Arroyo to Deliver 5th SoNA under Damocles’ Sword
Unlike her previous
State of the Nation Addresses, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s fifth
one will be delivered before a nation that is largely no longer interested
in what she will have to say, and is now mostly engaged in actions to push
for her removal from office.
BY ALEXANDER MARTIN
REMOLLINO
Bulatlat
IN HAPPIER TIMES:
President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo delivers SoNA last year as behind
her Senate President Franklin Drilon (left) and House Speaker Jose de
Venecia cheer on.
Malacañang Photo |
On July 25, President
Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo will deliver her fifth State of the Nation
Address (SoNA) since assuming power through a popular uprising in 2001,
and her second since the 2004 presidential elections.
In content, it is not
expected to be much different from her previous SoNAs. The President will
probably present the latest data on her administration’s economic
accomplishments.
However, unlike her
previous SoNAs, her fifth one will be delivered before a nation that is
largely no longer interested in what she will have to say, and is now
mostly engaged in actions to push for her removal from office. She will be
delivering her fourth SoNA amid calls by even many of her political allies
– including 13 former cabinet officials and presidential advisers – for
her exit from office.
|
Anti-GMA actions
On July 24, several
artists are expected to come together in a big cultural night at the
Diliman campus of the University of the Philippines (UP). The cultural
night will carry a theme calling for the removal of Macapagal-Arroyo from
Malacañang.
The July 24 event
will be the second anti-Arroyo concert at UP Diliman in less than a week,
the first being a July 21 concert sponsored by Youth Demanding Arroyo’s
Removal or Youth DARE.
As of press time, the
White Ribbon Movement has just been launched at the La Salle Greenhills
School. The White Ribbon Movement is an alliance of persons from the
so-called middle forces, united on the call for Macapagal-Arroyo to step
down from office.
It describes itself as a movement of
concerned Filipinos calling for the resignation of Macapagal-Arroyo to
pave the way for meaningful and substantial reforms in the country. “The
color white symbolizes our stand for truth, integrity, renewal, peace and
hope – the very values and principles that the President has tainted and
apparently forsaken,” reads a statement by the new middle-force alliance.
The White Ribbon
Movement counts among its members Mo. Mary John Mananzan, OSB, former
president of St. Scholastica’s College; La Sallian Brother Edmundo
Fernandez; Dr. Menguita Padilla of Rx Emergency: Resign Gloria Now; former
human rights commissioner Nasser Marohomsalic; and student leaders Marco
de los Reyes and Mike Pante of the University of the Philippines and the
Ateneo de Manila University, respectively.
The day before,
lawyers from the Counsels for the Defense of Liberties (CODAL) went on a
motorcade that was supposed to go to the foot of the Chino
Roces Bridge in Manila, which leads
to Malacañang Palace, from the Quezon Memorial Circle to symbolically
serve Macapagal-Arroyo an eviction notice. However, the motorcade only got
as far as the Welcome Rotunda, the boundary between Quezon City and
Manila, as the protesting lawyers were blocked by a truckload of police.
Last July 20, the World Council of
Churches (WCC) held a forum at the St. Thomas Aquinas Research Complex,
University of Santo Tomas. The forum assailed the human rights record of
the Macapagal-Arroyo administration.
After the forum, the delegates held a
short candle-lighting ceremony to demand justice for human rights victims
and the removal of Macapagal-Arroyo from office. The delegates would then
join an anti-Arroyo noise barrage held that same day at the Welcome
Rotunda.
The July 19 rally by
the broad alliance Women MARCH or Women for Macapagal-Arroyo’s Removal and
Regime Change was definitely more successful than the CODAL motorcade. It drew in more than 5,000
women protesters to a program along Ayala Avenue in Makati
City. Among the speakers in the
women’s rally were former Transportation and Communication Secretary
Josefina Lichauco, former election commissioner Harriet Demetriou; and
Sandra Cam, the whistleblower in the exposé on the alleged involvement of
the Arroyos in jueteng, an illegal numbers game.
Meanwhile, on July
21, GMA 7’s news programs started features on an anti-Arroyo music video
prepared by members of ARREST Gloria (Artists for the Removal of Gloria) –
an alliance of filmmakers, visual and theater artists, and musicians in
the so-called alternative fields. Among ARREST Gloria’s members are
musicians Lourd de Veyra of the Radioactive Sago Project and Bobby
Balingit of The Wuds, who did the vocals and musical accompaniment for the
video, respectively. The video is also expected to be presented at the
cultural night in UP on the 24th.
July IBON survey
The extent of the
clamor for Macapagal-Arroyo’s exit from Malacañang is also manifested in
the results of the latest survey by the socio-economic think tank IBON
Foundation, released to the media just last July 21.
Of the survey’s 1,379
respondents – of whom 13.4 percent are from Metro Manila while 84.6
percent are from the country’s other regions – 68.6 percent are of the
opinion that Macapagal-Arroyo should be removed from office, or 10.05
percentage points higher than that registered in the March 2005 survey
(58.55 percent).
The same survey also
shows that Filipinos are not inclined to believe what Macapagal-Arroyo
will be saying about her government’s economic accomplishments for this
year.
The economy is in a
worse state than it was in last year, according to 67.88 percent of the
respondents. Meanwhile, 25.89 percent said the economy stayed the same.
Only 4.06 percent said it improved.
Macapagal-Arroyo is
seen by some observers as focusing on the economy to divert attention from
issues of electoral fraud raised against her.
The suspicion that
Macapagal-Arroyo cheated her way to victory in the last election stemmed
from the surfacing of what looked like tampered election returns showing
inconsistencies in the tallying of votes, from all over the country.
Last June 6, Press
Secretary Ignacio Bunye released two CDs containing audio files of what he
said was a taped conversation between the President and a political leader
of the administration Lakas-CMD in Mindanao, southern Philippines. One of
them, Bunye said, was a version purportedly altered by the opposition to
make it appear that Macapagal-Arroyo had cheated in the 2004 presidential
election.
Both “original” and
“tampered” have portions in which a woman – said to be Macapagal-Arroyo –
was asking a man (“Gary” in the “original” version, “Garci” in what Bunye
called the tampered version) if she would still win by a million votes.
Macapagal-Arroyo won by a million votes over her closest rival, Fernando
Poe, Jr.
The President
admitted June 27 that she had talked to an election official during the
counting of votes – an unlawful act, according to a number of legal
experts.
Unlike in previous
years, Macapagal-Arroyo will deliver on July 25 her annual SoNA amid a
political atmosphere that is decidedly no longer conducive to the
continuation of her administration. Bulatlat
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