The Aquinorroyo Conspiracy beneath the Drama

YESTERDAY, TODAY & TOMORROW
Linggoy Alcuaz
11/28-12/4/2011
OpinYon Regular



In March 2000, I was invited by Bert Pedrosa to join the Silent Protest Movement. I had met Bert and his wife, Chit (the author of the Unauthorized Biography of First Lady Imelda Romualdez Marcos), at a Fourteenth Anniversary Commemoration of the February 22 – 25, 1986 EDSA People Power Revolution at the basement of the Club Filipino.

The SPM, later better known as the “Exclamation Point Movement!” was protesting against the alleged massive corruption of the Estrada Administration.

Actually, Erap had been falling in the popularity and/or satisfaction ratings in the Pulse Asia and SWS surveys for the third and fourth quarters of 1999 and the first quarter of 2000.

Our SPM/EPM! used to meet every Saturday morning in a restaurant on Jupiter Street, Bel Air, Makati.

We averaged about a dozen in number. We were composed of veterans like Linda “Inday” Olaguer Montayre and former FVR DBM Secretary Salvador “Badong” or “Jun” Enriquez, the Pedrosas and even 1950’s Cold Warrior Ramon Binamira, as well as new faces.

‘Sticker’ Success
Our pioneer project was the square, black and white sticker with a slanted (to the right) Exclamation Point.

It was an instant success from its soft launch a forum of Justice Cecilia Munoz-Palma and Sister Christine Tan at the Manila Polo Club on the last Monday night of March, 2000.

However, before the end of April, we had an internal falling out with Bert and Mon over the timing and the decision of calling for a Noise Barrage.

We parted ways and the Movement stalled just as Erap declared his “All-Out War” against the MILF.

Meanwhile, Jun and Inday organized and invited me to join the People’s Consultative Assembly (PCA).

The PCA, although overshadowed and overtaken by KOMPIL II and COPA, planned, initiated and executed the Ouster of Erap from October 2000 to January 20, 2001.

Let us move fast forward to the post May 10, 2010 Presidential Elections.

On Thursday, June 3, 2010, the Solidarity 4 Sovereignty surfaced at a People’s Assembly or Congress at the Kalayaan Hall of the Club Filipino.

Since then, I have been invited to two other activities including the People’s SONA in June or July this year where two Philippine Marine Officers (one active and one retired) spoke and rattled the Aquino Administration.

‘Zarzuela’ Statement
Following is the latest statement from the S4S covering the whole “HULLABALLOO” from the May 10, 2010 Presidential Elections until the present contest between the Executive and the Judiciary, P-Noy and the Supreme Court, Aquino and Arroyo:

SOLIDARITY 4 SOVEREIGNTY STATEMENT
ON THE TRO – HOLD ORDER “ZARZUELA” AND THE REAL ISSUES
(Topic breaks supplied. – Editor)

“We want Gloria Arroyo charged, indicted and punished for her many crimes against the Filipino people when she was president.

“But why has it taken the Noynoy Administration a year and a half for her to be formally charged with electoral fraud?

“Why have the DOJ and Ombudsman sat on the many cases of plunder, cheating and human rights violations against Gloria Arroyo?

“Why was the Executive Order on the Truth Commission so flawed it was easy for the Supreme Court to declare it unconstitutional?

“Why was it even headed by a chairman who was clearly beholden to Gloria?

Electoral Fraud Raps
“Many Filipinos are elated by the charge of electoral fraud against Gloria Arroyo for which a departure hold order by a court has been officially issued against her.

“But renowned constitutionalists/legal experts have stated that electoral fraud is a new offense after the Omnibus Election Code because of which the law has still many loopholes with the mechanics of the said law not still in place making her exoneration or dismissal of her case almost inevitable.

“Are we being taken for a ride by this administration and its “student council subalterns”?

“Is the “zarzuela” or mass deception underway to make it appear Gloria Arroyo is being prosecuted for her crimes just to pacify the Filipino people and to drum up popularity for Noynoy Aquino?

“Or is this part of the deal that Noynoy and Gloria entered into before the May 1O elections?

Conspiracy Evident
“The “Aquinorroyo Conspiracy” is becoming quite evident.

