ANALYSIS
The Enemy
Within
The call
for a snap election is a sure sign of desperation, not among the
opposition but among Mrs. Arroyo’s own allies, many of whom are beginning
to realize how incorrigibly focused she is on staying in power, even if it
be to the entire nation’s detriment.
By the Center for People Empowerment in Governance (CenPEG)
Posted by Bulatlat
It
would be too costly and too time-consuming. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo won’t
consent to it. The Constitution doesn’t sanction it. And it probably won’t
settle anything.
The
call for a snap election is a sure sign of desperation, not among the
opposition but among Mrs. Arroyo’s own allies, many of whom are beginning
to realize how incorrigibly focused she is on staying in power, even if it
be to the entire nation’s detriment.
Two of
Mrs. Arroyo’s allies in the religious sector—one is tempted to describe
them as among her “staunchest”—Cebu’s Ricardo Cardinal Vidal and the El
Shaddai’s Mike Velarde, are said to favor an amendment to the Constitution
that would allow snap elections which, depending on how fast Congress can
convene into a Constituent Assembly and do its work, could presumably be
done within a few months.
When
confronted by the media, Cardinal Vidal displayed the kind of moral
agnosticism for which some bishops of the Catholic Church are now
well-known by refusing to say if he thought Mrs. Arroyo should step down.
But he did say when asked what he thought of holding a snap election that
an amendment was necessary for it to take place—which of course doesn’t
answer the question but evades it.
El
Shaddai’s Mike Velarde was not as evasive. Velarde, who expressed his
distress a week ago over the unprovoked water-hosing of a group of
participants in the October 14 prayer rally that tried to march to
Mendiola, did not deny Senator Senator Sergio Osmena III’s claim that he
and Vidal favor a snap election to resolve the political crisis.
Velarde’s, and probably Vidal’s, favoring a snap election is in the same
category of desperation as former President Fidel Ramos’ advice to Mrs.
Arroyo last week that she should cut her term short.
A snap
election --if honest and fair-- would very likely confirm the results of
several surveys which uniformly show Mrs. Arroyo’s approval rating to have
hit subterranean levels. (An Ibon Foundation poll covering September and
the first week of October this year, for example, found that her approval
rating had fallen to negative 74.7 percent)
Such a
result – assuming the election is honest and fair – would lead to the
exact same thing Ramos wants: Mrs. Arroyo will have to cut her term short.
The
only difference between the Velarde-Vidal proposal and Ramos’ is that
Ramos is asking that Mrs. Arroyo voluntarily cut her term short. The
Velarde-Vidal proposal would force Mrs. Arroyo, once the results of an
honest snap election are in, to step down. The first would be a form of
resignation; the second an ouster via an electoral process.
As
expected, Malacañang has rejected both proposals and has instead proposed
a plebiscite, in the apparent belief that a plebiscite would be easier for
Mrs. Arroyo to win.
A
plebiscite, in the first place, would have to convince the citizenry to go
to the polls merely to answer a question with either a “yes” or a “no.” A
snap election would be far more I interesting for them in that they could
vote for the candidate of their choice—for either Mrs. Arroyo, or the
alternative to her that Ramos said last week was not available.
The
question in a plebiscite could be something like “Are you in favor of
Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s serving the rest of her term until 2010?” but it
could very well also be phrased in such a way as to make a “no”
practically impossible.
For
example, the Commission on Elections that Mrs. Arroyo has in her pocket
could frame the question into something like “Are you in favor of (Mrs.
Arroyo’s) serving the rest of her term until 2010 as legally mandated by
the results of the May 2004 elections and the Constitution?”
Beyond
these possibilities, there is also the fact that any “solution” to the
crisis that would involve the Comelec would be suspect, that body being in
the first place central to the probability that Mrs. Arroyo and company
manipulated the May 2004 elections.
In the
end, a plebiscite or a snap election, unless the Comelec membership is
radically changed and Malacañang is somehow forced not to intervene, would
be no solution at all, and can even result in Mrs. Arroyo’s getting one
more dubious mandate to add to her 2004 one.
The
Ramos proposal Malacañang knows for what it has always been: a disguised
call for Mrs. Arroyo to resign. But Mrs. Arroyo did say last July 8 that
the package of which resignation later is an important part—Ramos’
declaration of support on the condition that she initiate Constitutional
amendments—was acceptable.
It
could not have been lost on her that what Ramos was actually saying was
that she should resign—though at a later date rather than last July,
specifically in the middle of 2006 once a new Constitution is in place and
parliamentary elections are held.
That
these proposals—all in effect saying that Mrs. Arroyo should step down, if
not now, then later—are being made by some of her most important allies
suggests that in their heart of hearts even these allies doubt Mrs.
Arroyo’s mandate, and worse, that they doubt even more her capacity to
surmount this crisis through, among other ruthless but eventually self
destructive means, the suppression of free expression and assembly.
Of
particular interest is the fact that the Commission on Human Rights itself
has stated that it saw no legal basis for the CPR policy and the
declaration of Mendiola as a no-rally zone, and that both are violative of
human rights. This effectively undermines the regime’s claims that it is
on solid legal grounds—in the context of a gathering “second wind” of the
Oust Arroyo Movement.
And yet
what other alternative does the Arroyo regime have except to withdraw into
Fortress Malacañang, given its fear that the whole truth about what
actually happened last May 2004 may finally come to light? Unfortunately,
it is besieged not only from outside. There are mounting indications that
its own allies are beginning to realize that the regime is simply
incapable of rationally and effectively defending itself, quite simply
because it is in the wrong. The enemy is now within. Bulatlat
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