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Wednesday, March 01, 2006
Carvajal: Imperial Manila, again
By Orlando P. Carvajal
The emergency, whether imagined or real, was confined to Manila. There was no emergency in the rest of the country except for the tragedy in Southern Leyte. People in the rest of the country went on with their lives, disregarding the political infighting in the capital as a waste of time and resources.
The attempted coup was also confined to Manila. There were no coup plotters in camps outside. It was an ill-advised adventure, allegedly hatched by Manila-based politicians that do not speak for the people in the rest of the country.
The people who gathered and marched in Makati and Edsa are Manila-based supporters of the united opposition, a motley group of rightists and leftists that have their respective political agendas that are not necessarily the people’s agenda.
The right wants to be back in power and the left is salivating at the prospect of a revolutionary situation emerging from the factional war of the rightists. In both cases they don’t speak for the rest of the country. Certainly neither left nor right has come up with anything better to offer to the rest of the country.
It was a travesty of People Power. It was a blatant use of people by the Manila-based opposition in order to get themselves back into power.
They do not offer a different platform of government. They do not have any proposed electoral reforms or changes in the political and economic system of the country. They have not told us what kind of anti-poverty program they would push. They have not come forward to offer their solution to corruption either.
None of the above, because all they want is to take over from someone who out-cheated them, perhaps, in the last elections.
We seem to never learn from both Edsa 1 and 2 that it is useless to topple a ruthless dictator or an impeached president if the power just gets transferred to another faction of the ruling oligarchy that history has proven is only interested in protecting its vested interests. We seem to never learn that unconstitutional means should only be used to unseat an evil government and install a clearly better alternative.
Hence, PGMA should lift the state of emergency immediately and face the pressing concerns of the people. The opposition should offer an alternative program of government, tell us how they intend to prevent cheating during elections and outline for us their own anti-poverty and anti-corruption programs and let the people decide in the next elections.
The rest of us have to get back to grassroots organizing to generate genuine people power to help install a pro-people government and not another faction of the ruling elite that knows only how to, at its very best, condescend on the people.
For Bisaya stories from Cebu. Click here. (March 1, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
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