“At this stage Mike Arroyo and Mikey have escaped judgment for their many crimes against the Filipinos and no one in the Noynoy camp is complaining.

“The Filipino people will be left with an empty bag, thanks to Noynoy.

“Gloria Arroyo cheated FPJ in 2004 to continue her Presidency. She cheated again in 2007 to ensure that the check and balance of the Legislative will be bent in her favor as Executive. She had to cheat in 2010 through a Comelec that unconstitutionally turned over the elections to Smartmatic.

“Besides, the big eco-political elite did not want their interests threatened by a failure or postponement of elections thus they paved the way for Gloria to deal with her successor.

“Huge money changed hands for which we have been informed the late Gov. Nantes paid with his life and for which we have been calling for an investigation.

More Frightening, Sinister
“Who benefited from the cheating of Gloria Arroyo in 2010 through PCOS machines that read unauthenticated Xeroxed copies and not actual votes? Not the 2010 presidentiables who lost!

“Gloria had to cheat in 2010 to guarantee her protection as she ended her term as president, from prosecution and punishment and save her/her family’s life, but most important of all, to keep intact the trillions of people’s money she had stolen with her husband and sons.

“And the end game is even more frightening and sinister – a constituent assembly that will usher a parliamentary form of government and erase all the crimes of Gloria Arroyo and family in the old system of government.

“At the same time it will legitimize the unconstitutionality of the last elections from the presidency to the last mayor.

A Clever Cover-Up
“We see that this issue between the Supreme Court and the DOJ erupted when the results of a survey showed that more than half of our population or more than 1OM Filipino families said they were hungry.

“This seeming conflict of supposed Constitutional crisis proportions is a clever cover-up for the worsening poverty and hunger of our people which Noynoy Aquino has not cared to or has failed to address for the past 17 months.

“Noynoy has not even been able to control the runaway prices of food, fuel, other basic commodities, electricity and transportation, even toll fees, etc.

“Is there any economic relief under his watch especially with forecasts of further global economic collapse?

What should we do?

For Other Plunderers, too
“Threats of a global war confront us increasingly.

“Developed nations want to depopulate poor nations like ours so that they can use our mineral resources for themselves.

“Thus, we are ready to unite with groups based on principled goals to save ourselves and our nation.

“As we question Noynoy’s legitimacy, we can tolerate him if he will appropriately respond ASAP to the present hunger of the Filipino people by reducing prices of goods/commodities affordable to our poor.

“If he is unable to deliver, we shall seek other leaders/allies who will repudiate/suspend our national debt servicing 70% of our national budget, use the funds for education, health, housing and other social services and generate employment by empowering our manufacturing sector through the establishment of cheap electricity.

“We will consider as partners those who will genuinely charge, indict and punish Gloria Arroyo and family and make them return the colossal funds they plundered from our people.

“This should be done for other plunderers.

Keeping Sovereignty Intact
“We also call on our people to shelve with finality the foreign sponsored RH Bill with its clear mandate for abortion and population control.

“We ask our Muslim brothers and sisters to join us resolve the conflict in Mindanao with our sovereignty intact.

“And if we are to truly build our nation and make it strong, we must ensure that our military will no longer be just the glorified bodyguards of our politicians or wealthy elite but that they shall be trained and treated as the protector of our people and our State.

“Finally, we invite all Filipino patriots of all ideologies or political parties, of all sectors and regions, especially our youth, to build with us a nation that honors and protects our inalienable and sovereign rights.

“God Bless Us All! Mabuhay ang Bansang Pilipinas! Mabuhay ang Pilipino!!!”

Things just get worse

DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
11/28/2011



While mainstream media, politicians, lawyers, text addicts, and the man-on-the-street get sucked into a Gloria Arroyo-carping mindset, the situation on the ground just keeps getting worse. A new think tank that’s making its presence felt recently released some startling findings about the Philippines.

A report by Stratbase entitled, “Study traces poverty incidence to vested interests,” cited World Bank data showing the increase in the number of poverty-stricken Filipinos by 3.4 million between the years 2008 and 2009. Even worse, its comparison of growth rates in Asia showed how much of a basket case we are. It said that “while East Asian economies posted average annual GDP growth rates from 3.6 to 6.0 percent between 1960 and 2008, the Philippines only managed an annual average increase of 1.4 percent during the same period.”

