit in a room with someone who describes his state of spiritual perfection as being similar to that of Adam before the Fall and who has convinced several million self-identifying Christians that he is justified in putting himself on an even footing with Jesus Christ. I’d wanted to ask him about his conversations with God – and about allegations against him of brainwashing and of holding a young woman against her will.

I’d wanted to ask, too, about stories linking him to intimidation and land grabs against indigenous peoples in Mindanao – including an episode that resulted in the death of the Bagobo K’lata tribal leader Dominador Diarog, who was gunned down in 2008 shortly after refusing to sell Quiboloy two hectares of land near the so-called Garden of Eden Restored on the Pastor’s grounds. At the time, Quiboloy was able to call on Duterte – himself widely suspected of overseeing extrajudicial killings during his tenure in Davao – to dismiss rumors of his involvement.

In the end, I have to make do with watching him preach on a big screen. Quiboloy made one of his semi-regular appearances at the Southorn in June, but on my visit his presence was virtual. He’s fatiguing to listen to – by turns straw man-denouncing demagogue, late-era Elvis impersonator and used-car salesman – and I’m unable to discern the “something special from within” that Sonny alludes to. Maybe it’s simply stamina, or conviction. “No other pastors or preachers have the knowledge that he has,” says Rose. “He teaches us to work hard and make money for the Father’s glory and to pay for the ministry and its work.”

As I look around the hall, I get the sense I’m witnessing a show of strength that thrives on vulnerability. Maybe that’s how all religion works. Maybe not. Maybe I’m just too cynical. I can’t help but suspect, however, that the greater cynic is Pastor Quiboloy himself.


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Hong Kong politics – the basics

This article can also be read at SCMP.COM

I am often struck by how well-informed Hongkongers are about stuff happening elsewhere. After the referendums on Scottish independence and Brexit, for example, many here seem to have more of a grasp on Britain’s complex constitutional affairs than large swathes of the people who voted.

The complexity of Hong Kong’s own affairs is of a different order, however. For a city so inhabited and visited by foreigners, it seems to me that its political situation is not well-understood by onlookers and harder to grasp than most. No doubt this is partly due to a lack of curiosity, and partly because international media take only superficial notice. It’s also because politics here is a conversation that tends to defy the outsider points of access.

Here, then, ahead of next month’s Legislative Council elections, is my stab at a 10-point guide to Hong Kong politics for the ingenue and the bystander – and the hordes on social media baffled as to why the city has its own Olympic team.

1. Everything in Hong Kong revolves around the Basic Law, the city’s mini-constitution. Whenever any action is proposed, someone will protest that it is against the Basic Law.

2. The Basic Law is much-cherished. Disagreement is rife, though, as to what large chunks of it mean, and, more importantly, who gets to decide. Lawyers argue as to whether its legitimacy derives from the Sino-British Joint Declaration on Hong Kong, of 1984, or from the National People’s Congress. The smart money will always be on the NPC making its own mind up. The internet tells me that these days the word “basic” can mean “thoughtless and vapid.”

3. A number of rights and freedoms are protected under the Basic Law, in-keeping with the principle of “one country, two systems”. The two systems it refers to are i) cadre capitalism in mainland China, and ii) crony capitalism in Hong Kong.

4. Article 45 of the Basic Law enshrines the “ultimate aim” of having the city’s Chief Executive elected via universal suffrage. There has been something of a hold-up with this. Last year, lawmakers sank proposals that would have allowed Beijing to pre-screen candidates, reasoning this would be against the Basic Law. The proposals’ sponsors argued, meanwhile, that the breach would be in allowing candidates who opposed the Central Government to stand.

5. There are political parties of the left and of the right in Hong Kong, liberals and conservatives. These distinctions pale, however, against where they each stand on the issue of what to do with the Basic Law.

6. Whenever Hongkongers have time to do anything, they form a new political party. The result is more parties than anyone can count, far less remember the names of. There are currently 16 parties represented in the Legislative Council, alongside 10 independent lawmakers. In the upcoming election, at least three dozen parties have put candidates forward.

7. The largest single party in Legco since 2004, The Democratic Alliance for the Betterment and Progress of Hong Kong, does everything it can to block democratic reform. The Liberal Party is not liberal on social issues and also opposes democracy. It is in accord with the pan-democrat parties, however, in seeking to defenestrate Leung Chun-ying, the city’s current Chief Executive. The pan-democrat camp tends to splinter every so often, like a Roman candle.

8. The last few months have seen the pace of party formation accelerate, primarily under the banner of “localism” – a reaction, in large part, to the stalled delivery of democratic reforms. Polls suggest more and more Hongkongers view themselves solely as Hongkongers, and not as citizens of China.

9. Most localist groups adopt an openly hostile stance towards towards the Central government. The most radical call for full independence for Hong Kong, with some suggesting a period of transition involving return to British rule. It is unclear as to whether Britain has been party to discussions. The English names of localist parties – Demosisto and Youngspiration, for example – often sound like 1980s pop groups.

10. Controversially, six intended localist candidates have been disqualified from running for election, while localist organisations have had difficulty registering as companies. According to the Electoral Affairs Commission, arguing in favour of full autonomy for Hong Kong runs counter to the Basic Law.

