PGMA under siege
The rather overzealous move of Malacanang, Inc. to push for charter change in a scheme fraudulent of the Senate’s corporate if proprietary existence should be read as a desperate act of a presidency under siege largely on account of recurring reports of corruption traced at the doorstep of the seat of power.
Senator Mar Roxas, as if to confirm suspicion, knew that RP is no longer getting the financial package it gets from US except by another round of negotiation in what would be the same dog with a different collar. If that little attempt will find fruition, then maybe RP can again, get a shot in the arm from Uncle Sam but Roxas shares strong misgiving that US will grant this country another loan package. Reason is a government tainted with corruption. Call to mind how Mar uttered the words – ‘P…. ina. Ano ba to?’ – in a crowd?
The way things are, the ruling cliché in Congress can have their cake and eat it too. After all, the rule of majority in this country has long been distorted to actually mean, mere numbers game and its tyranny. And Congress keeps on growing as more bills – to divide a province into two, to divide a town or city into two, to divide a barangay into two – come as vicious practice. It is still gerrymandering by any other name – to spread the loot – doesn’t it?
PGMA felt rather reassured though when the Chief of Staff of the AFP emphatically pointed out on the occasion of the AFP’s 73rd Anniversary that ‘politics in the AFP is dead’. But is it really dead? Would it be correct to say that EDSA 2 were a mistake? Where signs indicate, the reason Senator Trillanes will never be allowed to function as a regular member of the Senate is born out of that fear that the AFP is, after all, reasonably politicized.
The menu in the charter change proposal is one that claims not to include term extension as officially advocated by GMA’s political operatives in Congress. But there are tricks in the book later on. There is no barrier big enough not to be confronted in favor of what Congress wills it to be since – voting is a vicious malpractice – whenever an issue has to be settled even without debate. That is what may be called as ‘summary execution’ – they kill anti-GMA bills in Congress, don’t they?
Suppose that indeed charter change will push through even before 2010? What will happen to us all? Central to the original charter change proposal is for foreigners to own the lands under some concessionaire agreement. In other words, they can’t take away the lands they own out of the country – only that they will control production and all that Marxist stuff to the possible peril of the Filipinos given the chronic rapacity of a capitalist system. The more conservative segments of body polity equate that as tacit commercialization of our sovereignty, or is it?
Elections 2010 is far more exciting than charter change, it’s fiesta. It seems that it is only GMA who is interested in charter change knowing pretty well that it is the only vehicle she can hold on to power if she cannot be possibly elected sans the props of ‘Hello Garci’. But all other politicians would rather opt that an election be held in 2010 since that would not be violative of the Constitution. So necessarily, no-el scenario is not to come about.
The GMA administration is probably the luckiest presidency we ever had. At least three coups failed to dismantle it. And just as how many impeachment moves have already been registered in the failure chart? Even People Power attempts fail to invade Malacanang when it is virtually made as a container yard whenever rallyists gather around its radius. The AFP and PNP are too in tact to disintegrate as other sub-centers of power are like the House of Representatives, the Supreme Court, et cetera.
There is no way to boot out GMA, just no way at the moment. Serious observers of trends knew too well that in spite of net satisfaction and trust ratings of GMA gliding down to historic negative ebbs (if there be a word), she still will finish term and the post-GMA scenario may be such that she will not follow the fate of Marcos or of Erap when she leaves Malacanang.
KARLPOPPER
(Email: nielsky_2003@yahoo.com or text 09164985265)