Apocalypse 02/12/2007
The reason Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is President today owes to one other reason than that she asked Garci to make her win by a million votes over Fernando Poe Jr. and that her minions carried out a massive switching of ballots in Tawi-Tawi and neighboring districts. The latter borne out by the fact that the tallies in many precincts were either not signed by the public school teachers or carried signatures that bore no resemblance to human hand. I am not exaggerating. Look at the “thumbprints” in some of those tally sheets and ask yourself if they were made by thumb or paw.
But like I said, the reason GMA is President is not just because she did that. It is also because of something equally important, if not more so. That is that the so-called opposition, represented in great part by the FPJ camp, bungled things monumentally. The way the FPJ campaign was conducted remains an object lesson in how to lose without really trying. How anyone can possibly manage to not get the most popular candidate on earth—more popular even than Erap, who won over his nearest rival, JDV, by the kind of landslide you see only in Ormoc and Infanta—to dominate an election, it takes talent of the vastly negative kind.
The point is this: GMA became President not just because she cheated but because she made her victory over FPJ plausible.
Until the Garci tape came out a couple of years ago, by the grace of God and Ong, I myself thought GMA might have won the elections. That was so because she ran a more efficient, if epically corrupt (Joc-Joc Bolante, the PhilHealth card, the PCSO and Pagcor ads), campaign. Or conversely, because her main rival, or his handlers, ran theirs to the ground.
Had the FPJ camp been half as competent as Erap’s, the cheating would have been patent and intolerable, and would have driven FPJ’s legions into the streets in violent protest. As it was, well, all Kiko Pangilinan had to do was say, “Noted,” and that was that.
Well, folks, it’s happening all over again.
Truly, people who do not heed their history are doomed to repeat it. Hell, people who cannot stop, look and listen for the history train are doomed to be run over by it. Two developments are particularly scary in that respect.
The first is that the cheating machinery isn’t just in place, it is well-oiled and ready to spring into action. Only recently I got a text message that said: “What are the bishops doing about the Comelec officers in the ‘Hello Garci’ tape that have just been promoted? They are: Francisco Pobe, Renato Magbutay, Ray Sumalipao, Remlane Tambuang.” Good point. And should be addressed not just to the bishops but to everyone: What the hell are we doing about them?
Yet that is nothing compared to something even scarier. Look at the placements of public officials. You have Ronaldo Puno as head of the DILG, you have Benjamin Abalos as head of the Comelec, you have Hermogenes Esperon as AFP chief, and now you have Hermogenes Ebdane as the new defense secretary. What do they have in common? They are the people believed to have engineered the massive cheating in the last elections. Puno as mastermind, Abalos as chief executor, and Esperon and Ebdane as implementers in the field. The two Hermogeneses specifically appear in the “Hello Garci” tape.
They are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
But here’s the bigger rub. A massive hoax is about to be sprung upon an unsuspecting electorate while the so-called opposition is self-destructing right before our very eyes. I’ve always thought, and said, that the May elections will go the route of the American elections last year and our own elections in 1971. The issue in the last American elections, though not a presidential one, was George W. Bush, because of the Iraq War. The issue in the 1971 elections, though not a presidential one as well, was Ferdinand Marcos, because of the Plaza Miranda bombing. The issue this May will be Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo because of the “Hello Garci” tape.
Or so I thought. One would imagine with the elections shaping up that way, the “opposition” would put up a united front and make the contrast between them and GMA a lot starker. Or put the distance between them and her a lot longer. Or one would imagine that they’d get their act together and register their opposition to GMA’s illegitimacy and dictatorship a lot more stridently.
But no, the opposite is happening. Instead of creating a broad united front, the opposition has divided itself into the Erap people and the non-Erap people, with the Erap people getting favored treatment in UNO. JV Ejercito’s decision to make way for Sonia Roco is far too little and probably far too late. The rest of the pack, disgusted by that turn of events, but with their own political ambitions flailing at them like a whip to a horse, have gone their separate ways, many of them making their own pacts with the devil. Or joining the administration camp or groups allied with GMA. What thoroughly idiotic things to do.
What it does is not just to confuse the issue, turning an election that would and should have been a judgment on GMA, the way the American elections of 2006 and the Philippine elections of 1971 were, into a farce. It reduces a historical watershed into a choice between relative bastards and opportunists. Indeed, what it does is render the cheating that is about to be sprung on this country invisible. At the end of the day, the administration can claim—with much believability—that the opposition candidates lost, not because the Four Horsemen wrought an apocalypse upon them but because they shot themselves in the head.
