Criminals July 10, 2006
PRAY, WHAT CRIME HAS DANILO LIM COMMITTED?
Malacañang says it is variously plotting to oust Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, plotting to mutiny against GMA, plotting to coup-curucu-coup GMA. Take your pick.
Well, what Lim did say, as the video shows, was a “withdrawal of support.” Is that any different from the withdrawal of support of Angelo Reyes, or indeed GMA herself, from Erap?
Ah, but it is. For reasons that indict not Lim but the people he plotted to withdraw support from.
Reyes’—and GMA’s—withdrawal of support from Erap (former President Joseph Estrada) was a withdrawal of support from an elected president. At the time Erap was ousted, the impeachment proceedings against him hadn’t finished. Half the senators had merely walked out of the impeachment court. They had done so because their colleagues, who were the majority, had tried to block the truth from being known, the truth in the form of the so-called “Second Envelope,” which they voted not to open. To this day, that remains the fundamental moral justification for Erap’s ouster: He had betrayed the public trust; his supporters in the Senate-cum-impeachment-court had merely tried to prevent the truth from coming out.
By contrast, Lim’s withdrawal of support was a withdrawal of support from an unelected president. There is the “Hello Garci” to prove that beyond a shadow of doubt. That isn’t just a moral justification for ousting GMA, that is a legal justification for jailing her. GMA hadn’t just betrayed the public trust, she had screwed the voters’ votes. The only reason she remains in power is that her supporters act as though the “Hello Garci” does not exist, and she has prevented witnesses, like Gen. Francisco Gudani and Col. Alexander Balutan from showing her to have robbed the voters of Tawi-Tawi and environs of their votes.
Now, tell me, how is the desperate effort of Erap’s friends to prevent the Second Envelope from being opened different from GMA’s desperate effort to prevent Gudani and Balutan from opening their mouths? Well, the second is worse. Far, far, worse. Yet Erap is in jail and GMA is in Malacañang.
If Lim committed any crime, it is only in trying to talk his superiors, who were the top brass of the AFP, into joining his cause. He seems to have been confident he had done so when he agreed to give that interview. To this day, I cannot comprehend how he could have possibly thought that his superiors, who had corruption charges hanging on their heads and were even then being fattened off the fat of the land by their commander-in-theft, could have been persuaded to bite the hand that fed them.
Indeed, if Lim committed any crime, it is only the crime of idealism, or optimism, of believing that his superiors could be capable of finally thinking of country before self, of being satiated at some point, of being alarmed at the hellish pass their country had been plunged into, enough to say, “Tama na, sobra na, abuso na.” If Lim committed any crime, it is only the crime of wanting to avoid bloodshed, which was what made him want to talk to his superiors to begin with, the younger officers already incensed at the way the AFP had been utterly perverted and used like petty riffraff to steal the vote in Muslim Mindanao; and ready to storm the gates of Hell or Malacañang, whichever held more demons.
Truly, those are heinous crimes in this country today. To continue to believe in the decency of other people, including generals, and the wisdom of bloodless uprisings—that is deserving of the firing squad.
Indeed, even if Lim’s actions constitute a coup plot and not just a mere withdrawal of support, what of it? If it were so, then it would have been a coup to end a coup. Indeed it would have been a popular coup to end a widely detested coup. For make no mistake about it, the GMA regime is the product of a coup. It is a coup regime. It is a junta held by a few people. It is a seizure of power, no more and no less than Ferdinand Marcos’ martial law was a seizure of power, albeit one done through the ballot rather than the bullet, by Garci rather than by goons, by farce rather than by force. It is no less vicious and murderous for being so, the usurpation now currently being propped up by the thuggish ways of dictatorship. Illegitimacy is the handmaiden of dictatorship. So it was in Marcos’ time, so it is in GMA’s time.
The real crime isn’t Lim plotting to oust GMA and attempting to get his fellows in uniform to go along with him, it is GMA actually ousting democracy, whose cornerstone is that the people may be ruled only by the leaders they voted for, and conscripting the very sectors of society that once ousted a president who had betrayed the public trust to go along with her.
The real accessories to the crime are not the civilians and military officers who did go along to end a vicious farce; it is the bishops who thought to lend a halo to a usurper, shown by the “Hello Garci” tape to be willing to agree to kidnapping to silence a witness; the businessmen who kept asking, “But who do we replace her with?” as though an illegitimate leader can ever be better than a dog; the pillars of civil society who proved that they were hollower than the prop pillars Hollywood used for “Samson and Delilah”; the congressmen whose only heroic act was to look at the faces of the heroes in the peso bills that flooded the Batasan during the impeachment bid; the lawyers who argued that there could possibly be any shred of sanity, not to speak of legality, in preventing Gudani and Balutan from telling the world GMA was a cheat apart from a liar; the tired, cynical and resignation-filled Filipinos who kept saying, “Sige na lang, let’s move on,” as though life could ever move a muscle while being pinned down by a rubble called Injustice. Look at them:
Criminals all.
http://opinion.inq7.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=8943
Malacañang says it is variously plotting to oust Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, plotting to mutiny against GMA, plotting to coup-curucu-coup GMA. Take your pick.
