Scapegoating again

DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
11/25/2011



Only after a year-and-a-half of very obvious dilly-dallying — with what was deliberately an ill-conceived Truth Commission and countless false starts of much publicized plunder and electoral fraud accusations against Gloria Arroyo that spurred a national chorus of denouncement after a cat-and-mouse comedy unfurled at the international airport — did the BS Aquino III administration finally file a case to legally hold its supposed bête noire in the country.

It’s not a narrative that can convince any keen observer of the seriousness of this government in seeking justice, especially since the hospital arrest of PeNoy’s predecessor changes nothing in the oppressive conditions brought forth by their successive regimes.

Rates for electricity, water, toll ways, the MRT/LRT, tuition, as well as prices of basic goods — and, consequently, poverty and hunger — all continue to rise. These are but a continuing legacy of an Edsa II Yellow coup more than 10 years ago that reversed the pro-people Erap administration’s no price increase policy.

With GDP growth down to 4.5 percent from a projected 6 percent; a massive drop in exports; beleaguered collections at the Bureau of Customs; the worsening poverty and hunger indices; and, among many other things, the embarrassing admission that government will have to import 860,000 tons of rice again despite promises by the Agriculture Secretary and PeNoy himself that rice imports are a thing of the past, the arrest of Mrs. Arroyo is simply an attempt at a PR bonanza for an incumbent regime that now badly — nay, desperately — needs it.

It’s very clear that around two months ago, the foreign and local PR advisers of Aquino III managed to convince him that the Aquinorroyo “deal” had to be revised, with Arroyo sacrificed for the good of his administration. Besides, the clamor from the victims of Gloria’s transgressions, including those who were cheated by her electoral and political violations, could not be denied anymore.

Still, there was no lack of defense of Arroyo from the largest bunch of hypocrites within the administration and outside its circle, convincing me even more that the whole affair is the moro-moro I have said it to be all along.

While the mouthpieces of Malacañang and the Department of Justice (DoJ) insist that they are only pursuing the law while foregoing due process, the so-called experts cum sophistic legal authorities who defiled the law at Edsa II, like that Jesuit Bernas who justified the violation of the people’s democratic vote for President Estrada, now argue in behalf of Mrs. Arroyo’s legal rights to due process and equal protection of the law.

At the same time, as the Supreme Court was believed to have tipped Gloria off on its impending issuance of the TRO to give her time to make a sprint to the airport, Malacañang had to stop the flight by hook or by crook as the skeptic, in seeing the larger ruse, would have busted all of them.

That larger ruse is the continuance of the system that has prevailed since Edsa I: The myth that the rule of law reigns and that democracy and justice exist in this country.

Edsa I restored the old oligarchic families, all of whom, according of Alfred McCoy’s An Anarchy of Families: State and Family in the Philippines, Marcos had begun to dismantle earlier. Only idiots wouldn’t see that since 1986, upon Cory Aquino takeover, government has merely been reduced to an alternation of oligarchic factions in monopolizing the nation’s wealth.

Gloria is now the scapegoat of these families despite the fact that PeNoy and his cronies all aided and abetted her usurpation of power twice and partook of the economic plunder and defilement of all government institutions and the rule of law.

Real justice, thus, can only be attained if we see all of them jailed with Gloria, starting with the businessmen who have transferred loyalties to Aquino to continue their plunder.

Unlike their ouster and persecution of Estrada that were hugely detested by the general population, the scapegoating of Gloria is a very effective move. Estrada had genuine efforts to champion the people such as the lowering of the MRT fares; the non-implementation of any power or water rate increases in his attenuated two-and-a-half year term; the elimination of the MILF camps; his support of the peasantry in land reform and irrigation programs; and, not to forget, his lunches with the urban poor in their homes.

When they tried to make a scapegoat of Estrada, the masses exploded in protest, leading to the Edsa III uprising where Gloria Arroyo had to machinegun them down. Their moves against Estrada were, in fact, popular only with the oligarchs and the US Embassy.

In contrast, when Arroyo’s henchmen allegedly tried to build up her rally crowd last week with an offer of P500 per person, they weren’t even able to muster a few hundred, forcing them to call it off. Of course, Gloria’s better organizers such as Dinky Soliman and Ronald Llamas are now with PeNoy, gleefully handling billions in doleout funds.

As such, the real cancers continue to fester in our political-economy, with the Arroyo scapegoat as the opiate to distract the people from their misery.

Even as my radio listeners rejoiced at the arrest of Gloria, the euphoria quickly dimmed when I asked: “Does this bring down your electricity or water bill, or the VAT (value added tax) that’s now added to the toll ways, and even to marinated meats and fish (yes, Virginia, even tocino)? Will this stop the fare increases in the MRT or other modes of transport, or the corruption in all three branches of government?”

The worst part of this scapegoating is that the looting and plunder under the new administration will exacerbate under the cloud of dust this arrest has kicked up — which will stay in the air for weeks and months while the Office of the Executive Secretary and its allies in Congress, local government (Quezon City, for one), and everywhere else wreak havoc.

(Tune in to Sulo ng Pilipino/Radyo OpinYon, Monday to Friday, 5 to 6 p.m. on 1098AM; Talk News TV with HTL, Saturday, 8:15 to 9 p.m., with replay at 11 p.m., on GNN, Destiny Cable Channel 8, on “An Interview with Ken Fuller, Author of A Movement Divided”; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)