Elections are the heart of democracy December 14, 2006

THERE’S one even more compelling reason to junk Charter change in whatever form it will take between now and the May 2007 elections. That is quite apart from its humongous bane in the form of keeping the same congressmen in power forever and giving Jose de Venecia a backdoor to Malacañang. That reason is that at no time than today has the need for (clean) elections become more obdurate. At no time than today has the need for (clean) elections become more life-and-death.

Nobody seems to appreciate the importance of elections anymore. But they are the lifeblood of freedom, they are the heart of democracy.

The depreciation of elections is readily shown in one question I keep getting to this day: “But if not Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, whom would you rather have in Malacañang?” That is a question I get almost without fail in forums -- and I make it a point to talk pretty much only to the kids, they still have the capacity to listen. That was the first question I got during a gathering of first-time voters several weeks ago. Whom would you rather have in lieu of Arroyo?

My answer to that question has always been, and will always be: That is not for me to say. That is not for you to say. That is for the Filipino voters to say. That is why we have elections. That is why we consider ourselves a democracy: Because we have elections, because we choose our leaders. My beef with Arroyo is precisely that she has not been voted president by the voters. Who to have instead of her is someone who is voted president by the voters.

I’ve said that repeatedly in my columns. But I now suspect the reason that point isn’t being grasped is not just that we refuse to think things through but that we’ve reached a point where elections no longer matter to us. We’ve reached a point where we’ve gotten cynical about elections. We’ve reached a point where we now distrust elections. We figure the choice of leaders is best left to “enlightened minds.”

I’ve heard that in other forums, some people I’ve always thought sensible springing up from their seats to say they wouldn’t mind elections being scrapped altogether. The reason for it being that elections merely compel us to choose between two sets of rogues, the “trapo” [traditional politicians] and the entertainers. Elections, if they are clean, produce only Eraps, and who the hell wants that. And elections, if they are not clean, produce only GMAs, and who the hell wants that too. Might as well do away with them.

I suspect the reason Arroyo has succeeded in clinging on to power is not just her willingness to do so at all costs, including the slaughter of a good portion of the population, but the indifference, if not tacit approval, of the middle class for what she has done. That has been expressed explicitly by some of her supporters in this extreme form: “Of course, she cheated. So what? Good for her, she prevented Fernando Poe Jr. from taking over the country.” The first time I saw that, which was on the pages of this newspaper in a feedback from Online, presumably from a Filipino living in the United States, I nearly fell off my seat. I thought it would be protested bitterly. But, no, I heard variations of it elsewhere. The attitude was: Might as well look at the cheating with benign indifference.

I suspect the problem goes very deep, to an elite and middle class fear and anger at the thought of being held hostage by the “dumb, ignorant and corruptible” masses, ready and eager to sell their votes at elections. A fear and anger exacerbated over the last decade by the unprecedented success of actors and singers, basketball players and media personalities, at the polls. Which culminated in Joseph Estrada’s rubbing of Joe de V’s nose in the mud, a thing Joe de V never forgave him for, and for which he now wants vengeance -- never mind if he rubs the nation’s nose in the mud along with it.

It’s a scary pass, and every time I hear the thought, I tell people there’s one thing I know that’s far more frightening than elections. That is no elections.

That was our condition during martial law. There were no elections then, or no real elections, the results being foregone. The plebiscites in particular were so, Marcos constantly getting 99.9 percent approval from the people -- which is the same kind of plebiscite Joe de V wants to have. And that is our condition today, at least after 2004. Even Ferdinand Marcos was capable of going through the motions of having elections 00 in 1978, 1981 and 1986, all of which he -- or his minions -- won handily. The last precipitating the Edsa People Power Revolt. You have no clean elections, you have no elections.

You have a tyranny.

