Till kingdom come August 24, 2006
I HAVE a fearless forecast to make at this early date. It is: If Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo remains in power until 2010, she won't leave.
I say this because I keep hearing people talking about all sorts of political configurations or tandems for 2010. Assessments and predictions are already being made about the "presidentiability" of certain individuals. I say this because I keep hearing people, gripped this early by election fever, talking about 2007 being a prelude to 2010. One Voice is expressly saying 2007 can be a verdict on the Arroyo presidency.
And I say this because I keep hearing people -- some of them tired, frustrated and bitter after trying to unseat an unelected president and finding a world deaf to their entreaty -- saying "sige na lang," let's wait for 2010 and repair the harm that's been done. Or better still, punish the guilty afterward, begin anew and build a better world.
Let me douse water on those enthusiasms or desperate hopes. Those things are predicated on the belief that Arroyo will go gently into the night or into obscurity after 2010 when the prescribed term of the 2004 president ends. I see no reason to believe so.
All the signs today in fact point to the opposite: She won't leave.
Chief of those signs are today's "killing fields." The recklessness or, indeed, wild abandon with which Arroyo is wreaking the mayhem with the aid of her head executioner, Jovito Palparan, must suggest she means to stay on after 2010. For as long as breath remains in her body. She cannot afford to be out of power.
It cannot be unknown to her that that scale of mayhem -- one wrought completely cynically (as the New People's Army, much ravaged by time and ideological setbacks, is in no position to seize power) it merely offers a convenient scapegoat -- carries with it the seeds of epic retribution. At the very least, there is the legal recourse of haling her and Palparan to the World Court to answer for crimes against humanity. This scale of bloodbath, one done with little distinction between combatant and noncombatant, indeed one that directly, deliberately and systematically targets civilians who are turned into combatants by association or mere proximity, sends off loud echoes of genocide. In lieu of ethnic cleansing, ideological purification. With the international human rights community prosecuting, she and Palparan won't escape the harsh judgment of the world.
If they do, they must still reckon with the judgment of the kin, friends, and/or comrades of the dead. As those people like to point out, they have very long memories.
Along with the motive is the means. The means comes in the form of carrot and stick. The carrot is the Charter change. The only reason Arroyo hasn't yet earnestly pushed for changing the Constitution is that she doesn't have to -- at this time. Why should she? She has until 2010 to rule, notwithstanding that she didn't win the elections. Ferdinand Marcos didn't think along those lines either, until his second term was about to end.Then he did everything in his power to get the Constitutional Convention to approve a shift to parliamentary government to allow him to run again, as prime minister. Failing that, he declared martial law.
Today's Charter change won't just allow Arroyo to run again after 2010 (and steal the vote again, which is the only way she -- or her party in a parliamentary setting -- can win), it will consolidate once and for all "trapo" [traditional politics] power. For all the parliamentary system's theoretical virtues, it will only serve one purpose in this country, which is to end the entertainers' threat of snatching the highest positions in the land. Most of the congressmen who killed the impeachment bid against Arroyo can never become senators, they will always be beaten by the popular candidates. A parliamentary system, which makes everyone an MP, or Member of Parliament, solves that problem. Arroyo can count on Speaker Joe de Venecia and his syndicate in the House of Representatives to ram Charter change through even if only they, and not the public, are clamoring for it.
The stick is dictatorship. Arroyo has already flirted with it with 1017, and continues to flirt with it even now. We live today in a virtual dictatorship, government officials routinely spurning Senate summons despite the Supreme Court scrapping Executive Order 464, human rights (notably freedom of assembly) being mugged, and Palparan going on a murder spree. Waiting for Arroyo to go after 2010 is like waiting for Marcos to go after martial law. It presumes there is a prescribed limit for dictatorship, real or virtual. Nice work if Charter change will legalize the (indefinite) extension, but it's entirely optional.
And there's opportunity to go with motive and means. That comes in the form of the terrifying indifference of the public to iniquity. Or at least their lack of desire to do anything about it, even if, as the surveys indicate, they bristle at the thought of not having the president they voted for. What's to prevent Arroyo from staying on after 2010? Marcos at least was the legitimate president in 1972, having won a reelection in 1969. His mindset was to go around the rules, not to ignore them altogether. Arroyo has no such mindset. She has never been elected president yet rules as one. Why go around the rules when you need not even acknowledge they exist?
That public passivity is an active encouragement to malfeasance. Each hour that the public despairs of ending an illegitimate rule is another brick laid at the foundation of unending illegitimate rule. The current occupant of Malacañang has already gotten away with lying about her intention to run, she has already gotten away with stealing the vote, and now she is getting away with (very literally) murder. Each one of them represents anexponential leap in perfidy.
