Road Map to the Last Revolution

DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
8/10/2007



The word “revolution” evokes consternation in some Filipinos, but to the vast majority of Filipinos it is becoming more and more conceivable. Some of the most illumined, intellectually perspicacious and conscientious of citizens espouse the idea; while often the most ignorant, mis-educated and mal-educated eschew it. The richest, often the most corrupt, are revolted by the idea even when the sky already seems to be falling for need of change. For many other societies “revolution” has not been anathema, in fact it has been a boon for countries such as Venezuela.

President Hugo Chavez ran and won on a platform of “Bolivarian Revolution”. The forces of the rich and corrupt led by the most prominent businessman, Pedro Carmona, launched a coup with corrupt police generals. In a matter days Hugo Chavez and the broad masses of Venezuelans triumphed over the traditional and financial elite and with a handful of middle class professional employees of foreign transnational oil companies engaged in sabotage– Chavez fired them, closed down oligarch controlled media destabilizing the country, and proceeded with his revolution.

Nine years after Chavez won Venezuela has raised royalties on oil production from 1% to 33% and raised taxation on foreign oil companies by 16%, bringing a bonanza of additional $ 5.8-B to fund state health, education, community programs, infrastructure, industry and defense. Chavez’s revolution was relatively peaceful, not over fifty casualties in the many years of confrontations of pro and anti-Chavez forces. The reason for this mild process is a long history of Bolivarianism in the military that produced a consensus among the military in conjunction with a civilian movement.

Chavez proves that a “civilianized” former military man can successfully create a peaceful and genuine social revolution. This is a lesson for so-called “nationalists” in the Philippine leftist movement where persists a mental block to the ascension of military men to nationalist leadership; but most of the intelligentsia are now shedding off this hangover from the demonization of the Philippine military in the long period of anti-Marcos campaigns. At the same time, from the military have come young leaders like the group of Senator Antonio Trillanes who have shown moral and intellectual integrity.

On the long road to peaceful social revolution in the Philippines these confluence of events cited above marks the crossing of a first landmark. It is just a matter of time that the civilian and military movements for change converge to form an inexorable force of such mass that the counter-reaction to it will just melt away. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and her coalition of profit-seeking corrupt government bureaucrats-military-police bureaucrats and exploitative Big Business corpo-rats has been instrumental in incubating this movement – by their seven years of oppression since Edsa Dos.

The old stage of political comedies highlighted by the trapo antics in congress and the senate no longer elicits rapt attention from the people – only media seems to take it seriously, headlining the squabble for committee powers, etc. The main players vying for the 2010 presidential elections are making fools of themselves thinking Gloria Arroyo will yield at all, and in time she’ll make the move to quash all thought of her leaving the august halls of Malacañang. This is going unnoticed, but the word is that Esperon is recruiting for a palace coup; with Gloria’s blessings? Naturally.

Gloria believes she can bide her time, she’s being granted by the trapo opposition three more years to plot that palace coup to save herself; only fools cannot see this. A bigger fool is he who will accept her word that she will no longer stay beyond 2010, like her word not to run again in 2003 and every other promise she’s made. The only thing that can delay the fruition of the Last Revolution is for Gloria to make people believe she’s leaving in 2010. Fortunately, only the trapo opposition believes Gloria is ready to make an exit – 75% of Filipinos don’t believe her the slightest bit.

Two and a half months after the last election and soon after the trapo opposition factions showed their fickle motives in the scramble for senate spoils, the real anti-Gloria opposition has been realigning and refocusing. Its greatest strength and promise is the great and early disillusionment of the nation in the trapo politics and the emergence of the new leaders standing firm to principles and facing unflinchingly the onslaught of Gloria and the entire system’s oppression. Two issues stand as the next landmarks on the road to the Last Revolution:

President Estrada remains undeterred in his quest for truth and justice despite Gloria’s prejudgment of his Sandigabayan case. Senator Antonio Trillanes IV remains unflinching in the face of the clearly corrupted and unjust actions of the Gloria regime and its sycophants in the judicial and military bureaucracy to stop him from performing his solemn duties for the Filipino people. These two cases stand atop the mountain of daily issues that reflect the undemocratic power structure in Philippine society today – issues such a power, water, telecom rates, taxes and unemployment, ad nausea.

Only the next tremor is awaited for the earthquake to begin and the socio-political tsunami to sweep away the decayed present order. For its aftermath, we have the roadmap for the Republic of Rizalia we will explain in our coming columns.

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