The worst elections are always better than no elections at all. Clean elections that produce Estrada are always better than no elections that produce Marcos or dirty elections that produce Arroyo. If the problem is that our elections only trot out bad choices, then the solution is to work to produce better choices, not to scrap elections. But while at this, I am not so sure we always have bad choices. The last elections offered other choices than Arroyo and Fernando Poe Jr. -- Raul Roco and Eddie Villanueva were two of them. We kept saying they were not “winnable.” The problem is not out there, it is right here, in our hearts. Or minds.

Elections, in fact, are not unlike democracy itself. Democracy is a terrible system, as Winston Churchill once said.

Except that everything else is worse.

* * *

If you have time, a bit of cash, and a heart, drop by My Brother’s Mustache café near Scout Madriñan Street in Quezon City tonight. There’s a benefit for Chikoy and Monet Pura’s nephew Marco Quimpo who has cancer. Your presence will help in his treatment, and you will treat yourself to large helpings of music from Chikoy Pura, Noel Cabangon, Rom Dongeto, Cooky Chua, Susan Fernandez, Lester Demetillo, Mon Espia, and others. Show starts at 9 p.m.

http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=38212

Anywhere will do December 13, 2006

I DON’T know if it’s completely by coincidence that the government gaming firm Pagcor has rented the Quirino Grandstand on the very day that the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) was to lead its flock there for a prayer rally, which was this Friday. But my first reaction to that was: no matter. So what if they got Rizal Park? All they’ll succeed in doing is add another insult to Jose Rizal, the one person Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in particular likes to invoke -- after God -- to justify clinging to power. It should help to remind us what she did to him four years ago on his death anniversary.

Rizal in any case, like God, has been known to express himself through the people, and send retribution to tyrants through them. Vox populi, vox Dei; vox populi, vox Josei. The voice of the people is the voice of God, the voice of the people is the voice of Rizal. Certainly, neither God nor Rizal has been known to speak through Pagcor or Arroyo or Speaker Joe de Venecia. Whose voice passes through them, well, feel free to speculate on the source.

That was before the CBCP decided to postpone its prayer rally to Sunday to still get the Rizal Park. Well, I am glad at least that CBCP head Archbishop Angel Lagdameo will push through with it notwithstanding Arroyo’s order for Joe de V to drop Con-ass. We have every reason to distrust these people. “We cannot let our guard down, we cannot trust them,” Msgr. Meliton Oso, executive director of Jaro Archdiocese social action center, expressly said. I’d have thought though that Friday would have been the better day, even for prayer. I can only hope the faithful would prove true to their faith this Sunday and stay away from the malls and the cockpits to show their solidarity with their shepherd.

Frankly, I don’t know that the Edsa Shrine wouldn’t have been a better venue. It has a more storied past, one at least that the current generation still remembers. I did think initially that Pagcor did the bishops an unwitting favor by driving them away from the Rizal Park straight into the arms of Edsa highway. Plaza Miranda and the Mendiola Bridge would also have been good venues, but much of their symbolic value would probably have been lost on today’s generation. Which I deeply rue: Plaza Miranda no longer stokes fires of pride or sends shivers of awe, but it used to be the very embodiment of freedom in this country. As every public figure said then, a law was not a law until it could be defended at Plaza Miranda. A point Joe de V and his minions badly need learning.

But the Edsa Shrine seemed much the better choice because, like I said, it holds tremendous symbolic value for the present generation. Who knows? Maybe a richly ironic value as well -- the site that spawned the current tyranny being potentially the same site that could end it. Or spark the beginning of its end. I don’t know that the CBCP or any other group would have needed a permit to gather there. Why would they? Joe de V and company themselves did not ask for a permit from the Constitution, or the source of the Constitution, the one thing that animates it -- the people -- to perform sodomy upon Inang Bayan [Mother Land]. What else call "Con-ass" [constituent assembly] but that? At the very most, it’s time we showed that we do not exist at their sufferance, they exist at ours. It’s time we stopped suffering from them. It’s time we stopped suffering them.

