06/13/2011
I couldn’t help laughing out loud after reading the exchanges between Butuan Bishop Juan de Dios Pueblos and the Palace hacks over the former’s call for BSA III to resign posthaste or risk ouster by a “shadowy group.” It’s not that the idea posed is silly — for BSA III has proven so grievously pro-oligarch and anti-people in his economic policies while being so corrupt in appointing so many KKKKs (Kaibigan, Kaklase, Kabarilan at mga Korap) — such that his early resignation is called for; it’s the source of this call and how these erstwhile jolly pots and kettles in the Gloria Arroyo camp are now calling each other black when they’re all the same!
The bishop is alleged to be one of the more well-known “envelope” prelates of Mindanao, along with Davao Archbishop Fernando Capalla, during Arroyo’s 10-year bribery rule; but at the same time, we should remind BSA III that he himself also voted to stop the playing of the “Hello Garci” tapes when this caper was being investigated in the Lower House.
Sen. Franklin Drilon, in defending BSA III from the onslaught of the Butuan bishop, asks the prelate where he was when Arroyo was appointing her manicurist and gardener to high government posts; yet he forgets that he was a rabid supporter of Arroyo until such genuine patriots as Sammy Ong, Alan Paguia, the Tribune, this space, and many others helped expose “Hello Garci.”
Today, Drilon should ask himself what he is doing about the appointment of the four Ks as we mentioned above (especially the last), whose felonious records would make any manicurist or gardener accepting government sinecures look saintly.
Still, there is indeed that group (though not as shadowy) that has been active ever since the elections in trying to manage the situation in favor of Arroyo’s proxy candidate while allowing the US Embassy to take command of the entire process through Smartmatic, back-stopped by a shadowy corporate network registered in Barbados and Florida.
Pueblos’ shadowy group, meanwhile, is simply pipitsugin. It has staged sham coup initiatives in the past to get publicity for fundraising, often by using retired, washed-out military generals as fronts. Still, there’s no telling what trouble it can create for the Palace today if backed by potential contributions from Gloria and Mike, along with the participation of some opportunistic generals embedded within the Armed Forces of the Philippines.
In fact, this Pueblos salvo may just be a warning shot across the bow from the Arroyo camp, which has been under some pressure from the allies of Malacañang. Although I don’t believe that any of the taunting and teasing by the Aquino regime of Arroyo is serious — from the dubious Truth Commission to the impeachment drama over Merci Gutierrez and, now, the opposition posed by Arroyo and her decrepit former Justice Secretary over the possible appointment of Carpio-Morales to the Supreme Court — such moro-moros may still be enough to scare BSA III.
The hope for a real force for authentic social reform and economic revolution rests only in an alliance of patriotic, nationalist, civilian mass movements with the idealistic young officers’ corps. In the past, this group of young officers has proven to be a truly serious, reformist and risk-taking lot. Though they have not succeeded, mainly due to the repeated intervention of the US Embassy, their idealism continues to grow, same with their numbers, because of the continuing oppression and injustice the prevailing system is inflicting onto the people.
This force, I have been told by former idealistic young officers, is now three times larger than when it flexed its muscles for the first time in the 1980s. Its members now understand the sham democracy that prevails, having seen through it in the decades that have passed where the nation has become poorer as the oligarchs have gotten richer.
They must be laughing at presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda for engaging Bishop Pueblos in some doctrinal debate on church involvement in politics, saying, “It is not the Church’s task to set forth specific political solutions‚ and even less to propose a single solution as the acceptable one‚ to temporal questions that God has left to the free and responsible judgment of each person. It is, however, the Church’s right and duty to provide a moral judgment on temporal matters when this is required by faith or the moral law.”
That’s because the political history of this country that led to the installation of BSA III’s government is largely based on the interference of the Catholic Church. From Jaime Cardinal Sin baby-sitting Cory Aquino through Edsa I and then Gloria Arroyo in Edsa II, to Bishop Soc Villegas holding Arroyo’s hand after Sin died to cradle the Yellows through the crises of illegitimacy, until a managed transition to BSA III became possible, the Church’s hands have been locked with the Yellows through and through.
Drilon called on Pueblos to resign as prelate and join GMA; but he should also resign his office, along with BSA III, and join the US Embassy if he were to be sincere in his call.
The Catholic Church, this puppet government, and the Yellows — who have all been in control these past 25 years — are all handmaidens of US hegemony, assigned to mesmerize the people with mystic opiates and a sham democracy while the country continues to bleed P800 billion a year in foreign debt amortization, to feed the globalist banking mafia with hundreds of billions more in eVAT and other taxation, as well as allow the Yellows’ Big Business branch to siphon off the same amount in profits from privatized public utilities.
A new generation of patriotic and nationalist young officers must continue to evolve hand-in-hand with popular, civilian mass movements for the historic opportunity to come together to oust this hopelessly corrupt system.
(Tune in to Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m., and Sulo ng Pilipino, Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, 6 to 7 p.m. on 1098AM; Talk News TV with HTL, Tuesday, 8 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com and http://hermantiulaurel.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
(Reprinted with permission from Mr. Herman Tiu-Laurel)
Source: The Daily Tribune
URL:
http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20110613com5.html
