2014: Year of RP political chaos

2014: Year of RP political chaos

(Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 12-15-2014 MON)

 

Turmoil everywhere in 2014, from East Ukraine, the Middle East, all the way to Asia, has kept this column focused on global events.  Little understood by many Filipinos, though, the impact of such events in relation to the Philippines has been immense, like this deeply palpable effect on oil prices that many should thank countries fighting US hegemonism for.  Oil export-dependent Russia, Iran, Syria, and Venezuela are the real targets of this latest US-Saudi financial siege that aims to buckle these countries’ economic knees.  Filipinos are just short-term accidental winners in this phase of geopolitical struggles.

 

Moreover, this column has missed commenting on the Philippine scene for weeks on end because the domestic political situation at this stage is a confused mess.  The political waters have been terribly muddled by a year of confused, contradictory, and illusory anti-corruption campaigns by BS Aquino that smacked of selective, partisan justice and injustice, as well as prosecution and persecution.  Still, high public expectations are raised for more corruption revelations against all (including administration) politicians, with the political storms somehow leveling the playing field for a much needed diversity of presidential aspirants--or so we think.

 

I am in a special quandary over the splintering of the anti-Gloria Arroyo coalition that helped define the past decade.  That decade of struggle molded much of my political ideology today: Edsa Tres and the struggle of the masses against the manipulation, exploitation, and oppression of the oligarchy and its US partner; the unmasking of the Yellows’ hypocrisy and corruption; the restoration of the central role of the State in promoting the general welfare against the power of the privileged few; and the preservation of the nation’s interest against the onslaught of predatory free-trade and globalization programs.

 

While issues and policy questions matter most, and personalities rank a very far second (if at all), personalities still embody issues and policies, which sometimes political personalities do not completely appreciate themselves.  Thus, when VP Jejomar Binay was under siege, I thought it mattered immensely that he translate the imbroglio into policy debate, which was why I wrote, “Polarize: Binay’s only way.”  But that didn’t happen and Binay even visited Aquino.  The debate with Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV could have also been an opportunity, but this, too, has not come about.  At one point business tycoon Manny V. Pangilinan was even broached as a potential VP to Binay; that certainly swamped the Edsa Tres ideal.

 

I also note President-Mayor Joseph Estrada’s inclusion in the last “presidentiables” survey, which placed him fourth, despite his non-interest.  Erap still embodies many of the ideals that led voters to give him the 1998 presidency, which also led to his unconstitutional 2001 ouster.  The ideals: fierce nationalism (prompting US plots against him); moral honesty (earning the ire of religious hypocrites); a deep sense of fairness that opposed “sovereign guarantees” to Big Business (alienating foreign and local oligarchs); and political-military decisiveness that vanquished the Moro Islamic Liberation Front at Abubakar (but irking the group’s US backers).

 

A key ally of Edsa Tres was the Bagong Katipunero (BK), now known as Magdalo, and its leader Sen. Trillanes, who spent over seven years in detention in opposing the unconstitutional Arroyo presidency.  The BK or Magdalo was a movement of no less than 300 young officers; and many are still in the service.  Certainly, the Magdalo has risen to prominence (having two party-list representatives) with the impetus from fighting alongside Estrada; but for which they have also sacrificed and worked very hard (building a card carrying membership of over 300,000 to date).

 

Internal struggles in the anti-Arroyo movement surfaced during the Manila Peninsula incident.  Several major opposition factions saw divergent final strategies to wrest power after the 2007 elections trounced Arroyo’s legitimacy.  Realignments ensued in the 2010 elections that saw Erap coming from behind, almost winning.  The oligarchs, true to form, favored BS Aquino; hence, the untouchability of their growing mono/oligopolies (particularly in power) today.  But one can argue that Smartmatic-PCOS (and US-controlled Dominion Voting Systems) actually “won” the elections.  There began the 60-30-10 manipulation in 2013 to put one senatorial puppet on top and primed for 2016.

 

It’s a wonder why candidates are jockeying for the presidency when the Smartmatic-PCOS problem has not been resolved at all. Is it sane and logical to take the Commission on Elections and its so-called preparations seriously while this problem festers?

 

The Philippines should go back to manual voting and then electronic transmission of precinct counts.  A host of countries, notably Germany, have either gone back to manual voting and counting, or, like Australia, have stuck to the manual system.  Hopefully, 2015 will be a year of domestic political crystallization--starting with a return to manual voting and a convergence of revolutionary ideals.