All perfectly clear, now? As I thought…


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Blair was an internationalist to the core

This article can also be read at SCMP.COM

It’s telling that when they were lining up to scold Britain in 2013, both Russia and China took aim at its self-image. A small island that no-one pays attention to was the verdict of Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov. “Just an old European country apt for travel and study” chimed the Chinese Communist Party-owned Global Times.

Fear of insignificance has rather haunted vital regions of the British psyche, perhaps for as long as the country has been without imperial possessions. Certainly, as detailed in Lord Chilcot’s voluminous and long-awaited report on his inquiry into Britain’s role in the Iraq War, published earlier this month, it haunted Tony Blair.

The former Prime Minister’s determination to go to war, Chilcot tells us, was underpinned by a sense of anxiety about Britain’s role on the world stage. In particular, he wanted to show that its ‘special relationship’ with the United States mattered; that however much George W Bush might have been prepared to walk a unilateralist line in 2003, deep down America really needed Britain on board.

Chilcot’s report is about five times the length of War and Peace. Unpacking it has therefore served as a distraction from the fallout of Britain’s vote to leave the European Union – a decision that has caused its own surfeit of angst. It has also meant assessments of the freshly-exeunted David Cameron’s Prime Ministerial legacy have jockeyed with renewed interest in the record of a man (Blair) who left office nine years ago.

The trouble with all of this is that Blair’s enemies – and they are legion, on both the left and right of British politics – hardly needed to read what Chilcot had to say about him, because they had already made their minds up as to the extent of his villainy. However nuanced the report, enough of it can be marshalled to succour the notion that the war was fought illegally – and for some that’s all that matters, as though proving the point might make the big bad world more ordered, more rational.

Britain’s forces were ill-equipped and ill-prepared for war in Iraq. Their attempts to hold Basra ended in humiliation. Unfortunately, knowing these things gives us no better idea of how to deal with failing or failed autocratic and authoritarian states in the Middle East.

As far as Blair is concerned, his part in the downfall of Iraq’s Saddam Hussein was at odds with how he approached other despots in the region. In his attempts to seek engagement with Bashar al-Assad in Syria, Muammar Gaddafi in Libya, and Hosni Mubarak in Egypt, he understood the trade-off between stability and tolerating intractable regimes. That none of them grew any less intractable led, by and by, to the Arab Spring, and to the civil wars that have followed.

By 2011, however, there was little appetite in the west for new military entanglements. Western powers willed democracy but withheld any meaningful support to see it delivered. In Syria, moderate rebels looked for help where they could get it, only to find themselves engulfed by a millenialist death cult. The result is a murderous stalemate that has caused about 11 million people to flee their homes. The shockwaves from Syria’s collapse are felt in all parts of the Middle East and Europe.

There are those for whom all of this goes back to the invasion of Iraq, for whom Islamic State’s neo-medieval brutality is a phenomenon born entirely of Western fallacy and folly. Neither provable nor completely falsifiable, theirs is a view of the world that will retain its appeal sufficiently enough to ensure, if nothing else, that Tony Blair’s reputation remains benighted, whatever the success of moves now to impeach or prosecute him.

The rueful irony is that for all his foreign policy failures, Blair was an internationalist to the core. His government – reforming, progressive, pluralistic – embraced globalisation and declared Britain more open to the world than ever before. When he stood down, he left it a little less gray and a little more gay than he had found it. Arguably, it’s his vision voters finally rejected with Brexit. Whether it can survive remains to be seen.


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A toast to Xi’s crackdown on boozing

This article can also be read at SCMP.COM

Donald Trump apparently once jeopardised a business deal with a group of Hong Kong billionaires by declining to indulge in a drinking contest with them.

According to the unwritten ordinances of contemporary punditry, this preamble should lead – like all Trump-related preambles – into some veiled, or even unveiled, disparagement of his lack of deportment, his racism, and most crucially his hair.

Not today, though. No sir. Even a stopped clock tells the right time every 12 hours and I’m with Trump on his tee-totalism. The man is mad, bad and dangerous enough without getting on the El Dorado. But look: as arguments for abstinence go, the prodigious drinking that attends a large part of both state and commercial activity in these latitudes is hard to beat.

Therein also lies the reason why President Xi Jinping ought to be given some credit for his campaign against the mainland’s drinking classes. Last month (June) brought a win in his efforts to curb what might properly be described as Russian levels of boozing in public life as cadres in Anhui province were told that, with the exception of events involving foreign affairs, or held to attract investment, there would be no more drinking at official dinners – otherwise known as “the office”.

The ban, designed to combat an ingrained culture of “working at the drinking table” according to Xinhua, came in the wake of an investigation into several deaths in the province among functionaries who had been too assiduous in their gan bei toasts and succumbed to alcohol poisoning. It also followed Xi’s move, shortly after assuming office in 2012, to place restrictions on alcohol at military functions. The practice of lower-ranking officers in the People’s Liberation Army endlessly toasting their superiors was held to be causing widespread liver disease and elevated blood pressure, not to mention chronic badger breath, among the officer class at large.

