The Macapagal-Arroyo administration has used every trick in the book to remain in power: cheat, plunder, kill, suppress, coerce, bomb, confuse, peddle concessions and stonewall. It is the administration with the longest running unsatisfactory rating and the most number of impeachment complaints filed against it. The fact that it has been successful so far in staving off threats to its perpetuation in power is not so much a tribute to its being political savvy. Its continued stay in power is a requiem to the system which it claims to be a democracy.

BY BENJIE OLIVEROS
ANALYSIS
Bulatlat
Vol. VII, No. 40, November 11-17, 2007

The smoke of the Glorietta explosion has cleared, even as there are still conflicting findings as to who is at fault. Meanwhile, the controversy over the granting of presidential pardon to former president Joseph “Erap” Estrada who was convicted of plunder has died down.

The country is back once more to where it left off: the Senate announced that it would investigate the Malacañang bribery scandal and resume its hearings on the graft-ridden National Broadband Network (NBN) deal with ZTE of China. Whether these investigations would finally bring closure to these issues remain to be seen. Malacañang could once more stonewall these investigations, as it is wont to do, in the hope that the issues would die down, much like what it did to other controversial issues involving the Macapagal-Arroyo administration such as the “Hello Garci” tapes which pointed to the commission of electoral fraud during the May 2004 presidential elections; other corruption scandals such as the Jose Pidal accounts and the fertilizer scam; and the spate of extrajudicial killings and enforced disappearances. If and when it does, we will back to where we used to be. Or will we?

At the Lower House, the “honorable representatives” of the ruling coalition, Kampi and Lakas-CMD, acted swiftly to junk the two supplemental impeachment complaints filed by former Iloilo representative and current Vice-Gov. Rolex Suplico and Adel Tamano of the United Opposition. The swiftness with which the ‘honorable representatives’ junked the complaints is record-breaking.

Meanwhile, Roel Pulido who vehemently declared his sincerity in filing what House Speaker Jose De Venecia called a “joke of a complaint” and who recently announced his willingness to withdraw his complaint if and when a stronger one is filed has conveniently made himself scarce.

Another complaint is poised to be filed: one which would contain all the unresolved issues involving the Macapagal-Arroyo administration, including extrajudicial killings. This time the complainants would be militant groups. But as both the administration and opposition have declared, these complaints would never prosper as the opposition does not have the numbers. (Numbers in this country is counted by the hundreds of thousands, say P200,000 to P500,000 [$4,673.44 to $11,683.61, based on an exchange rate of P42.795 per US dollar] in “cash gifts.”)

Once the administration has hammered the final nail in the coffin of these complaints, we will be back to where we used to be. The Filipino people would have to wait for another year or the 2010 presidential elections before being able to make the Macapagal-Arroyo administration account for these issues. Or should we?

The Macapagal-Arroyo administration has used every trick in the book to remain in power: cheat, plunder, kill, suppress, coerce, bomb, confuse, peddle concessions and stonewall. It is the administration with the longest running unsatisfactory rating and the most number of impeachment complaints filed against it. The fact that it has been successful so far in staving off threats to its perpetuation in power is not so much a tribute to its being political savvy. Its continued stay in power is a requiem to the system which it claims to be a democracy.

It has presided over two fraud-ridden elections – the 2004 presidential elections and the 2007 senatorial and local elections. How can the Filipino people trust the electoral process when it has debased it twice over? And to think that in this system of elite-dominated politics, the electoral exercise is the only venue where the people directly participate in the process of governance.

It has used the impeachment process not to strengthen the democratic process of recall but to keep itself in power. By abusing the one-complaint-per-year rule, it has closed down the venue of impeachment in removing erring elected officials.

It gave a new meaning to executive privilege, using it not for the common good but as a shield to prevent it from being linked to corruption scandals. It made corruption and bribery so common that government officials such as Environment Sec. Lito Atienza had the gall to declare that it is part of the normal processes.

It has used and abused the concept of national security to perpetuate itself in power by killing and abducting unarmed political activists with impunity and attacking civil liberties.

Having used every trick in the book, the Macapagal-Arroyo administration is now doing the same things over and over again to perpetuate itself in power. But in doing so, it has become more predictable and crude in its ways. It had the carelessness to try to bribe a militant lawmaker, AnakPawis (Toiling Masses) Rep. Crispin Beltran, and a priest, Gov. Ed Panlilio of Pampanga, as well as the temerity to distribute money to so many people in Malacañang.

But while the Macapagal-Arroyo administration is running out of options to keep itself in power, the Filipino people, on the other hand, is likewise running out of options within the normal processes to institute changes. (Bulatlat.com)

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