Arangkada for July 16, 2005

 

TAPOLANG PROTESTA

 

Niang mga ebidensiya nga si Presidente Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, sukwahi sa iyang pasalig nga motingob na sa iyang panahon pagduma sa nasud ug pagpatuman sa gikinahanglang mga kausaban, nisentro sa tanan niyang paningkamot ug nigamit sa tanang kahimanan sa gobyerno aron paghaw-as sa iyang kaugalingon gikan sa nitibugsok nga popularidad ug seryusong hulga sa pagkalagpot gikan sa puwesto:

• Ginamit ang nihit nang daan nga nasudnon ug lokal nga panudlanan, ang tanang alyadong mga politiko, gikan sa mga mayor ug mga gobernador ngadto sa labing ubos nga opisyal sa barangay, gitapok sa Malakanyang, sa luhong hotels sa Metro Manila ug sa ubang urban centers sa nasud sama sa Sugbo aron pagdeklarar sa ilang way kamatayong suporta para sa presidente;
• Bisan sa gideklarar nga kaandam ni Presidente Arroyo pag-atubang ug pagtubag sa mga pasangil batok niya pinaagi sa impeachment process, ang alyadong mga kongresista wa nay kukaikog nga nangamang sa ilang kaubanan nga nipakita nag tilimad-on nga mopirma sa impeachment complaint batok sa presidente;

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• Way pupanaganang nipalihok sa iyang mga itoy ug mga torotot paglawgaw sa Garci tapes, apil nang (1) Edgar Ruado, ang nagpailang chief of staff ni Kongresista Iggy Arroyo, nga nipirma og affidavit pag-angkon nga siyay gika-istorya sa presidente sa telepono, (2) Ilocos Sur Governor Chavit Singson kinsa nikalit lag pakita sa "X" tapes sa giingong plano ni kanhi presidente Joseph Estrada pagpukan sa administrasyon ug pagpatay ni Presidente Arroyo, ug (3) binayrang mga sakop sa media ug text, phone ug Internet brigades nga nipabaha sa tradisyonal nga media ug cyberspace sa nangalisbong propaganda pagtabon sa pagpanikas sa presidente;
• Paghakot sa iyang mga loyalista sa Metro Manila, sa Sugbo ug ubang bahin sa nasud—nakatag-an mo, ginamit gihapon ang kuwarta sa gobyerno—aron pagmatuod nga mas daghan sila kay sa otro sang hinakot nga mga dumadapig sa politikanhong oposisyon sa Makati City; ug
• Pagamit sa militar ug kapolisan paghudlat sa mga grupong tinuorayng nagprotesta para sa dinalian niyang resignasyon, sama sa pagpaulbo nila og kanyon sa tubig ug bomba sa teargas para sa gatosan ka demonstrador sa Malakanyang sa Sugbo ug sa ilang pagtanggong sud sa pipila ka oras sa mga demonstrador gikan sa mga probinsiya sa Luzon.

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Niang mga ebidensiya nga di hingpit ang determinasyon sa mga grupong niawhag sa resignasyon ni Presidente Arroyo:

• Wa sila magkahiusa kinsay moduma sa nasud kon mabakanteng katungdanan sa presidente;
• Ang tradisyonal nga mga politiko andam mosayaw sa Cha-Cha bisan magpabilin sa puwesto ang presidente; ug
• Ang mas ligdong untang grupo nilang kanhi presidente Corazon Aquino ug sa nang-resign nga mga sakop sa gabinete gustong mokanaog si Presidente Arroyo pero tapolan na silang moprotesta sa kadalanan. [30]  leo_lastimosa@abs-cbn.com

Inquirer Editorial

VICE President Noli de Castro may yet become the pivot in the crisis besieging the presidency of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. If the President is booted out of office, the constitutional mantle will pass on to him. This seems to be the consensus of some influential players, such as former President Corazon Aquino, who have called for the President's resignation. And if an earlier Pulse Asia survey is to be believed, 60 percent of Filipinos are ready to accept De Castro as president, acting or real.

The prospect may be discomfiting to thinking Filipinos. To some people, even as vice president, De Castro has merely been "acting." Such is the distaste and repugnance for media personalities engendered by the presidency of Joseph Estrada and the candidacy of Fernando Poe Jr. that many remain in denial that, indeed, De Castro, is a heartbeat away from the presidency. The prospect is too "real" as to be surreal for some. Perhaps this is what the poets mean when they write about the "harshness of reality."

