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Bu-lat-lat (boo-lat-lat) verb: to
search, probe, investigate, inquire; to unearth facts
Vol. V, No.
21
July 3 - 9, 2005 Quezon City, Philippines |
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alternative reader
Commentary
The Final Crisis of the
Arroyo Government
(First of two parts)
President Arroyo will not be able to easily ride out this crisis of
confidence because she is perceived to be directly responsible for a
deeper economic and political crisis besetting the country.
By Antonio Tujan Jr.
IBON Research Director
Posted by Bulatlat
IBON Features - President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo was grossly
mistaken if she thought that she could ride out the electoral
protests when she stole the elections in 2004. She is again grossly
mistaken to think that she could ride out the current bigger
protests. This time she is facing the combination of the political
crisis created by the failed 2004 elections and the general mass
unrest over economic and political issues.
Some quarters claim that President Arroyo mishandled the jueteng
scandal and the Hello Garci tapes. But her administration had tried
to handle these issues as best it could, the point, however, is that
no matter how well it handles these issues, evidence can no longer
be suppressed and the past has come back to haunt her regime.
Arroyo had already been implicated in previous jueteng
scandals even before she came to Malacañang starting with her
Pampanga connections that current accusations could not easily be
dismissed from the people’s perception. On the other hand,
jueteng is a permanent feature of the political economy of
Philippine government that enforcement authorities from the
President down to the mayors and police chiefs are easily suspect.
Thus jueteng is a standard issue against the incumbent in the
course of factional battles.
‘Flashing the badge’ of authority
But the Arroyo government’s penchant for “flashing the badge” of
authority in dismissing the jueteng issue takes the cake in
hiding behind usurped power from the glare of accountability and
demand for transparency. This is the line of action her police
officials took in declaring jueteng as no longer existent in
the Congressional inquiry. This is the same recourse that Arroyo
took in refusing to acknowledge the Hello Garci tapes.
”Flashing the badge” is not the track of incompetence but the only
recourse left for the guilty in the face of evidence and public
opinion.
The tactic of “flashing the badge” only works for the disempowered
or the supporters, but since March, IBON surveys have shown that the
majority of Filipinos already want Arroyo out. Subsequent surveys by
other outfits confirm this worsening trend for President Arroyo.
These survey results should have warned her that “flashing the
badge” when the jueteng and Hello Garci scandals broke out
would fail terribly. But Arroyo hardly ever listens to surveys just
as she hardly ever listens to the people.
Forced to publicly accept that the Hello Garci tapes were indeed
genuine, Arroyo takes another favored track of “flashing the badge”
-- “I am the President and let me continue my good work.” What she
does not realize, or would like people to forget, is that Hello
Garci is not about jueteng or a Monica Lewinsky scandal or a
Watergate. The issue goes to the heart of her legitimacy as
President-- an issue that had long been under question and remains
unresolved legally or politically. Legally, because the Supreme
Court simply dumped the petition of Fernando Poe’s widow, and
politically because the opposition continues to ride on the public
opinion shown in the surveys that Poe won the election.
The other, deeper crisis
But Arroyo will not be able to easily ride out this crisis of
confidence because she is perceived to be directly responsible for a
deeper economic and political crisis besetting the country. The
masses are in dire straits in the face of increasing joblessness,
shrinking incomes, and higher costs of living. Mass starvation and
severe malnutrition, especially in the countryside and among the
displaced, is an emerging phenomenon in several areas of the
country. The thinning ranks of the middle class are increasingly
threatened with shrinking incomes and inflation eating into their
fixed salaries. Businessmen groan under the impact of globalization
and foreign competition in the face of economic crisis, but blame
politics for their woes instead of the policies implemented by
Arroyo and previous administrations under IMF-World Bank
prescriptions.
In an attempt to derail popular opposition, the authorities have
been behind a massive plot of assassinations of leaders of people’s
organizations, cause-oriented groups, feisty media practitioners,
human rights lawyers and socially active religious leaders. The
timing of the assassinations has coincided with the upsurge of
opposition and threat of a people power uprising against Arroyo from
the death of Fernando Poe in December last year to the present.
These are meant to send a clear message that even church leaders,
media practitioners and lawyers perceived to be defenders of the
people and of civil liberties are not immune from attack and should
therefore just shut up.
As usual, Arroyo acted as though such monstrosity to democracy does
not exist until she was challenged to respond to successive killings
of journalists. But the popular opposition was not derailed in
having to secure its leaders and attend to the increasing numbers of
victims, but also was not cowed by these developments. The
reemerging civil liberties movement that is as strong or even
stronger than the civil liberties opposition to Marcos’s suspension
of the writ of habeas corpus is now a key component to a broader
movement against the Arroyo regime.
Bleak future
At this point it would seem that Arroyo faces a bleak future. The
issue of her electoral legitimacy cannot be easily sidelined because
of a broader support created by more than a year of economic
protests by people’s movements led by Bayan, KMU, KMP, Gabriela and
others. It cannot easily be sidelined because she has sharpened the
conflict with attacks on popular opposition thus giving birth to a
stronger civil liberties movement. IBON Features / Posted by
Bulatlat
Posted by
Bulatlat
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© 2004 Bulatlat
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