Bu-lat-lat (boo-lat-lat) verb: to search, probe, investigate, inquire; to unearth facts

Issue No. 24                       July 29 -August 4,  2001                    Quezon City, Philippines

The Political Animal
Teddy A. Casińo

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The Hypocritical Opposition 

Ang kapal ng mukha.

This best describes the traditional opposition whose leaders gave the public a mouthful last week delivering speech upon speech, soundbyte upon soundbyte of their stinging criticism of Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s State of the Nation Address (SONA).

Taking a dig at GMA’s publicity stunt on the three kids from Payatas who wrote their wishes on paper boats, Sen. Edgardo Angara said the entire nation was riding on a paper banca (boat) that had no direction and was sinking fast under the Arroyo regime.

Angara, who was Joseph Estrada’s running mate in the 1998 elections, later agriculture secretary then US-backed mini-president, said Arroyo’s agenda was “illusory and undoable” and put the nation in a precarious situation. Among the “central issues of our times” that the President left out, he said, was the issue of globalization.

For his part, House Minority Floor Leader Rep. Ronaldo Zamora said the President did not know her math. “But how do we pay for it?” he thundered in a privilege speech baring a price list of the President’s proposed projects. “I know we won’t get it by borrowing more dollars, because you will just end up paying far more than your regular interest rates,” he said.

Saying the US, Japan and Europe were already “rich, self-satisfied, overweight and middle-aged,” Estrada’s former executive secretary said it was time for the country to “discover the untapped resources and the inner wellsprings of our own selves” and thus “seize the day” by charting an independent “international economic program.”

Oh wow. How deliriously wonderful. It seems People Power 2 has not only kicked out Estrada, it has turned patriots out of the opposition too. For who are Angara and Zamora but the very same bureaucrat capitalists who, just a few months ago, were conniving with Estrada in turning the Philippines into a better, more improved haven for monopoly capitalists and criminal syndicates?

Angara, Zamora and their ilk in yesterday’s ruling party are simply shooting their mouths off because as today’s opposition, they are expected to be “critical” of the administration. They are supposed to play the role of “fiscalizers” in the legislature.

In reality though, they are faced with the fact that they’ve nothing to offer the public save their own brand of opportunist politics since, like those in the ruling party, they too are died-in-the-wool adherents of globalization and the mythical free market. Take note, for example, how carefully couched the criticisms are, and how they remain silent on Arroyo’s concept of a “free enterprise appropriate for the 21^st century,” a euphemism for globalization which is at the heart of her so-called anti-poverty program.

The dilemma faced by today’s opposition is that they really have nothing to oppose. In fact, GMA is implementing Estrada’s own medium term “Angat Pinoy 2004” program, albeit with a few modifications to mollify the angry pro-Erap mob that stormed Malacanang. I mean, whose ideas were the one million jobs in agriculture anyway, or the 1,000 rolling stores, or the massive housing program, or agricultural modernization kuno? Eh kanino pa di kay Estrada, Zamora, Angara and their co-racketeers in the previous regime. No wonder Sen. Loi Estrada felt vindicated; Erap was doing right all along!

This was precisely the same problem faced by the Lakas-NUCD in the early part of Estrada’s presidency. They couldn’t serve as fiscalizers because, as one Lakas congressman admitted candidly, they had nothing to fiscalize. Erap was implementing Lakas-NUCD’s platform of government. 

Once again, the opposition has nothing to oppose except the ruling party’s incompetence in promoting the interest of the big landed and comprador classes, the multinational corporations and their own vested interests. They are like two kids besting each other as to who can fart the loudest. In the end, they’re all full of shit. #

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