It’s my suspicion that listening to Party orders of business in Anhui province is not something that can easily be endured sober. It would be wrong to make light of this matter, though. Where politics and drink intersect it is customary to refer to Winston Churchill, and if there is one point about drinking on which Britain’s “Greatest Briton” is clear, it is that no-one but he could achieve what he managed on the drinking regimen to which he was devoted. “I have been brought up and trained to have the utmost contempt for people who get drunk,” said the man who liked to drink almost as much as he liked being at war.

The reality is that many who drink to excess in public life are tragic, second-rate characters, and it seems to me the archetype here is Boris Yeltsin, a Falstaffian figure who revelled in representing a tradition of alcoholism bridging Russia’s new era of capitalist autocracy with its Communist and Tsarist ones. As Bill Clinton tells it, he (Yeltsin) once got so bladdered on a visit to Washington that he was found roaming Pennsylvania Avenue, outside the White House, dressed only in his underpants and attempting to hail a taxi. He wanted to get pizza, see. As an adjunct to that, he was completely incompetent, sold off the state’s prize assets to gangsters and started two wars in Chechnya.

In the mainland, where in certain contexts it’s considered bad form to refuse a drink, there’s something of that buffoonish macho spirit of recklessness in the alcoholic brinksmanship of the baijou dinner. As one civil servant in the Anhui city of Ma’anshan told the China Daily: “Many Chinese believe they can judge a person’s quality through observing the attitude and style of one’s drinking.”

It may be that Xi Jinping’s main concern is to see that his country’s officials do not dilute what the writer Yuan Weishi called their “wolf’s milk” – Yuan’s phrase to describe nationalistic indoctrination – with headier brews. Yet while the President’s crackdown on corruption means a little transparency here and there without significantly changing how things work, clearer heads in government as a result of reforming the country’s drinking culture might actually result in actions that make life better for people.


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A mess of Cameron’s own making

This column can also be read at SCMP.COM

On the morning of June 23, the people of Britain will wake up, look outside, and ask themselves how well-disposed they feel towards the French.

If the answer comes back that for all their faults they are charming and dependable neighbours, then Britain’s place in the European Union is safe. If, on the other hand, it’s one of those days where France brews up in the mind as wholly smug and irritating, then the whole European project may be imperilled.

Yes, that’s probably a distortion of what will happen next week. The point stands, however, that the outcome of Britain’s referendum on whether or not to leave the EU will hinge on voters’ gut instincts. With the entire debate consisting of two sets of campaigners (Remain and Leave) lobbing forth outlandish predictions of the dire future that awaits if the result goes the other way, how could things be otherwise?

Depending on who you listen to, staying in the EU will either leave Britons richer, more empowered on the world stage and happier, both at work and in their personal lives, or shoeless, hatless and overrun by foreign criminals. The chasm between these competing views can only fuel distaste for politicians. More fundamentally, though, it should warn us, if warning were needed, that referendums are no way to arrive at practical policy decisions.

There are, after all, good reasons why they are used sparingly in most democracies and hardly at all in Britain. Not the least of these is that they normalise decision-making without personal accountability. The most extreme example of direct democracy is also the nuttiest. The state of California’s ballot initiative allows voters to take much of the business of policy into their own hands. The result is that limits on tax rates permanently depress revenues, which in turn enrages those who vote on bills to spend money on services only to find the legislature has none.

The European country with the greatest appetite for referendums, meanwhile, is France. Charles de Gaulle, who incidentally wanted Britain nowhere near any supranational European body, had them introduced into the Fifth Republic’s constitution in order to override Parliament when it suited him.

There are circumstances where referendums seem entirely justified, of course. Specifically, where existential or constitutional issues pertaining to sovereignty arise, people want straightforward questions to which they can give straightforward answers. Those in favour of “Brexit” frame Britain’s relationship with Europe in such terms, and are committed to re-establishing (as they see it) the sovereignty of Britain’s own parliament – albeit by circumventing it on this occasion. For their part, Remain campaigners, headed by sitting Prime Minister David Cameron, consider Britain to be perfectly sovereign inside the EU. Tellingly, that view seems to be shared by the rest of the world.

What, then, motivated Mr Cameron to call this referendum? In the most charitable analysis, he did so because he wanted to finally give the British people their say on a political union which they had never directly endorsed: the European Economic Community, continued membership of which Britons backed in a referendum in 1975, was merely a framework for trade. Judged in a harsher light, he did it because he thought it would get him off the hook for a while with the Eurosceptic wing of the Conservative Party, which he leads. There was, certainly, no great popular clamour for this vote before he committed to it back in 2013.

In the latter scenario, things have backfired. The modest proposals for EU reform Mr Cameron extracted from other European leaders prior to announcing a referendum date are now viewed by his opponents as evidence of a lack of sincerity all along. To be sure, a week out from polling day, victory is within sight: Leave has made gains but most credible observers predict Remain will make it over the line. And yet, even so, there’s something – dare one say it – un-British about throwing a lot of graphs and projections at people and asking them to fight your internal party battles. If they decide to stick it to the French, it’s your mess.