Glue-ria Pacman

DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
10/20/2006



Isn’t it weird to hear and watch Ronnie Puno claim that he’s suspending local government officials to clean up anomalies? He’s the man behind the 1992 Sulo Hotel election manipulation operations Miriam Santiago raged about and the driving lisense urine-test racket, This Puno once engineered the strafing of his own house just to distract from the graft suspicions and issues against him, and as president of the political party Kampi that cheated the electorate in the 2004 elections he is the last the public can find credible. Support for Binay and the opposition is swelling as a consequence.

Will Glue-ria, the Fat Guy and Puno’s lawless campaign to get rid of opposition local and national leaders from their elected position be the trigger for the final civilian-military push for regime change? To me the question is irrelevant. The forces for good and decent change must simply pick up every opportunity to highlight the evil of the present regime. This campaign against opposition leaders started with the ouster of Pasay Mayor Trinidad, and now against Mayor Binay, Vice-Mayor Danny Lacuna and others will heighten the public’s awareness of the need to oust Glue-ria as early as possible.

On the first day of the mobilization for the defense of Makati City Hall, the earliest and more militant support came from the mass movements of President Estrada. The Union of the Masses for Democracy and Justice (UMDJ) renowned for its Erap Five, PMAP, NCCV, KMLG and others were there at the earliest hours to give a boost to the Makati citizens milling about City Hall. Quietly and surely President Estrada has been consolidating support for Binay and the opposition group UNO, as well as for all the other cause-oriented and activist dissident groups against Glue-ria’s tyranny.

The most important factor that, however, is the guidance and leadership being exercised by the growing number of progressive Catholic bishops for the oust Glue-ria campaign. The visit of the three progressive bishops Tobias, Inigues and Labayen to Binay Wednesday night was extensively reported by the broadcast media and buttresses the cause of Binay and the citizens of Makati. On Friday, the day this column comes out, these bishops will lead a march starting from Ayala to the Makati City Hall to call the attention of the business sector and the world to the accelerating political crisis here.

The business community is finally waking up to the fact that Glue-ria’s moves against elected opposition officials using force and illegal maneuvering are ominous signs that the same thing could happen to them, with Glue-ria using the same force and illegal maneuvers to take over their businesses once the political opposition is out of the way. Even pro-Glue-ria columnist are now raising a howl about the to remove the elected mayor of Makati and the fears it is causing the business sector – a new Pacman in the making.

*****

The Nobel prize for Peace is awarded to the founder of the Grameen Bank for its small loans to the poor Bangladeshis. It is a perfect award for creating the wrong economic idea that cottage industry loans can lead to real economic upliftment, and the global Shylocks of the IMF-WB and the private commercial bankers love this wrong idea because it leaves them in control. Let us ask the proper question: Did today’s fastest growing formerly underdeveloped economies use the Grameen model? No, China and India did not rely on cottage industry loans to become pacesetters.

Neither did the tiger economies South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore and the rising Malaysian economy rely on cottage industries. They had one thing in common that led them to sustanined high growth rates and massive upliftment of the poor: nationalist state-intervention and planned economics using state financing of economic modernization and industrialization. I am sure Mohammad Yunus is very well intentioned but, ot paraphrase an old saying: the road to perpetual poverty and mendicant economics can be paved with good intentions.

The Ramon Magsaysay awards beat the Nobel in awarding Yunus. Of course it did, the RM awards is meant to promote Western-biased political-economic values in Asia. Yunus now sits in the Pantheon of Western-favored icons like Aung San Suu Kyi who’s determined to return Burma into a colony of the British. Hugo Chavez or Mahathir can win the Nobel or Magsaysay awards, they freed their countries from Western control. If Ramon Magsaysay had lived longer and turned nationalist as some historians believe, the U.S. would never have funded the RM Awards.

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The reverse psychology being employed by Glue-ria’s regime on the matter of the Supreme Court deliberations on the People’s Initiative petition is becoming clearer and clearer with Cheap Justice Panganib’s not so surprising admission that “Heavy pressure is being applied on the justices of the Supreme Court (SC) on the Charter change”, and even suggesting that the vote being requested is 10-5 for the PI. As we have reported here, Glue-ria’s real intention now is the ConAss where the SC will, after gaining the pogi points on the PI, decide in favor of the “voting as one House” of Joe de Venecia.

With the ConAss it’s only the congressmen that will decide, and that’s the easiest for Glue-ria to glue up with the new and 70% expanded pork barrel for each solon.

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