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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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