COMMENTARY

Surveys and Gimmicks
GMA declares war on Muslims; death to criminals

As the history of Philippine politics will show, things will go out of hand – things will in fact become even more deadly and desperate – as the election nears. Ate Glo is fighting for survival, and the country be damned.

By Andres Rebana
Bulatlat.com

FROM the looks of it, it seems like the Arroyo regime is on desperate mode. So much so that I wouldn’t be surprised if, a few days from now, it will declare another all-out war in Mindanao against the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), using the supposed links between the front and the Jemaah Islamiyah as a justification.

Already, U.S. Marines are already in Lanao. Late last week, reports said that some U.S. Marines were spotted in Marawi City. According to the Philippine military, the Americans were there for a medical mission, although it cannot explain why the medical mission was done in secrecy (it was exposed only after text messages circulated about their presence) and why the Americans were in full battle gear. The Americans meanwhile said it was all part of JUSMAG activity, whatever that means.

The Lanao areas, of course, were the same areas where the JI has allegedly been training, inside the camps of the MILF. This is an old story but something that Defense Secretary Eduardo Ermita has been earnestly trying to peddle to the public. With the help of a gullible, corrupt and easily manipulated media in Manila, Ermita had succeeded in doing precisely that. And now the Americans have arrived in MILF territory – just the kind of thing some Muslims and militant groups had warned against.

(We may not know it but the United States has been involved all this time with purely internal security of the country. There were reports of American presence near Sarangani Bay, now in Lanao, and previously in the Bicol region. And didn’t you notice that the U.S. troops involved in Balikatan in Zamboanga have never left? There are 300 of them still down there, doing God knows what! The Americans are making a mockery of our sovereignty, that’s for sure.)

And so, to gain pogi points (publicity) with the public, especially after surveys after surveys indicated that she is nowhere near the top of the heap for the presidential elections next year, it is very likely that President Arroyo will declare a war somewhere in that area. If there’s one lesson she learned from the Estrada regime, it is that it supposedly gain so much pogi points with its all-out war againste the MILF in 2001, supposedly because most non-Moro Filipinos supported the war that killed hundreds and displaced hundreds of thousands of Moros, hundreds of them still living in evacuation centers all over Central Mindanao.

Of course, the fact that Angelo Reyes, the architect of the 2001 all-our war and the Pikit offensive, is at the helm of the anti-crime efforts of this regime certainly helps. Last week, Reyes announced that he would be deploying soldiers in Metro Manila to do purely police work. There’s no stopping this wicked man from wreaking havoc on us all.

Death penalty

Morever, President Arroyo is now doing some propaganda spreading herself. She has wavered in her position on the death penalty. Come to think of it, she never did have any principled stand on the issue; she continued the moratorium only because she felt the need to defer to the Catholic Church. Now, she lifted the moratorium because, according to her, that is something the people want and need.

Of course, what she did not say was that, like the wars against our Muslim brothers, the death-penalty issue has been used by the different regimes all these years to mollify the public and to gain more pogi points. It is not an accident that President Arroyo announced the lifting of the moratorium only after another survey indicated that Fernando Poe Jr. was way ahead in the polls and that she was still languishing at the bottom. She is scared of FPJ, and it shows.

Just as she did not have any principled stand on the death penalty vis-ŕ-vis the Church, President Arroyo used the issue once again to pander to the business community and the Chinese-Filipinos, whose campaign contributions will surely start flowing after this. Then again, she’s never been a principled person. She’s a traditional politician, period.

As a sign of more pandering on her part, Malacańang announced this week the release of a dozen inmates supposedly for humanitarian grounds. It, of course, reeked of cheap gimmick, designed to mollify the Church and those against the death penalty. It was intended to depict a regime that is supposedly tough on crime on the one hand and gentle on the other.

All this is done certainly with one thing in mind: to shore up her popularity. And the more she slides in the polls, the more she will come up with political gimmicks. The tragic thing is that, the gimmicks will not be limited to some innocuous action, such as pardoning prisoners. As the history of Philippine politics will show, things will go out of hand – things will in fact become even more deadly and desperate – as the election nears. Ate Glo is fighting for survival, the country be damned. Bulatlat.com

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