Sheer "garapal"

DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
11/20/2006



Angara launched his biography last week and announced that he is maintaining himself and his LDP as the dominant political opposition party. The bio fashions him as a “seer” by the sea and sierra, a false environmentalist veneer for his image badly tarnished by allegations of massive illegal logging and deadly flash flooding in his province of Aurora. After compromising Estrada with his distorted diary entries, sabotaging the FPJ candidacy in Gloria’s service, and Sotto, Oreta, Honasan and Lacson bolting from his LDP, Angara can be nothing more than an opposition spoiler – Ang Garapal Talaga.

It is very likely that Angara can get the title of “dominant opposition party” from the Comelec that will naturally do Gloria’s bidding. When they do that, the more obvious it will be that Angara and his one-member LDP will just be a handmaiden of the cheater, plunderer and murderess in Malacañang who’s out to despoil the 2007 elections as they conspired to do in 2004, and despoiled our fledgling democratic system in 2001. He’s been serving the same purpose since Marcos’ time, but then as handmaiden of the Americans in sabotaging U.P. and then Marcos by joining the CIA-NED’s Namfrel.

In case you don’t know what the NED is, its National Endowment for Democracy which I was surprised to know now has Melinda Quintos de Jesus on its Board, which could be a reward for the many media hatchet jobs she’s done for the U.S. in monkey wrenching this country through the media (as she did in demonizing Estrada) in the same manner that Angara is doing through the political system. Angara has really come a long way from just being a lawyer (read: fixer) for American companies despite his speech deficiency of being unable to pronounce “f” and “p” in their proper places.

Angara is taciturn and soft-spoken which often taken for humility and depth, I actually believe it’s a put on to hide a vacuous mind which I tend to think is the case. “Can this be the true since he had done so much reforms during his stint at the U.P.,and he brought so much money into U.P.!”, I have heard some Angara admirers say. Those reforms are mere Xerox copies of the World Bank and ADB programs for subjugating our education to the globalization process that was then starting as Angara took over U.P., and the funds came liberally from multilateral agencies and American foundations.

In the land ruled by the garapals, from Gloria down to Garci, Angara is good company to the Kampi. What will Angara’s opposition line up will look like, taken from those left out by the Estrada list or the UNO line up? Let’s see, there’s this party left behind by a deceased presidential timber from which Gloria can pick prime candidate for Angara’s “opposition”, a sure losers but certain to make enough propaganda impact to serve as the rationale for successful cheating. With Angara’s help the 2004 election fraud can be repeated for one last time to seal the doom of genuine democracy.

Back to the issue of environment, I picked up good news in global “afforestation”. The world is gaining back more trees lost in the past decades, but among countries where alarming rates of deforestation continues is the Philippines. New FAO (Food Agricultural Organization) studies using new measurement protocols found that among the 50 nations studied, forest area in percentage terms shrank fastest from 1990 to 2005 in Nigeria and the Philippines, and expanded fastest in Viet Nam, Spain and China. Angara’s province is a prime wooded area depleting very fast, what’s you answer to this Mr. Angara?

The gall of Angara-pal really! To proclaim himself and his one-man party in the face of all the facts that point to his political bedding with Gloria, the one he’s politically married to and not the other one. Angara has been traveling with the political Gloria in what seems like perpetual political honeymoon, and the plain truth is that he’s more often with Gloria and has made nary a tip of a hat to the only genuine opposition leader President Joseph E. Estrada. Yet, Angara dares to drop Estrada’s name in his public pronouncements that he, Angara, is going to work with Estrada.

Estrada is the top endorser for the coming elections, according to one of the recent SWS surveys. The politicians of all stripes have been trooping to Estrada for have a little of his public good will rub off on them. Others go also join up with UNO to reinforce their opposition credentials. You won’t find Angara in any of these as he may just be cold shouldered, or the UNO meeting organizers may change venue just to avoid embarrassing Angara. Yet, this pariah dares to declare himself the dominant opposition leader and his party the foremost opposition party! Ang-gall-pala, ah, Angrara-pal!

One of the saddest thing I witness in this Angara comedy of a book launching is the infestation of the crop of young and neophyte mass media professionals who are forced to do PR for the likes of Angara. They were texting and calling us to attend Angara’s book launch, I politely assented without intending to attend the farce. Political power in our society rests on such charlatans as Angara – what a pity.

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