The statement by Kawal and likeminded groups that they would be there to protect the marchers from harm comes as no small reassurance.

But no matter, too: The place is not deathly important, the purpose is. I can only hope that the people who will go to the prayer rally this Sunday will go there to pray in the truest sense of the word. Which is to beg God not to do what one ought to do himself, but to beg God to give one the courage to do what one ought to do. In any case, God has been known to help only those who help themselves. Indeed, I can only hope that the people who go there to pray -- which will most certainly include me -- will go past praying Charter change to hell but give hell to the evil that makes abuses like the "Cha-cha" possible.

I said it yesterday: I can’t understand why we should content ourselves with being at the receiving end of every iniquity or abuse this government, in whole or in part, foists upon us. The last time we congregated at Edsa highway, we ousted a government that had merely ceased to earn our trust. The current one hasn’t just betrayed our trust, it never had it to begin with.

I don’t know why De Venecia et al. should be free to make demands upon us when we should be the ones making demands upon them. At the very least, I don’t know why we shouldn’t demand that the May elections be turned from a senatorial to a presidential one. We already have a Constitution, we still do not have a president. The Constitution is genuine, the president is fake. Change the president, not the Constitution.

Turning next year’s elections into snap presidential elections, not quite incidentally, is the only thing that will guarantee those elections will be clean. Which is the next problem we will be having after we thwart De Venecia from taking Malacañang by the rear -- talk of Con-ass! Arroyo’s example of imposing her will on this country by force has already been followed by De Venecia and company. What’s to prevent the administration candidates from following her example about stealing the vote? You do not punish crime, crime will flourish. You do not punish crime, crime will be emulated.

The place doesn’t really matter, the purpose does. If I recall my catechism right, Jesus Christ once told his apostles: “Whenever two or three are gathered in my name, there I am in the midst of them.”

The Fellow Downstairs didn’t exactly say the same thing. But look at the tongressmen and their allies in the Palace, and see if he might not as well have said so.

http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=37919

Day of reckoning December 12, 2006

I WOULD very much like to thank the "tongressmen" for doing what the opposition, in whole or in part, united or fragmented, has not been able to do all this time. That is to rouse the people from an immense and bovine stupor to protest wrongdoing. I had begun to wonder not just when we would ever get out of it but if we could still do so. Not all the efforts of the NGOs, the Church, the business community, and the media to damn the abuse and the corruption and the killings seemed to do the trick.

Then suddenly, in one fell swoop, the tongressmen turned things around. Then suddenly from out of the blue, the House of Representatives' Batasan [Legislature] session hall offered scenes reminiscent of Joseph Estrada’s impeachment trial -- the very thing the tongressmen were trying to avoid when they blocked the impeachment bids against Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Scenes that spoke of the battle between Good and Evil, between decency and abuse, between those who were drunk with power and those who were steeled in body and spirit by humility. As with the Estrada impeachment trial -- though many of these scenes transpired well past the witching hour, to be replayed on TV only the following day to a larger audience -- the events at the Batasan last week came across as a Morality Play.

As with the Estrada impeachment trial, it produced images that have stuck in the public mind. The Estrada impeachment trial had Miriam Santiago turning her wrath on the gallery after being embarrassed by Raul Roco on the subject of the natural career path of lawyers, and ordering three of the spectators out. The Batasan “debate” (it was more a monologue than a debate) had Tongressman Douglas Cagas shouting angrily at the gallery, “You are not representatives!” and being embarrassed by Teddy Casiño with the reminder that representatives are called representatives because they represent the people, who were to be found in the gallery. They will have the same endings: The Estrada impeachment trial ended in Estrada being impeached by way of People Power. The Arroyo-Batasan move to change the Charter will end up with usurpers being changed by way of People Power.

Truly, my deepest thanks to the tongressman for accomplishing what none of us could.