But isn't De Castro a broadcast personality, a journalist? Alas, if in other countries journalists are considered intellectuals whose opinions and positions are eagerly awaited to resolve social problems and crises, in the Philippines they are mere carnival sideshows. For how else would one explain the broadcast media's description of their programs as "infotainment"?

This same distrust for entertainers is the reason there seems to be few takers for the call of former Sen. Loren Legarda that De Castro step down because the election results were allegedly rigged in his favor. If she indeed won the vice-presidency, would she be any different from him? At ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corp., they were both newsreaders. They made the news believable. In short, they were actors. Entertainers.

But the fact that a big majority of Filipinos are willing to have De Castro take over the reins of government only shows that they are committed to resolving the crisis within the bounds of the Constitution. It shows that people are repelled by calls to resolve the crisis by means that undermine our constitutional foundations.

The calls are diverse, but they amount to the same thing: extra-constitutional jabs that could only worsen rather than remedy the problem. Pangasinan Archbishop Oscar Cruz, retired Bishop Julio Labayen and a few Metro Manila bishops have called for a "transition" government, while leftist forces have either proposed a "junta" or a "council of state" that would take over the government once Ms Arroyo resigns or is ousted. What all of these calls presuppose is a constitutional order that is a shambles.

The Left cannot exactly be accused of revisionism. It really looks at the liberal democratic order as a failure, an artifice of governance. It does not recognize such an order because it derides its basis-popular elections-as an exercise in bourgeois boredom. In short, it does not recognize the Constitution. It does not recognize the democracy that forms and informs the expression of constitutionalism. It does not recognize this because democracy is popular, people-centered. The Left's calls for De Castro to step down and the establishment of a state council to govern the nation (presumably, the Left forms the majority in the council) show its bias for statism, for centralized authority, for single-party fixes.

As for the so-called "progressive" bishops, there's a quixotic dimension in their initiative to form a group consisting of a number of academics, intellectuals and other leaders of society who would manage the transition. Since the group is envisioned to screen applicants for the highest government positions, it is nothing more than a talent search committee. Which may be well and good, but from where will the committee derive its authority? Do clerics have to be involved in the minutiae of personnel management? Is it within the competence of bishops and priests to run government or dictate how it is run?

All of these questions crop up because denying the succession and transition provided by the Constitution creates a black hole of ifs and buts, of trial and error, of hits and misses. It's a power vacuum that adventurists and interlopers will be eager to fill. The majority of our people apparently crave certainty. They want the Constitution, with all its flaws, to be respected and followed.

©2005 www.inq7.net all rights reserved

Gloriagate Blogs

Posted by Alecks Pabico
PCIJ

LET a thousand (journalist) blogs bloom.

No doubt about it, the current political crisis rocking the Arroyo administration has made blogging, for all its unmediated, instantaneous and personal nature, an attractive reporting medium for Filipino journalists. Of course, the case for blogging journalists has already been made by the likes of Manuel L. Quezon III, Jove Francisco (By Jove!), Chin Wong ( Digital Life), Erwin Oliva (cyberbaguioboy), to name a few, even before we at the PCIJ started venturing into the blogosphere ourselves.

Recent welcome additions to the journalist blogging community are GMA Network's Howie Severino (Side Trip with Howie Severino), who has a blog on blogs today, and Philippine Daily Inquirer's editorialist John Nery (Newsstand). Much earlier, we also saw GMA reporters coming out with blogs of their own — Tina Panganiban-Perez ( crimson page) and Joseph Morong (Essays and Other Lullabies). The media network is said to be encouraging its reporters to go into blogging.

Another journalist has also been blogging anonymously since May at The Early Edition.

While the mainstream media based in Metro Manila seem slow in grasping the potential of blogging as an important addition to the journalistic toolkit, interesting developments have happened elsewhere. In Cebu, Sun.Star has spiced up its coverage of "Gloriagate" by launching the Citizen Watch: The Arroyo Presidency blog. There's also dyAB, the first radio station (as far as I know) that is complementing all its programs with blogs ( dyAB Abante Bisaya). 

Chavit's Turn

Posted by Luz Rimban 
PCIJ

Things are getting curiouser and curiouser.

