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Monday, March 13, 2006
Ledesma: Questions and answers
By Jun Ledesma
Sunbursts
BEFORE asking the question why President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo declared the state of national emergency, it will be interesting to know what had prompted the anti-Arroyo group to stage a concerted assault on the presidency of Arroyo.
The perspective acutely changes when, in the quest for an answer, we focus the issue first on the motive and motivations of those behind the "Oust GMA" plotters rather than ask the question why the President declared the state of emergency.
The stakes are high.
One group had thought that the "jueteng" scandal will shake the presidency and the "Hello Garci" tapes will create a domino effect, which will drag Noli de Castro to the same fate as Arroyo. The stake was the Presidency and the benefactor who is just waiting in the bend is the senate president. Frank Drilon may deny it, but had Noli taken the bait and resigned, the scheme of the Hyatt 10 conspiracy, with which he (Drilon) was or is identified, would have dovetailed with the plot to pole-vault the Senate head to Malacañang.
Another cabal wants to avert the sentencing of a plundering leader of a brief but steamy Bacchanalian regime. The consuming desire to reclaim the Presidency despite the Supreme Court decision and the holding of presidential election has neither diminished nor silenced the vocal wish of Estrada to come back to power which he foolishly believe was still his. From the wake of Fernando Poe Jr. to every opportunity his jailers allow him, he pilloried Arroyo and incites the masses to install him back to power, which he claimed was stolen from him. Last week he confessed to gifting handsomely some Marines and Magdalos a whooping amount of P10 million! This is going beyond the limits of generosity especially for one who is behind bars.
Nevertheless I believe his confession in the same manner that I believe him when he confessed to Pia Honteveros who Jose Velarde is.
How do we make out of the band that assembled in the house of Jose "Peping" Cojuangco, brother of the prayerful ex-President Cory Aquino. Hardly can one imagine why a failed President has the temerity to go to Malacañang and demand that she resign. Why are the Cojuangcos so enmeshed in the conspiracy to "Oust Gloria" when Cory had her time. Arroyo was nowhere when coup plotters attempted nine times to unseat her. Nor was Arroyo in any of the rallies during the Aquino regime when more than a dozen farmers where mowed down by machine gun fires in Mendiola. Where they from Hacienda Luisita? Does Cory feel Arroyo is treating her with disfavor when the more than 6,000 hectares of Hacienda Luisita preserve, which was put in the block for distribution to the tenant-beneficiaries?
If Cory placed her Presidency at stake by ingeniously sparing the hacienda from her own Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program what makes the stake lesser now that she is no longer President? What were they hatching in Peping Cojuangco's residence? If we were to believe the Time Magazine story of that event it looks like it's about how to Oust GMA. Well, Cory was not at the house of her brother as she had rushed to the Marine Headquarters along with a handful of loyalists in response to the call of a Marine officer's call for mass support, which never came.
The refrain of the political opposition is the viral symptom in Philippine politics where the losers never accept defeat but fool themselves into believing that they were cheated. This frame of mind is not really without basis because nary a politician in this country who does not cheat or use other similarly unethical persuasive means to earn a vote. And so the protest never ends even long after elections are over.
And parts of these alliances are the Maoists. They are those who want a shortcut in a power grab. The radical partisans among them craftily pushing for a bloody clash between forces of the State hoping that in the melee they can easily rout the remaining survivors of their unwitting allies who remains to be veritable threats and their sworn enemies.
Of course we have a not-so-few failed businessmen, ex-government men and women, aging generals and politicians who want to be back in power. They really don't matter as they have become irrelevant. But sometimes they get the water cannon they asked for and all they do is grumble and wonder why the police and the military are not supporting them. The stake for them is power, which has become elusive. Just like what the communists hoped to attain, these pitiable graying men wants the Presidency and power. Presently however that is nothing but a consummation devoutly wished.
Now, ask the question why Arroyo declared the state of national emergency. I have answered the first part; now think of how to answer this one.
For Bisaya stories from Davao. Click here. (March 13, 2006 issue)
Write letter to the editor.Click here.
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