I am not surprised at all that Arroyo has tried to put as much distance as she can between herself and the Cha-cha as between herself and a leper. She hopes to douse water on the flying sparks that are threatening to turn into raging fire. But I personally would earnestly urge those who had planned to hold huge rallies in Manila's Rizal Park and elsewhere to push through with them. Indeed to go beyond protesting the iniquity that is Charter change ("Cha-cha") to the evil that is this government itself. That is so for several reasons.

First is that Arroyo may not easily wipe off from her person the stench of the cesspool she has created. She is a party to this crime. At the very least, fact that she has ordered the moves for convening a constituent assembly ("con-ass") to stop must mean that she had the power all along to stop it. That she did not lift a finger to do so, until the public upheaval threatened to engulf her, makes her a “perp," as the crime dramas on TV now refer to them.

At the very most, the tongressmen wouldn’t have thought they could ram this down the nation’s throat with her help if she didn’t owe them for killing the impeachment bids against her. The Cha-cha was the tongressmen collecting past due. It was Arroyo’s own crime of stealing the elections that spawned it. That she has decided she is not going to pay her debt through her teeth, or at risk of jeopardizing her own survival, doesn’t change things -- at least for us, even if it does change things for her and her allies. That is for them to fight over, like jilted lovers, or like thieves over spoils. Ah, but no two parties more richly deserved each other.

Second is that the Cha-cha owes to Arroyo in an even more elemental sense. As I said yesterday, the inspiration for it is that she has been able to get away with murder in more ways than one. She has shown that in this country there is no law left other than the law of the jungle. All anybody has to do to impose his will on us is to be arrogant and ruthless enough to do it. The theft of the 2004 elections is to the Cha-cha as cause is to effect. Indeed, the theft of the 2004 elections is to any attempt to rape this country as cause is to effect. It is the poisoned well whence the polluted water comes from.

Third and most importantly, I don’t see why we must content ourselves to just parry iniquity after iniquity and pat ourselves on the back after we have stopped one or the other. I don’t know why we should content ourselves with taking a defensive stance, dancing happily like idiots after the Supreme Court has stuck down Presidential Proclamation 1017, Executive Order 464, the "calibrated preemptive response" policy, and whatever unholy numbers and letters this government finds it in its pettily tyrannical mind to fling upon us. We never voted this government to power. It should be defensive, parrying blows from us, not the other way around.

Why should we be happy that Joe de Venecia has retreated from con-ass, tail between his legs? Why should we be happy that Arroyo has abandoned him, as she would, and has, anyone who threatens to weigh her down? What happens now, we start worrying about the threat of massive cheating in the May elections and try parrying that all over again? What have we become, a race of masochists and self-flagellants? Have we learned not just to endure pain but to love it?

It’s time we took to the streets and made our roars heard. It’s time we thundered forth like the voice of heaven itself, “Tama na, sobra na, palitan na.” ["Enough already, too much already, change already"] It’s time we tumbled down like a great flood and washed down the dregs of this country down the canals. It’s time we sounded the trumpets to smash down the walls, announcing the day of reckoning has come.

The day for breaking chains has come.

http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=37694

A—holes December 11, 2006

(I wrote this piece last Thursday simply to get the bitter taste of the constituent assembly off my mouth. I decided to come out with it as is—notwithstanding that Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has ordered it to stop and Jose de Venecia now wants a constitutional convention—to register the disgust I felt then, and now, which I imagine most of us did.)

WE MAY BE GREETING EACH OTHER “MISerable Christmas” rather than “Merry Christmas” the next few weeks. That is courtesy of the tongressmen who have just made it so.

Certainly they have single-handedly raised high blood pressure in this country to epidemic proportions, to go by the text messages I’ve been getting. Most of which end in punctuation marks that exhaust the range of symbols in the gallery of cell phones. “Ang kapal talaga ng mukha ng mga tongressmen (Those tongressmen really have thick faces)!” one message summed it up succinctly.