 

(Listen to Sulô ng Pilipino, 1098 AM, dwAD, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.; watch GNN Talk News TV with HTL on Destiny Cable Channel 8, SkyCable Channel 213, and www.gnntv-asia.com, Saturday, 8 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m.; search Talk News TV and date of showing on YouTube; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com; and text reactions to 0917-8658664)

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The plunder 'elite'

The plunder ‘elite’

(Herman Tiu Laurel / DieHard III / The Daily Tribune / 10-14-2013 MON)

 

For three decades now we have heard and read how establishment institutions, from school books to Western media, such as Time/CNN, to local mainstream and the addled social media, have portrayed how “plundering” Ferdinand Marcos was.  But the desire of BS Aquino, expressed through House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte, to expand presidential discretion over, for instance, the disposition of government’s share of revenues from the Malampaya natural gas facility reveals just who has the real plundering mindset.  And it’s none other than the jaundiced, Yellow Edsa I power elite led by the likes of the Aquino family and cronies such as Belmonte.

 

Marcos’ earmarking of the Malampaya Fund to energy-related projects at the project’s inception defined a clear sense of priority, propriety, and foresight.  It indicated the clear understanding of the Philippines’ need for continued dedication to indigenous energy source development and protecting the revenues from the Malampaya project from diversion to anything other than that goal.  Decades after Marcos set up the energy development programs to create a self-sufficient energy base for the country, we have been witness to a progressive dismantling of that energy self-sufficiency program and, now, the imminent threat of dissipating one of the last sources of funds dedicated to it.

 

Is the idea of dissipating the Malampaya Fund really BS Aquino’s or is it simply Belmonte manipulating his little “tyke” from the Boston years of Ninoy Aquino’s exile?  The current House Speaker is the epitome of the greed that marks the Yellow decades of governance in this country.  In fact, if the public were to look for the root of the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) schemes, it should call for the investigation of Belmonte and his coterie known as “the Quezon City mafia” that includes Executive Secretary Jojo Ochoa and a one-time treasury chief who is a master in packaging financial instruments to plunder government coffers.  Not surprisingly, Belmonte, in the name of BS Aquino, has now set his sights on frittering away the Malampaya Fund to “alleviate poverty and job creation.”

 

Just think about it: BS Aquino and his top House henchman have passed a national budget of over P2 trillion every year.  They have allocated over P100 billion for the anti-poverty Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) program the past years and over P48 billion for 2014.  Yet one cannot see where the poverty and unemployment alleviation goes.  It’s so bad that even BS Aquino and Yellow crony Walden Bello had to admit that recently in the news article, “Global poverty down, Philippine poverty remains high,” given the National Statistics Coordination Board data that 27.9 percent live below the poverty line.  Worse, National Economic Development Authority chief Arsenio Balisacan, in “Unemployment rate inches up to 7.3% in July 2013,” even had to admit that the “September 2013 underemployment rate rose to 22.7 percent--the highest since July 2006.”

 

So why is Belmonte coming up with this scheme to divert the roughly P150-billion Malampaya Fund?  With three years left of the BS Aquino administration, this gang is showing its intent on cleaning out every fund it can lay its hands on, no matter the scandal that may ensue.  This proposal for opening the use of the Malampaya Fund to other than energy-related purposes will ensure its travel down the long drains of official greed and corruption.

 

While we are wary of any “ouster” moves against a government or president without a prepared alternative, I’m afraid we have to join the call as nothing may be left of the government treasury after BS Aquino and his Yellow cronies are through with it.

 

Although weakened by the sinking US dollar, the Yellow ruling class, being a collaboration of the US neocolonial overlords and their traditional financial-economic-political oligarchy, prevails because of divisiveness built into Philippine society--from obscurantist religious sects, a military indoctrinated against genuine nationalism, to the addled middle class and “social media,” etc.

 

Impoverished Filipinos now see through the Yellow Edsa I “democracy” and “growth” frauds.  Hope lies in the rise of reformist young officers, the militant nationalists, principled “rejectionists” of the Left, and the latent Edsa III forces (if revived in the face of oppression), among other reform movements.

 

But for genuine social reformers to win, weaving a thread of unity across the progressive nationalist elements is a precondition.  Only a meeting of minds of these anti-Yellow forces will suffice.

 

The time to stop and end the plundering elite around BS Aquino and the Yellows is now.  The opportunity to coalesce and win for genuine change is approaching with the anti-presidential pork crusade rising and the US continuing its downward spiral into social and political chaos that not even the resolution of its “shutdown” and its “debt ceiling” crises will stop.

 

(Tune in to 1098 AM, Tuesday to Friday, 5 p.m. to 6 p.m.; watch GNN Destiny Cable Channel 8, Saturday, 8:00 p.m. and replay Sunday, 8 a.m., also on www.gnntv-asia.com, this week on “Gaddafi’s struggle: Lessons for RP”; visit http://newkatipunero.blogspot.com; and text reactions to 09234095739)

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War-puppet regimes

War-puppet regimes.

