11/25/2011
Only after a year-and-a-half
of very obvious dilly-dallying — with what was deliberately an
ill-conceived Truth Commission and countless false starts of much
publicized plunder and electoral fraud accusations against Gloria Arroyo
that spurred a national chorus of denouncement after a cat-and-mouse
comedy unfurled at the international airport — did the BS Aquino III
administration finally file a case to legally hold its supposed bête
noire in the country.
It’s not a narrative that can convince any
keen observer of the seriousness of this government in seeking justice,
especially since the hospital arrest of PeNoy’s predecessor changes
nothing in the oppressive conditions brought forth by their successive
regimes.
Rates for electricity, water, toll ways, the MRT/LRT,
tuition, as well as prices of basic goods — and, consequently, poverty
and hunger — all continue to rise. These are but a continuing legacy of
an Edsa II Yellow coup more than 10 years ago that reversed the
pro-people Erap administration’s no price increase policy.
With
GDP growth down to 4.5 percent from a projected 6 percent; a massive
drop in exports; beleaguered collections at the Bureau of Customs; the
worsening poverty and hunger indices; and, among many other things, the
embarrassing admission that government will have to import 860,000 tons
of rice again despite promises by the Agriculture Secretary and PeNoy
himself that rice imports are a thing of the past, the arrest of Mrs.
Arroyo is simply an attempt at a PR bonanza for an incumbent regime that
now badly — nay, desperately — needs it.
It’s very clear that
around two months ago, the foreign and local PR advisers of Aquino III
managed to convince him that the Aquinorroyo “deal” had to be revised,
with Arroyo sacrificed for the good of his administration. Besides, the
clamor from the victims of Gloria’s transgressions, including those who
were cheated by her electoral and political violations, could not be
denied anymore.
Still, there was no lack of defense of Arroyo from
the largest bunch of hypocrites within the administration and outside
its circle, convincing me even more that the whole affair is the
moro-moro I have said it to be all along.
While the mouthpieces of
Malacañang and the Department of Justice (DoJ) insist that they are
only pursuing the law while foregoing due process, the so-called experts
cum sophistic legal authorities who defiled the law at Edsa II, like
that Jesuit Bernas who justified the violation of the people’s
democratic vote for President Estrada, now argue in behalf of Mrs.
Arroyo’s legal rights to due process and equal protection of the law.
At
the same time, as the Supreme Court was believed to have tipped Gloria
off on its impending issuance of the TRO to give her time to make a
sprint to the airport, Malacañang had to stop the flight by hook or by
crook as the skeptic, in seeing the larger ruse, would have busted all
of them.
That larger ruse is the continuance of the system that
has prevailed since Edsa I: The myth that the rule of law reigns and
that democracy and justice exist in this country.
Edsa I restored
the old oligarchic families, all of whom, according of Alfred McCoy’s An
Anarchy of Families: State and Family in the Philippines, Marcos had
begun to dismantle earlier. Only idiots wouldn’t see that since 1986,
upon Cory Aquino takeover, government has merely been reduced to an
alternation of oligarchic factions in monopolizing the nation’s wealth.
Gloria
is now the scapegoat of these families despite the fact that PeNoy and
his cronies all aided and abetted her usurpation of power twice and
partook of the economic plunder and defilement of all government
institutions and the rule of law.
Real justice, thus, can only be
attained if we see all of them jailed with Gloria, starting with the
businessmen who have transferred loyalties to Aquino to continue their
plunder.
Unlike their ouster and persecution of Estrada that were
hugely detested by the general population, the scapegoating of Gloria is
a very effective move. Estrada had genuine efforts to champion the
people such as the lowering of the MRT fares; the non-implementation of
any power or water rate increases in his attenuated two-and-a-half year
term; the elimination of the MILF camps; his support of the peasantry in
land reform and irrigation programs; and, not to forget, his lunches
with the urban poor in their homes.
When they tried to make a
scapegoat of Estrada, the masses exploded in protest, leading to the
Edsa III uprising where Gloria Arroyo had to machinegun them down. Their
moves against Estrada were, in fact, popular only with the oligarchs
and the US Embassy.
In contrast, when Arroyo’s henchmen allegedly
tried to build up her rally crowd last week with an offer of P500 per
person, they weren’t even able to muster a few hundred, forcing them to
call it off. Of course, Gloria’s better organizers such as Dinky Soliman
and Ronald Llamas are now with PeNoy, gleefully handling billions in
doleout funds.
As such, the real cancers continue to fester in our
political-economy, with the Arroyo scapegoat as the opiate to distract
the people from their misery.
Even as my radio listeners rejoiced
at the arrest of Gloria, the euphoria quickly dimmed when I asked: “Does
this bring down your electricity or water bill, or the VAT (value added
tax) that’s now added to the toll ways, and even to marinated meats and
fish (yes, Virginia, even tocino)? Will this stop the fare increases in
the MRT or other modes of transport, or the corruption in all three
branches of government?”
The worst part of this scapegoating is
that the looting and plunder under the new administration will
exacerbate under the cloud of dust this arrest has kicked up — which
will stay in the air for weeks and months while the Office of the
Executive Secretary and its allies in Congress, local government (Quezon
City, for one), and everywhere else wreak havoc.
(Tune in to Sulo
ng Pilipino/Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m. on 1098AM;
Talk News TV with HTL, Saturday, 8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m.,
on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8, on “An Interview with Ken Fuller,
Author of A Movement Divided”; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com
for our articles plus TV and radio archives)
Source: The Daily Tribune
URL:
http://www.tribuneonline.org/commentary/20111125com6.html