They actually have the gall to say they are doing this for the nation, notwithstanding that they betray the most fundamental tenet of lawmaking, which is that no lawmaker may pass a law to benefit himself. Easy to test the self-proclaimed altruism of the tongressmen, as my friend Oscar Orbos points out. All they have to do is to put down on paper in triplicate, using their own blood for ink, that they would resign at once and never run for public office again if they should succeed in turning this country parliamentary. For the good of the nation.

I have only one problem with that test. It presumes that the tongressmen’s word, like GMA’s, may be trusted. GMA vowed at Jose Rizal’s grave that she would never run for president again because to do so would be to wreak never-ending divisiveness upon the country. The last was the only thing that proved true. We ask the tongressmen to make the same vow, and all we’ll be left with is poisonous liquid on tissue paper, whose best destination is deep down the bowels of toilet bowls.

Which brings me to why the tongressmen, despite having no backing from the Constitution, the courts, or the people (the only sigaw you will hear is not fit to print), are doing this. Which is: GMA got away with murder, they reckon they can, too.

The fact that GMA cheated in the elections and got away with it has flushed all rules in this country down the drain. The only law left in this country is the law of the jungle. If you’re a public official, you now think: Who the hell cares if something is undemocratic, unconstitutional, or unpopular? Or never mind unpopular, an object of undiluted detestation by the public? GMA has shown by the fact that she is ruling to this day—an iniquity the tongressmen themselves contributed mightily to when they struck down the impeachment bids against her—that all it takes to hold power in this country is to want it. The voters be damned, the public be damned, the nation be damned. Or indeed more than want it, want it with every fiber of your being, enough to lie, cheat and steal for it. No, more than that, enough to kill for it. You’re capable of that, you can do anything you please in this country. You’re up to that, you can do anything you please with this country.

It’s the rule of thugs. It’s a gangster state. Nothing more or less than the one Marcos presided over during martial law. Or probably even less: Marcos had so much more finesse. Today, the presidential emblem has become a mailed fist. Today, the tongressional one has become an upraised middle finger.

There is a caveat to this, which is that all this has happened, and is happening, because we have allowed it to. Call it political fatigue, call it cynicism, call it stupidity (which it is: Life goes on? Death goes on!), but we’re party to the making of that gangster state. There are no tyrants where there are no slaves. There are no wolves where there are no sheep. There are no gangsters where there are no terrified victims. The tongressmen are doing this not just because they think they are powerful enough to do it, they are doing it because they think we are powerless enough to stop it.

Ah, but that is where GMA and allies have finally made their (fatal) mistake. Rizal, GMA’s favorite whipping boy, did say it once: The indios may be patient, but they are not infinitely patient. When they are insulted and branded idiots apart from being injured and branded serfs, they rise with hatred in their eyes and put down tyrants. And Marcos, GMA’s favorite non-president (and non-prime minister; he claimed both titles), did find out once (and for all) that when Filipinos are abused beyond even the national animal’s capacity to take abuse, they rise with bolos in hand, crying “Tama na, sobra na, palitan na!”

Listen to the sounds of a nation heaving. Listen to the groans and flexing of muscles of a nation rousing from stupor. Listen to the gnashing of teeth and the thrashing about of Florante recovering his wits only to discover he is bound to a tree. Listen to the cries of the bishops discovering we are God’s creatures after all, made after His image, which is not the image of a mongrel crawling on all fours. Listen to the sighs of the businessman and the road dredger, the NGO worker and the overseas worker, the nun and the whore, the leper and the whole, the sinner and the saint, rediscovering they are human beings after all, born with dignity and deserving of respect. Listen to the shouts of a nation, like a man experiencing pinpricks of pain after feeling returns to his numb arm or leg, remembering he was once proud and free. Listen to the rumbling of marching feet down the streets and alleyways, gathering force like a storm. Listen to the trumpet blasts sounding the hour is at hand.

There may be a reason to wish one another a “Merry Christmas” this Christmas after all.

http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=37517