Defend Charter from MBC too

DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
12/13/2006



You think it’s only Gloria and Joe de Venecia who want to insert self-serving provisions into the constitution or remove those that protect the people? Look again. Who are those whore saying that Gloria should stay until 2010 but the Constitution has to be changed anyway to remove the provisions protecting National Patrimony, protection for Philippine and Filipino economic sovereignty and unqualified opening of land ownership to foreigners – that’s the Makati Business Club, Amcham and the EuCham. God help the Filipino when these money powers bolt in and there’s no one to protect the people.

I saw the ANC coverage of Monday’s senate hearing on constitutional amendments and lo and behold the two major despoilers of the Constitution since 1987 through to 2001 were there pontificating on constitutional issues: Jesuit Bernas and Comelec deconstructionist Christian Monsod. Both were party to the 2001 Edsa Dos betrayal of the Republic, supporting the elite-led and funded coup against the only really popularly elected president of the country President Joseph E. Estrada. Bernas in particular is guilty of justifying coup d’etat as a means to depose Estrada.

Monsod is the nemesis of the only genuine Comelec reformer, Commissioner Luz Tancangco who conducted the most thorough study and investigation of the defects of the Comelec after the Edsa I chairmen Davide, Yorac and then Monsod deconstructed and reconstructed the Comelec to become the cheating instrument of the economic-politico (i.e. plutocracy) elite to control and direct Philippine government policies towards wholesale looting by liberalization, deregulation and privatization. Tancangco showed the voter’s list padding, districting manipulation and other anomalies.

Remember, Davide has reaped huge rewards from his continuing loyalty to the plutocracy, Yorac was an Ayala consultant and Monsod is a hireling of the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation. The history of foreign and plutocratic control of Philippine elections is there for all to study, from the inception of the Namfrel by CIA man Lansdale to the post 1986 Comelec. Marcos exercised his own control of the Comelec, but for the sake of credibility he appointed an opposition party man, Mon Felipe, during the crucial 1986 elections that led to Marcos’ downfall.

One must emphasize the role of Monsod (who headed Namfrel before going to the Comelec) and his Comelec computerization consult Gus Lagman, Joe Cons computer business partner that tried to ram his own vote counting machines. Monsod’s reforms was based on anomalous structuring of the election districting, the dirty voters’ list and the removal of opposition members from the electoral bodies which I believed then and now provided the sure, automatic check-and-blaance. I remember clearly my own clash with Monsod during a Kapihan at Ciudad Fernandina where I often hosted.

I questioned Monsod’s “reforms”, particularly the removal of opposition party members from the electoral bodies that in the past provided check-and-balance. Monsod snapped back, that’s when I first suspected that this fellow intended not to check the abuses in the Comelec but to ensure there’s no automatic check-and-balance mechanism. From then on I studied Monsod’s background and the elections that transpired since 1987, the cheating Yorac and Monsod did for FVR, the deals FVR made to get the plutocracy’s support in the cheated election.

To show the difference in the trends of voters’ list increases let us look at the period of transition from the last Marcos appointed opposition chairman Felipe to the time the Edsa I chairmen took over. In period after 1986 the voters’ list jumped by one million in one year, then under Yorac until the 1992 election when Ramos cheated it had gone up by 4.2-M, and between 1992 when Monsod took over until 1995 it increased by another 4.2-M in time for the dagdag-bawas that drove the permanent wedge between Pimentel as victims and Enrile as beneficiary – thanks to Monsod’s system.

Monsod as a representative of private interests and Bernas as an agent of a religious institutions competing against the State, cannot comment impartially on the Constutional issues. They are doing the bidding of their private masters, and as Franklin D. Roosevelt said: “The liberty of a democracy is not safe if the people tolerate the growth of private power to a point where it becomes stronger than their democratic State itself. That, in its essence, is fascism --- ownership of government by an individual, by a group or by any controlling private power.”

We have a fascist State today and Gloria is but a hapless puppet being toyed around by the masters of the economy and money, and they think they can continue laughing al the way to the bank when Gloria is sacrificed to the mob, plus a little circus o the ConCon. But no, don’t bring up the issue of the rope of the Constitution and the Will of the People in the 2001 Edsa Dos coup, don’t question the right of Gloria to stay on till 2010, and One Voice of Monsod will stare you down – which, fortunately, they no longer can as the nation is rising in awareness and indignation against them too.

Bishop Tobias in his homily, followed by a press conference, called on the nation and the soldier of the nation to stand and defend the Constitution and the People, and to junk the ConAss as well as the ConCon, which was our message too in our last column.