(Herman Tiu Laurel/ DieHard III/ Tribune column for 7-2-2014 Wednesday)

 

I really want to refocus on several crucial domestic issues, such as the MELORS (Manual Election or Revolution) call from one of our readers. That is a battle cry for this country cheated by the PCOS Smartmatic machines in 2010 and 2013. The need is highlighted today by presidential election candidate runaway leader VP Binay’s warning of “high tech election fraud in 2016”. Indeed, countries like Germany, Netherlands andIreland have banned electronic or automated voting, many others have put them on hold or banned various aspects of it. Its two years to the next election, we have to begin the MELORS campaign now.

 

              However, something overshadows all the immediate domestic issues. The PCOS Smartmatic manipulations were possible because a power far greater that any local force caused the Smartmatic PCOS to be installed. When one really looks into it deeply one will see the U.S. hand. which controlled. The machines in the 2010 and 2013 elections were Smartmatic but the software was from Dominion Voting Systems, a Denver based company today enjoying a seeming monopoly of automated voting technologies after it bought U.S. companies Sequoia, Diebold, ES&S. Reporter Chris Flyod writing in Moscow Times described: “CIA-owned Voting Machines Ensure Bush Victory in 2004”.

 

              The “U.S. pivot” was first broached in 2009, during then U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s first trip to Asia. There followed three elections in the region reveal the U.S. hand in installing what would subsequently be the abuilding anti-China coalition with the U.S. In September 2009 a new Japanese Prime Minister was elected on the basis of a pledge to remove the U.S. Futenma base from island of Okinawa, nine months later PM Yukio Hatoyama resigns on the basis of his “failure” to deliver on that promise. Yoshihiko Noda succeeds Hatoyama in February 2011 and falls in December 2012 with only one memorable act – the nationalization of the Diaoyu or Senkaku islands.

 

              The alleged reasons for the Noda cabinet’s resignation were its “failure to improve the economy and its perceived lack of strong leadership”. So why did the Japanese Diet oust Hatoyama when he was the Japanese leader who dared to do what the Okinawan and Japanese desired – remove U.S. bases. The LDP’s Shinzo Abe, traditional U.S. political enforcers since WWII replaced Noda and championed the removal of the “peace provisions” of the Japanese Constitution and push the “collective defence” for Japan to deploy troops with allies in “defence” of each other. U.S. pressure and not Japanese electorates was behind Japan’s political changes.

 

              Last June 29 a Japanese man committed self-immolation on an elevated railroad girder in Shinjuko district, protesting Shinzo Abe’s “collective defence” and military expansionist plans. Our article “Two-faced U.S.-Aquino-Abe” reported Japanese survey showing as much as 70% of Japanese opposed to Abe’s sabre-rattling. “Abe-nomics” devalued the Yen, raised taxes and inflation but not consumption. Some Japanese are upset enough to commit fiery hara-kiri, yet Abe gets only praises form the West.  Meanwhile, in South Korea, a petition to manually recount the results of the 2012 elections that installed Park Geun-hye has circulated on the Internet.

 

              South Korea presidents have single term limit and hawkish. Rabid anti-North President Lee Myung-bak had to go in 2012. Major candidates to replace Lee were Moon Jae-in, human rights advocate, and former strongman Park Chung-hee’s daughter Park Guen-hye. South Korean voters manually stamp their votes followed by a machine count. As the petition for manual recount says, “The graphs representing the voter turnout and the votes earned for Mr. Moon and Ms. Park, measured over time, were consistently smooth to have occurred in real life,… Only the graphs implied by the Formula of Logistic Function can produce such a beautiful, smooth curves.” Shades of 60-30-10!

 

              U.S. covert operations in its formerly directly occupied countries are bequeathed “left behind” covert operators - those countries’ intelligence agencies. South Korea’s NIS (National Intelligence Service) is one such “left behind”. From various South Korea reports: “Since the Presidential elections…. debate has continued over suspected election interference…. The head Prosecutor has confirmed that from 2011 to December 2012, NIS employees of the Psychological Operations Group made 22 million tweets from 2270 Twitter accounts, tweets that were systematically posted …. linked to interference in the presidential election and politics … postings praising or blasting specific parties or lawmakers…”

 

              The Philippine Comelec’s removal of security measures from its Smartmatic PCOS machines, i.e.  removal of vote receipt to teacher’s digital signatures, last minute switching of 80,000 CF cards, and Dominion Voting System’s non-delivery of the source code in both the 2010 and 2013 elections, ensured installation of U.S. puppet leaders in Malacañang and the Senate. The few independent politicians who made it through are now being ousted for alleged “pork crimes”. These had to happen before the crucial Cha-cha that could change the Constitution and install a 2016 government that will be wholly controlled by the U.S. and ally with the collective Asian war faction.

 

(1098AM, SWAD 5-6pm Tues. to Fri.; GNN Talk New TV program, S “PCA versus Cocolisap”at. 8pm and Sun. 8am on Destiny Cable chn. 8 and SkyCable chn. 213 or www.gnntv-asia.com. or YouTube Talk News TV and add date; visit www.newsulongpilipino.blogspot.com) ###

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