Gloria: the barnacle speaks

It was me all along!
The last few weeks have not been pleasant ones for the President of the Philippines. In the wake of a bribe-taking scandal, her son has had to (temporarily) stand down from his congressional seat. A former leading figure from her own party (Renato de Villa), a presidential candidate (Raul Roco) and a vice presidential candidate (Loren Legarda) have called for snap elections. The official opposition has demanded impeachment. Newspaper columnists have given their pieces headlines like “From crisis to crisis” and questioned whether, even if Gloria survives the election-tampering and jueteng pay-off scandals, she will retain any authority to govern. On Friday a 5,000 strong rally at Liwasang Bonifacio called for her resignation. Tonight she was forced to abandon her lofty “no comment” position and, in a somewhat humiliating move, to come before the nation and look dolefully at the camera and say “sorry” for a “lapse in judgement”.

Nevertheless, even allowing that in the weird and wonderful world of Philippine politics nothing should ever be ruled out, my money is still on the barnacle.

Let’s take the demand for snap elections. C’mon, who are you kidding? The country could barely hold an election it had six years to prepare for—how can anyone believe a “snap” election would be anything else but an expensive and disastrous fiasco? Just like the 2004 mess in fact—the very election that one of these scandals is all about.

What about impeachment? I doubt that very much. Gloria and her allies may not be the greatest administration in history, but one thing she and her allies are very good at doing is holding the coalition together. It is true that Erap had majorities in both houses in November 2000 too and that did stop him from being kicked out. Still, the Lakas bloc is a far more homogeneous and professional organization than the loose confederation that backed Erap.

Street protests? I have seen no desire for this whatsoever. The 5,000 people at Liwasang Bonifacio was a tiny number in a city the size of Manila. If I decided to run for “King of Manila” I could probably rustle up 5,000 souls without too much difficulty. Given that both the official opposition and the leftist groups that backed the protests could bring along plenty of supporters and “volunteers”, 5,000 people means that pretty well nobody from Jose Public showed up.

The courts? The tapes—the sole evidence in the electoral tampering scandal—are inadmissible.

So, I think Gloria will cling onto the shipwreck that is the Philippines. Scarred but defiant, the barnacle will survive.

Comments

[lucy]

Please run for King of Manila! I´d be among your crowd so you can make it 5,001....

I´m fascinated by the current situation with the barnacle, do keep us updated...finding it hard to get any comprehensible reports from anywhere else as the Filipino media assume that you know a huge amount and a lot of Tagalog words already!

[benign0]

Lest everyone who is so busy being fixated on this latest presidential debacle forget: in the Philippines, presidential debacles are more the rule than the exception.

So why the fuss? The ultimate origins of this mess can be traced back to our ridiculously tolerant society in the first place. Before we cast the first stone, recall that we not only tolerated but cheered on GMA's ascent to power extra-constitutionally in the first place. And now we have the gall to exhibit "indignation" at this quaint transgression?
Puh-leez.

Check out the following article for some refreshing insight on this matter:

The fall of a philosopher-king
http://www.getrealphilippines.com/agr-disagr/18-3-gmafall.html

Excerpt:

"Conveniently, Ms. Arroyo has since been "re-elected" constitutionally (something possible in a nation that loosely defines the term) in 2004. Or has she? That question is now the buzz of 2005 -- another one of those all-too-common things that distract the Pinoy from that elusive job of nation building (remember the concept? Not.). That little after-the-fact legalisation of the 2003 power grab that we thought had been neatly swept under the rug (a la tapal Vulcaseal) is something worth bringing up now as the nation lurches towards another dose of its favourite laxative -- Fiesta Revolution! We need to remind ourselves yet again that we in fact not only deserve each other, we deserve the Philippine Government."

Happy reading! ;)

[ThEftcolby]

to buy rip dvd to avi with confident rip dvd to avi suprisely