• 6 AUGUST - *1907 - Gen. Macario Sakay, one of the Filipino military leaders who had continued fighting the imperialist United States invaders eight years into the Ph...
    11 years ago

......................................................................................

The Daily Tribune

(Without Fear or Favor)

Specials:

Bulatlat.com

World Wildlife Fund for Nature-Philippines

The Philippines Matrix Project

Highlight: Erap rejected Ampatuans DIE HARD III Herman Tiu Laurel 12/04/2009

Saturday, December 5, 2009


Highlight: Erap rejected Ampatuans


DIE HARD III

Herman Tiu Laurel
12/04/2009

The Ampatuans’ rise traces its roots to the mass firing of local government officials during Corazon Aquino’s counter-revolutionary dictatorship of 1986, where several of her unelected local potentates, including Datu Andal Ampatuan Sr., were summarily installed into office
. Even Yellow media, such as Newsbreak, have now confirmed this — a subject which we first broke in last Friday’s column, “The Ampatuans’ Yellow ties.”

The clan’s rise continued with each passing Yellow regime: From Cory to FVR, to Gloria Arroyo. The Ampatuans, with their network of militia men, were repeatedly used in election cheating, which is why this should dispel any notion of the Yellows’ “democratic” streak for good.

During the abbreviated term of President Joseph Estrada, Rep. Digs Dilangalen attempted to bring the patriarch of this feudal clan to meet with the President in Malacañang. Erap, aware of this person’s sordid reputation, rejected the proposal immediately.

Even as the race for 2010 is underway, we cannot separate this from the rest of our history. For one, it is not happening in isolation. It is the continuation of a chain of events snaking erratically through the decades. And, as we know, history goes by generations. One generation is reckoned as the “average interval of time between the birth of parents and the birth of their offspring” — between 21 to 30 years. It coincides with the period in which a generation is shaped by its collective experiences, as well as, the political, economic, and cultural milieu of the times.
By Western standards, we have the “greatest generation” of World War II, then the “Baby Boomers,” then the “Gen-X’ers,” and now, “Generation Nxt.” In similar fashion, the Philippines has its “Peace-time” generation, its post-war “Baby Boomers,” its “New Society,” followed by the “Martial Law Babies,” and then the “Post-Edsa I Generation” that’s been brainwashed by globalized education and media.

Each generation lives with a main theme, ebbing and flowing with every new hope and broken promise. Characteristically, the Yellow “Post-Edsa I Generation” has been brainwashed to believe everything about Cory and the Aquinos to be good, and everything about the previous period, the “New Society” and the Marcoses, to be bad.

In truth, the Yellows only re-established elite rule as their counter-revolution to Marcos’ “revolution from the center.” But, it became so bad that after only a decade of Yellow rule, all the Yellow myths started to show.
Each year, the crowd at succeeding Edsa anniversaries continuously dwindled. And after a decade of worsening poverty, the masa sought a regime of “Erap para sa Mahirap,” thus voting Estrada into power in 1998. Alas, Erap’s victory signaled the beginning of the Yellows’ demise.

So it came to pass that the Yellows staged Edsa II to oust the leader of the masses to stop the burgeoning “Para sa Masa” generation. The poor, however, struggled to sustain their new found awareness in Edsa III, despite being suppressed and mowed down repeatedly. And, to the misfortune of the Yellows, they made the supreme mistake of installing an incomparably corrupt (and inept) Gloria Arroyo, who is to be their ultimate undoing.

And as “Hello Garci” exploded in 2005, the Yellows staged an attempt to oust Gloria through the Hyatt 10 but failed. It was then that some Yellow elements joined the Edsa III crusade. They latched onto the anti-Gloria bandwagon in the 2007 senatorial elections, and then engaged in a tug-of-war to grab the legitimate opposition mantle from Erap.
Then, Cory’s apology to Estrada in 2008 should have added strength to the righteousness of Erap’s cause, but the Yellows chose to downplay it by claiming that the act of contrition was only in jest. Gloria, for her part, initiated brilliant obfuscations by supporting several candidates from behind, such as Villar and Chiz, with the former co-opting some known Erap symbols — the color orange, plus, the pro-poor and pro-OFW spiels.

We discuss the generations of our history to highlight the importance of the present election campaign. Most Filipinos just compare the candidates’ personalities or TV performances, or get taken by radio-TV adverts.
But what is of real importance are the tacit or explicit ideologies driving the candidates and their parties. The LP (Liberal err… Lakas Pala! Party) is diametrically opposed to the development and nation-building political-economy of the “New Society” and Erap’s pro-Filipino struggle for self-reliance, sovereignty and “revolution against poverty.”

Moreover, the Yellows represent a restoration of the foreign-led oligarchy by using double-talk, deceit, and hypocrisy to mask its exploitation and oppression.

Erap’s frank politics, meanwhile, represents pro-people, pragmatic, and fair governance, which is committed to the preservation of Philippine sovereignty over all its areas, including Mindanao.

The narrative of Erap’s instinctive rejection of the Ampatuans and Cory’s coddling of the same should thus be center stage today. These would easily illustrate the two kinds of governance this nation must choose from.
Ideally, the choice ought to be easy, if only ABS-CBN, Inquirer, and other elite-controlled media were not limiting or twisting available information. So, given this situation, we should all the more stop this reign of deception by the oligarchy and all corrupt feudal clans.

We must restore a pro-people, honest, what-you-see-is-what-you-get leadership, free of deception and hypocrisy, and dedicated to genuine action for the Filipino welfare, just as what President Estrada had started.
(Tune in to 1098AM, Sulong Pilipinismo, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 p.m. to 7 p.m.; Global News Network, Destiny Cable Channel 21, Talk News TV, Tuesday, 8:15 p.m. to 9 p.m. On “International Education for Asia and Filipinos;” also visit http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com)



 
SourceThe Daily Tribune

ALTERNATE URL: http://www.classicposters.com/commentary/20091204com4.html

(Reprinted with permission from Mr. Herman Tiu-Laurel)

0 comments

Blog Archive