If this is calm, give me emergency!

Crisis? What crisis?
For those of you outside the emerald 7,000 islands—relax! Yesterday President Macapagal-Arroyo lifted the state of emergency, marking an end to the crisis that accompanied the 20th anniversary of the People Power revolution. The emergency is well and truly over, as can be seen from a brief survey of today’s paper:

• an NPA landmine killed two policemen in the resort town of Puerto Galera;
• two bombs went off near a police station in Pasig, Metro Manila;
• the mayor of Basilan, Mindanao, was shot and killed;
• an army trooper was killed in a firefight with communists in San Andres, Quezon;
• a newspaper editor and two columnists were charged with inciting sedition;
• five opposition congressmen remain “under the custody of the House of Representatives” and face arrest if they leave the building; and
• 1,200 US-trained elite forces remain on standby at Fort Bonifacio while some 500-crowd dispersal troops from the National Capital Region Command (NCRCom) are ready for deployment at Camp Aguinaldo.

Oh, one more (and this is the clincher for me): 10 electric posts fall down in Makati City.

The president explained that the recent crisis had made the country "stronger".

Comments

[Madame Chiang]

I wrote something in a very similar vein to my brother last night...the notable exception being the 10 lamp posts falling over! For me the clincher was the end of the standoff at a city hall in Batangas. My brother made one comment...you've been in Manila too long!

[Sidney]

Ha,ha... love your sense of humor !

[hrm]

Torn: am currently not in correct frame of mind to disagree with article below, but thought I'd flag it for your attention. What do you think? Medyo na-asar lang kasi ako nung nabasa ko.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,,1725555,00.html

Kind regards, HRM

[torn]

Bonjour eevil midget. Good question -- I'll try to respond in a separate post if I may (and along the way I'll try alert people to your wonderful blog).

[hrm]

And good day to you too torn. Thank you for the kind referrals, but I am simply glad to be in blog-conversations with fellow filipinos. A little starved of them you see. And that article did irk me.

Some food for thought for your future post on this by the way... I cam across this:

http://www.businessweek.com/1999/99_41/b3650091.htm

[a de brux]

Torn, Sidney,

"The current anti-government campaigns in Thailand and the Philippines seem anything but democratic, the UK consevative Guardian's John Aglionby writes on Tuesday March 7, 2006

What really irritates me is that most of European media and even those in the US have bought Gloria Arroyo's spin that she declared a state of emergency because there was a coup d'état attempt.

Guardian bought the the Palace line, hook, line and sinker when it said "The Philippines appears to be calming down after a week of alleged attempted coups, emergency rule and a crackdown on the media."

This is pure baloney. All Palace fabricated evidences lead to nothing remotely pointing to a coup d'état attempt.

Really now!

Malacanang should be stopped from propagating their load of frogshit.