What's to prevent her from getting away with ruling forever?
http://opinion.inq7.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=16917
I say this because I keep hearing people talking about all sorts of political configurations or tandems for 2010. Assessments and predictions are already being made about the "presidentiability" of certain individuals. I say this because I keep hearing people, gripped this early by election fever, talking about 2007 being a prelude to 2010. One Voice is expressly saying 2007 can be a verdict on the Arroyo presidency.
And I say this because I keep hearing people -- some of them tired, frustrated and bitter after trying to unseat an unelected president and finding a world deaf to their entreaty -- saying "sige na lang," let's wait for 2010 and repair the harm that's been done. Or better still, punish the guilty afterward, begin anew and build a better world.
Let me douse water on those enthusiasms or desperate hopes. Those things are predicated on the belief that Arroyo will go gently into the night or into obscurity after 2010 when the prescribed term of the 2004 president ends. I see no reason to believe so.
All the signs today in fact point to the opposite: She won't leave.
Chief of those signs are today's "killing fields." The recklessness or, indeed, wild abandon with which Arroyo is wreaking the mayhem with the aid of her head executioner, Jovito Palparan, must suggest she means to stay on after 2010. For as long as breath remains in her body. She cannot afford to be out of power.
It cannot be unknown to her that that scale of mayhem -- one wrought completely cynically (as the New People's Army, much ravaged by time and ideological setbacks, is in no position to seize power) it merely offers a convenient scapegoat -- carries with it the seeds of epic retribution. At the very least, there is the legal recourse of haling her and Palparan to the World Court to answer for crimes against humanity. This scale of bloodbath, one done with little distinction between combatant and noncombatant, indeed one that directly, deliberately and systematically targets civilians who are turned into combatants by association or mere proximity, sends off loud echoes of genocide. In lieu of ethnic cleansing, ideological purification. With the international human rights community prosecuting, she and Palparan won't escape the harsh judgment of the world.
If they do, they must still reckon with the judgment of the kin, friends, and/or comrades of the dead. As those people like to point out, they have very long memories.
Along with the motive is the means. The means comes in the form of carrot and stick. The carrot is the Charter change. The only reason Arroyo hasn't yet earnestly pushed for changing the Constitution is that she doesn't have to -- at this time. Why should she? She has until 2010 to rule, notwithstanding that she didn't win the elections. Ferdinand Marcos didn't think along those lines either, until his second term was about to end.Then he did everything in his power to get the Constitutional Convention to approve a shift to parliamentary government to allow him to run again, as prime minister. Failing that, he declared martial law.
Today's Charter change won't just allow Arroyo to run again after 2010 (and steal the vote again, which is the only way she -- or her party in a parliamentary setting -- can win), it will consolidate once and for all "trapo" [traditional politics] power. For all the parliamentary system's theoretical virtues, it will only serve one purpose in this country, which is to end the entertainers' threat of snatching the highest positions in the land. Most of the congressmen who killed the impeachment bid against Arroyo can never become senators, they will always be beaten by the popular candidates. A parliamentary system, which makes everyone an MP, or Member of Parliament, solves that problem. Arroyo can count on Speaker Joe de Venecia and his syndicate in the House of Representatives to ram Charter change through even if only they, and not the public, are clamoring for it.
The stick is dictatorship. Arroyo has already flirted with it with 1017, and continues to flirt with it even now. We live today in a virtual dictatorship, government officials routinely spurning Senate summons despite the Supreme Court scrapping Executive Order 464, human rights (notably freedom of assembly) being mugged, and Palparan going on a murder spree. Waiting for Arroyo to go after 2010 is like waiting for Marcos to go after martial law. It presumes there is a prescribed limit for dictatorship, real or virtual. Nice work if Charter change will legalize the (indefinite) extension, but it's entirely optional.
And there's opportunity to go with motive and means. That comes in the form of the terrifying indifference of the public to iniquity. Or at least their lack of desire to do anything about it, even if, as the surveys indicate, they bristle at the thought of not having the president they voted for. What's to prevent Arroyo from staying on after 2010? Marcos at least was the legitimate president in 1972, having won a reelection in 1969. His mindset was to go around the rules, not to ignore them altogether. Arroyo has no such mindset. She has never been elected president yet rules as one. Why go around the rules when you need not even acknowledge they exist?
That public passivity is an active encouragement to malfeasance. Each hour that the public despairs of ending an illegitimate rule is another brick laid at the foundation of unending illegitimate rule. The current occupant of Malacañang has already gotten away with lying about her intention to run, she has already gotten away with stealing the vote, and now she is getting away with (very literally) murder. Each one of them represents anexponential leap in perfidy.
What's to prevent her from getting away with ruling forever?
http://opinion.inq7.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=16917
posted by dqfan06 @ 9:32 AM
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