It’s bad enough that we’re back to the rule of a tyrant. But for people to fight it armed only with stupidity! Onli in da Pilipins.
http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=48856
But like I said, the reason GMA is President is not just because she did that. It is also because of something equally important, if not more so. That is that the so-called opposition, represented in great part by the FPJ camp, bungled things monumentally. The way the FPJ campaign was conducted remains an object lesson in how to lose without really trying. How anyone can possibly manage to not get the most popular candidate on earth—more popular even than Erap, who won over his nearest rival, JDV, by the kind of landslide you see only in Ormoc and Infanta—to dominate an election, it takes talent of the vastly negative kind.
The point is this: GMA became President not just because she cheated but because she made her victory over FPJ plausible.
Until the Garci tape came out a couple of years ago, by the grace of God and Ong, I myself thought GMA might have won the elections. That was so because she ran a more efficient, if epically corrupt (Joc-Joc Bolante, the PhilHealth card, the PCSO and Pagcor ads), campaign. Or conversely, because her main rival, or his handlers, ran theirs to the ground.
Had the FPJ camp been half as competent as Erap’s, the cheating would have been patent and intolerable, and would have driven FPJ’s legions into the streets in violent protest. As it was, well, all Kiko Pangilinan had to do was say, “Noted,” and that was that.
Well, folks, it’s happening all over again.
Truly, people who do not heed their history are doomed to repeat it. Hell, people who cannot stop, look and listen for the history train are doomed to be run over by it. Two developments are particularly scary in that respect.
The first is that the cheating machinery isn’t just in place, it is well-oiled and ready to spring into action. Only recently I got a text message that said: “What are the bishops doing about the Comelec officers in the ‘Hello Garci’ tape that have just been promoted? They are: Francisco Pobe, Renato Magbutay, Ray Sumalipao, Remlane Tambuang.” Good point. And should be addressed not just to the bishops but to everyone: What the hell are we doing about them?
Yet that is nothing compared to something even scarier. Look at the placements of public officials. You have Ronaldo Puno as head of the DILG, you have Benjamin Abalos as head of the Comelec, you have Hermogenes Esperon as AFP chief, and now you have Hermogenes Ebdane as the new defense secretary. What do they have in common? They are the people believed to have engineered the massive cheating in the last elections. Puno as mastermind, Abalos as chief executor, and Esperon and Ebdane as implementers in the field. The two Hermogeneses specifically appear in the “Hello Garci” tape.
They are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse.
But here’s the bigger rub. A massive hoax is about to be sprung upon an unsuspecting electorate while the so-called opposition is self-destructing right before our very eyes. I’ve always thought, and said, that the May elections will go the route of the American elections last year and our own elections in 1971. The issue in the last American elections, though not a presidential one, was George W. Bush, because of the Iraq War. The issue in the 1971 elections, though not a presidential one as well, was Ferdinand Marcos, because of the Plaza Miranda bombing. The issue this May will be Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo because of the “Hello Garci” tape.
Or so I thought. One would imagine with the elections shaping up that way, the “opposition” would put up a united front and make the contrast between them and GMA a lot starker. Or put the distance between them and her a lot longer. Or one would imagine that they’d get their act together and register their opposition to GMA’s illegitimacy and dictatorship a lot more stridently.
But no, the opposite is happening. Instead of creating a broad united front, the opposition has divided itself into the Erap people and the non-Erap people, with the Erap people getting favored treatment in UNO. JV Ejercito’s decision to make way for Sonia Roco is far too little and probably far too late. The rest of the pack, disgusted by that turn of events, but with their own political ambitions flailing at them like a whip to a horse, have gone their separate ways, many of them making their own pacts with the devil. Or joining the administration camp or groups allied with GMA. What thoroughly idiotic things to do.
What it does is not just to confuse the issue, turning an election that would and should have been a judgment on GMA, the way the American elections of 2006 and the Philippine elections of 1971 were, into a farce. It reduces a historical watershed into a choice between relative bastards and opportunists. Indeed, what it does is render the cheating that is about to be sprung on this country invisible. At the end of the day, the administration can claim—with much believability—that the opposition candidates lost, not because the Four Horsemen wrought an apocalypse upon them but because they shot themselves in the head.
It’s bad enough that we’re back to the rule of a tyrant. But for people to fight it armed only with stupidity! Onli in da Pilipins.
http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=48856
posted by dqfan06 @ 11:39 AM
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