But there’s more: While the Asian Development Bank (ADB) was said to have found “that for every one percent growth in gross domestic product (GDP), poverty incidence has gone down by an average of 1.5 percent across the world and two percent within Asia… poverty incidence in the Philippines had actually risen since 2003, a time when the economy (was) thought to have grown very well.”

Even with the modicum of growth the Philippines has supposedly gained, not only is its poverty incidence not been reduced — it is, in fact, growing. What this means is that we are doing even worse than Africa.

As I have always said, the Philippines is on course toward “Africanization,” i.e. becoming as poor as the poorest in Africa. But, it seems, we are now getting there even faster.

So who exactly are these “vested interests?” They are the “rent seekers” whom Stratbase says “attempt to derive ‘economic rent’ by manipulating the social or political environment in which economic activities occur, rather than by adding value.” Even though it failed to provide specifics, it’s quite easy to glean that these rent seekers comprise the oligarchs who use their money powers to obtain concessions from government and/or take over state contracts and assets; politicians who use their positions to enrich themselves; media prostitutes who peddle information and opinion for a fee; as well as lawyers who answer to the highest bidder; and so on.

Notably, only a few choose not to be part of this rent seeking class. A fine example is eminent lawyer and constitutionalist Alan Paguia, who, despite being among the first to criticize the Department of Justice’s hold departure order, declined the offer to join the legal team of Gloria Arroyo, leaving his other compañeros to stumble over one another in hopping aboard the hospitalized lawmaker’s defense bandwagon.

Still, there is a very deep irony in Stratbase itself. While it indicts the vested interests or rent seekers, its officers and academic resources also have strong ties to these oligarchs or their intellectual hires.

Its chairman Jose Ibazeta, for example, was an Anscor (A. Soriano Corp.) president, as well as a director and treasurer of a known port management giant, and a chairman of state holding firm, Psalm (Power Sector Assets and Liabilities Management Corp.), which privatizes our country’s power assets to the oligarchs. Meanwhile, Antonio “Tony Boy” Cojuangco is a member of the board, along with Amboy Foreign Affairs Secretary Albert del Rosario. Among its academic advisers are Calixto Chikiamco of the pro-privatization Foundation for Economic Freedom; Ayala adviser Randy David; and pro-USAid RH (Reproductive Health) bill law professor Raul Pangalangan.

In its prospectus, Stratbase says, “Our knowledge of the government and the ability to establish strategic communications network with policy and decision makers ensures that our client’s voices are heard.” Sounds like lobbying or rent seeking to me.

The Philippine ruling class that runs our society and political-economy today, of which Stratbase appears to be an epitome, is (in a real sense) fraudulent, self-seeking, parasitic, intellectually dishonest, hypocritical, and incompetent — as can be witnessed in all the raging debates about Mrs. Arroyo. Even as worse transgressions by the oligarchs and their foreign masters against our nation continue to escalate, all these are merely glossed over by such lofty campaigns against the “evils” of the past.

Good thing we still have a number of outstanding individuals who represent the interests of the vast silent majority. Paguia, for one, continues to shine a light in the legal arena; while others such as Mang Naro Lualhati, Jojo Borja, Butch Junia, Bono Adaza together with Sulo ng Pilipino, Bagong Katipuneros (Magdalos), PLM and others, continue to fight for several nationalistic causes. They certainly prove that, unlike the ruling class, not everybody is simply out for a buck.

But, while the people have yet to seize victory, things can only get worse. No, we’re not just speaking of political-economic decay but one that eats away at the spirit of man, too. With all the demoralization, im-moralization, doublespeak, obfuscation, scapegoatism, hypocrisy and idiocy around, under a supposed democracy where the economic life of the nation deteriorates while only a few monopolize it in greater and greater proportions, just how can one’s humanity be left untarnished?

As Mahatma Gandhi correctly pointed out, “Corruption and hypocrisy ought not to be inevitable products of democracy, as they undoubtedly are.”

True, some may continue to point the accusing finger — like the pot to the kettle — to hide their own corruption; but as long as there are Filipinos who won’t tolerate such hypocrisy, there’s hope that they can be brought together in a political movement that will oust the corrupt in our society in due time.

(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; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com for our articles plus TV and radio archives)

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)