Well, what Lim did say, as the video shows, was a “withdrawal of support.” Is that any different from the withdrawal of support of Angelo Reyes, or indeed GMA herself, from Erap?
Ah, but it is. For reasons that indict not Lim but the people he plotted to withdraw support from.
Reyes’—and GMA’s—withdrawal of support from Erap (former President Joseph Estrada) was a withdrawal of support from an elected president. At the time Erap was ousted, the impeachment proceedings against him hadn’t finished. Half the senators had merely walked out of the impeachment court. They had done so because their colleagues, who were the majority, had tried to block the truth from being known, the truth in the form of the so-called “Second Envelope,” which they voted not to open. To this day, that remains the fundamental moral justification for Erap’s ouster: He had betrayed the public trust; his supporters in the Senate-cum-impeachment-court had merely tried to prevent the truth from coming out.
By contrast, Lim’s withdrawal of support was a withdrawal of support from an unelected president. There is the “Hello Garci” to prove that beyond a shadow of doubt. That isn’t just a moral justification for ousting GMA, that is a legal justification for jailing her. GMA hadn’t just betrayed the public trust, she had screwed the voters’ votes. The only reason she remains in power is that her supporters act as though the “Hello Garci” does not exist, and she has prevented witnesses, like Gen. Francisco Gudani and Col. Alexander Balutan from showing her to have robbed the voters of Tawi-Tawi and environs of their votes.
Now, tell me, how is the desperate effort of Erap’s friends to prevent the Second Envelope from being opened different from GMA’s desperate effort to prevent Gudani and Balutan from opening their mouths? Well, the second is worse. Far, far, worse. Yet Erap is in jail and GMA is in Malacañang.
If Lim committed any crime, it is only in trying to talk his superiors, who were the top brass of the AFP, into joining his cause. He seems to have been confident he had done so when he agreed to give that interview. To this day, I cannot comprehend how he could have possibly thought that his superiors, who had corruption charges hanging on their heads and were even then being fattened off the fat of the land by their commander-in-theft, could have been persuaded to bite the hand that fed them.
Indeed, if Lim committed any crime, it is only the crime of idealism, or optimism, of believing that his superiors could be capable of finally thinking of country before self, of being satiated at some point, of being alarmed at the hellish pass their country had been plunged into, enough to say, “Tama na, sobra na, abuso na.” If Lim committed any crime, it is only the crime of wanting to avoid bloodshed, which was what made him want to talk to his superiors to begin with, the younger officers already incensed at the way the AFP had been utterly perverted and used like petty riffraff to steal the vote in Muslim Mindanao; and ready to storm the gates of Hell or Malacañang, whichever held more demons.
Truly, those are heinous crimes in this country today. To continue to believe in the decency of other people, including generals, and the wisdom of bloodless uprisings—that is deserving of the firing squad.
Indeed, even if Lim’s actions constitute a coup plot and not just a mere withdrawal of support, what of it? If it were so, then it would have been a coup to end a coup. Indeed it would have been a popular coup to end a widely detested coup. For make no mistake about it, the GMA regime is the product of a coup. It is a coup regime. It is a junta held by a few people. It is a seizure of power, no more and no less than Ferdinand Marcos’ martial law was a seizure of power, albeit one done through the ballot rather than the bullet, by Garci rather than by goons, by farce rather than by force. It is no less vicious and murderous for being so, the usurpation now currently being propped up by the thuggish ways of dictatorship. Illegitimacy is the handmaiden of dictatorship. So it was in Marcos’ time, so it is in GMA’s time.
The real crime isn’t Lim plotting to oust GMA and attempting to get his fellows in uniform to go along with him, it is GMA actually ousting democracy, whose cornerstone is that the people may be ruled only by the leaders they voted for, and conscripting the very sectors of society that once ousted a president who had betrayed the public trust to go along with her.
The real accessories to the crime are not the civilians and military officers who did go along to end a vicious farce; it is the bishops who thought to lend a halo to a usurper, shown by the “Hello Garci” tape to be willing to agree to kidnapping to silence a witness; the businessmen who kept asking, “But who do we replace her with?” as though an illegitimate leader can ever be better than a dog; the pillars of civil society who proved that they were hollower than the prop pillars Hollywood used for “Samson and Delilah”; the congressmen whose only heroic act was to look at the faces of the heroes in the peso bills that flooded the Batasan during the impeachment bid; the lawyers who argued that there could possibly be any shred of sanity, not to speak of legality, in preventing Gudani and Balutan from telling the world GMA was a cheat apart from a liar; the tired, cynical and resignation-filled Filipinos who kept saying, “Sige na lang, let’s move on,” as though life could ever move a muscle while being pinned down by a rubble called Injustice. Look at them:
Criminals all.
http://opinion.inq7.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=8943
posted by dqfan06 @ 12:31 AM
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