First it was the battle of the press statements. Then it was the war of news conferences. Then they launched the battle of the rallies. Today, it was the war of the wiretapped conversations, the latest engagement in the battle of pirated CDs.

Ilocos Sur Gov. Luis "Chavit" Singson, a diehard supporter of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, yesterday released to the media what he said was a wiretapped conversation in which former President Joseph Estrada appears to have approved a plan to assassinate Mrs. Arroyo and do away with former President Fidel Ramos.

Singson said two persons he did not know had given him copies of the CDs containing a wiretapped phone call supposedly made by Estrada in May 2004 to former armed forces chief Joselin Nazareno. He told reporters that this was part of the unreleased segments of the "mother of all tapes" in the possession of former National Bureau of Investigation deputy director Samuel Ong, the same tape from which the "Hello, Garci" conversations came.

Reporters lapped up the handful of CDs Singson brought along for distribution to the press. The CDs were stamped with labels: they were entitled "The X-Tapes" and even had a caricature of President Joseph Estrada, as well as a playlist of the six cuts in the CD, the last of which was the wiretapped Estrada conversation.

The first five cuts of the CD included a call in which Estrada inquired from Nazareno, who seemed to be the one being tapped, about the results of the 2004 count. Another call had an Estrada aide talking to a politician or political operative in Mindanao. Senator Panfilo Lacson said in an interview with DZMM that these calls appeared to have been recorded by the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the Philippines with the cooperation of Smart, the mobile-phone company. (The Smart spokesman subsequently denied they had cooperated with ISAFP.)

The last cut, where Estrada supposedly plots the president's assassination, sounds suspect, as the sound quality is noticeably clearer than those of the other cuts. Lacson insisted this was a manufactured conversation and so did Senator Jinggoy Estrada.

Over GMA Channel 7, the younger Estrada called Chavit's revelations a "diversionary tactic meant to shift public attention to Erap." Jinggoy said that in his father's long years of public service, had not heard of Erap plotting the murder of anyone. The same could not be said of the man who released the tape, Jinggoy said, referring to Singson.

In the alleged conversation, a voice, supposedly Nazareno's, told his caller, supposedly Estrada, that Lacson had approved a plan to remove "pandak" (midget) and replace her with a "tanda" (crone) through a transition government.

The first voice then said "tanda" would get sick, leading the way for Estrada's return to power. Tanda was apparently a reference to Ramos.

Beside Singson at the press conference was Ramon "RJ" Jacinto, former Lakas congressional candidate and owner of radio station DZRJ. In 2001,at the height of EDSA 2, Jacinto was also responsible for coming out with anti-Estrada CDs containing songs lampooning the former action star. He is also a staunch Arroyo supporter.

Early yesterday morning, text messages sent to journalists already announced that DZRJ would be playing wiretapped CDs implicating Estrada.

This latest release appears to be an attempt by the President's supporters to muddy the trail and confuse the public mind. It was apparently released in an attempt to draw public attention away from the "Hello, Garci" tapes and a recent revelation that the president had talked to Garcilliano about padded votes or dagdag.

Meanwhile, in Malacanang earlier today, a feisty Mrs. Arroyo lashed back at her critics and accused them of having no plan of action, merely a "blueprint for obfuscation."

"Even if people don't like me right now, neither will they follow a road to nowhere," she said in an uncharacteristically animated and forceful manner. In a meeting with some 500 Filipino-Americans gathered at Malacanang's Rizal Hall, the president also announced her endorsement of constitutional change and a restructuring of the Cabinet to allow her, she said, to focus on the business of reforms. She named erstwhile NEDA chief Romulo Neri head of the budget department and banker Peter Favila  secretary of trade and industry. She  did not, however, announce a timetable for charter change and made no commitment to calling elections earlier than the end of her term in 2010.

She sidestepped these issues, instead promising more doleouts, in an apparent bid to win more public support.  These included cheap rice to be sold in National Food Authority rolling stores, subsidies to local governments that would allow them to extend Philhealth cards for another year, and a road construction program to give jobs to the unemployed.

 The measures did not include the demands the Cabinet members who resigned last week had made of the president, among them, a revamp of government to rid it of those associated with First Gentleman Mike Arroyo. The president's speech was more like something she usually gave out while on the campaign stump. It was apparently intended to show she was in control and it was business as usual.