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| ON THE OTHER HAND |
| Crossroads in 2004 By Antonio C. Abaya June 20, 2003 The coming 2004 presidential elections represent a major crossroads in Philippine political history, especially for the battered middle class, who were the shock troops of EDSA 1 and EDSA 2. Frustrated and disappointed by the lack of any major societal renewal in the wake of EDSA 1, and now fearful that whatever initiatives that may have been started by EDSA 2 are in real danger of being reversed and defeated by legal technicalities, the middle class, who can be said to be the repository of the national conscience, face some daunting scenarios less than a year from now. If Danding Cojuangco is elected president in 2004, the Marcos kleptocrats would be singing �Happy Days Are Here Again!� Cojuangco was the number one crony of President Marcos, a position of pre-eminence underscored by his flight from Malacanang in the same helicopter as FM in February 1986, the only crony so (dubiously) honored. If Joseph Goebbels had escaped with Adolf Hitler from their Berlin bunker in April 1945, instead of committing suicide within hours of each other��and returned to Berlin a mere three years later, unrepentant and unpunished, and allowed to run for kanzler in a later election, the parallelism would not have been more complete. Cojuangco was competing with Imelda Marcos to succeed the fading Ferdinand in 1983 and, I am morally convinced, knows more than he has let on regarding the assassination of Ninoy Aquino, who was eliminated because he threatened to upset that succession. Cojuangco was also implicated in an alleged plot to assassinate President Cory Aquino in late 1989, in a lengthy article written by then San Francisco Examiner reporter (now editor-in-chief) Phil Bronstein, an article reprinted in full by the Philippine Daily Inquirer on November 20, 1990. The Bronstein story included the FBI, the Australian federal police and a South African gunsmith in Flagstaff (Arizona) who made special (assassination) weapons for the CIA, and contained so many details that the curt, one-paragraph blanket denial from Cojuangco�s lawyer was simply not convincing. Yet the Aquino Government was so terrified of Cojuangco (who had re-entered the country illegally in November 1989, not coincidentally, days before Gringo Honasan�s coup attempt in December) that it could not gather enough nerve to book Cojuangco for illegal entry, let alone to investigate him for allegedly plotting to assassinate the president. What wimps this country has for leaders. It would be as if the US Government were to learn of a plot to assassinate President George W. Bush from an article in, say, The Times of London, but does nothing to investigate, arrest, charge or detain the mastermind identified in the article, who is living openly in, say, MacLean, a ritzy suburb of Washington DC. Only in da Pilipins! ***** If Panfilo Lacson is elected president in 2004, the carousing denizens of the Estrada Midnight Cabinet would be uncorking their bottles of Petrus to celebrate, what else? That happy days are here again! It was they who designated Lacson, as early as 2000, to be Erap�s successor in 2004, and they put their money where their mouths were by donating several hundred million pesos to Lacson�s PNP Foundation Inc. They being Mark Jimenez, plus Erap�s Chinese Mafia, plus the extended Estrada-Ejercito families. Some luminaries would be missed in the celebrations. Mark Jimenez is out on bail but is prevented by an electronic collar from straying far from a Miami federal prison. Atong Ang is also out on bail but is also prevented by an electronic collar from straying far from a Las Vegas federal prison. Dante Tan has not yet been arrested but is being hunted by police in Australia, Singapore, Germany and who knows where else. These are the characters that the criminally inclined Erap liked to surround himself with, and these are the characters who want Lacson to become president in 2004. Some daring reporter should ask Lacson in a presscon why he thinks shady characters like these slimeballs support his candidacy. I am genuinely curious about his reply. . Some daring reporter should also press him on the accounts of his wife with Bank of America and Wells Fargo Bank. No less than the FBI, in an official letter to the NBI (and reported in the Philippine Daily Inquirer), has confirmed that two of those four accounts contained �large balances.� How large is large? Well, let Lacson make public the bank statements of these accounts, if he has nothing to hide about them. I understand there is nothing confidential about these accounts anymore because Bank of America has filed with the FBI the obligatory SARs (or Suspicious Activity Reports) on a number of transactions involving Mrs. Lacson�s accounts, thus putting these documents in the public domain under the (US) Freedom of Information Act. Why our NBI continues to treat these documents as �confidential� and does not make them public may be another interesting story for our daring reporter to unravel.. ***** To summarize: this is what the middle class face in 2004, the trivialization of EDSA 1 and EDSA 2, the rendering into meaninglessness the two, and only two, events in recent memory that gave us even only a fleeting sense of nationhood, of an imagined community, of a deep, horizontal comradeship, of a shared destiny��if either Cojuangco or Lacson is elected president. Whether she eventually decides to run or not to run in 2004, President Arroyo has an obligation to bring into the open whatever skeletons Cojuangco and Lacson are hiding in their closets, especially those skeletons that may have to do with the matters above, so that the electorate will have a clearer picture of the moral choices they will have to make. This is the least she can do if she is serious about waging �a revolution in the way we think and do politics.� If she is not willing to do even this, then her revolution is not worth a fiddler�s fart. President Arroyo should also seriously consider the challenge of the do-gooder Nandy Pacheco and his Kapatiran political party. In the polluted air of trapo politics that has all but smothered all sense of decency in public life, the lonely voice of Pacheco and Kapatiran, calling for the transformation of the Filipino nation through political reforms, represents the proverbial voice in the wilderness. But President Arroyo should understand that it is only through such voices in the wilderness that the seeds of revolution, including the political revolution that she claims she wants to promote, are planted in the public�s mind, if only they are given the chance to be heard. President Arroyo�s revolution needs the fresh inputs and unsullied new faces of non-trapos like Pacheco to make it credible to the middle class, the shock troops of EDSA 1 and EDSA 2, the repository of the national conscience, who have become jaded and cynical about, and have grown sick and tired of, the trapos who have hogged the limelight of our public life for the past five, ten, twenty, thirty years, without making this country a better place to live in. President Arroyo would do well to name Pacheco to her Cabinet, which will soon have several vacancies as four or five department heads depart to run for the Senate in 2004. If Pacheco does well in his putative department, then he will have proven that trapos are not the sole candidates for the leadership of this country, which could be the necessary starting point for GMA�s political revolution as we near the crossroads of 2004. ***** The bulk of this article appears in the June 28, 2003 issue of the Philippines Free Press. |
| OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Reactions to �Crossroads in 2004� dear Sir, I wonder if I may invite you to lunch sometime next week. We met a few times in kompil meetings. I am currently out of the country. I always enjoy reading your column and I also share your angst and even anger at our system. At our age and being against the system would be considered odd in other times and other climes..but seems to be the norm in this time and place. I would like to discuss possibilites in thelight of the coming crossroad. But more importantly to thank you for these past years of articulate, incisive and meaningful articles. regards [email protected] June 24, 2003 �������������������������� Sir: Part of the problem, as I see it, facing the middle classes as teh repository of the naitonal conscience (as you put it) is that the political lines between the Marcos/Estrada forces and the EDSA forces has been blurred so much in recent years that to many people there is little distinction between the two sides in terms of moral ascendancy. The people installefd after the ouster of Erap for example, have ben accused of engaging in the same corrupt acts as their predecessors and in the same people ousted have found their way back into positions of power with the new administratoin. Hence the big fuss last year about Blas Ople leaving the senate to join the foregin office and the working coalition of the forces of Cojuangco and Arroyo in the House. The lines have been so blurred that no one can now claim to be the "good guys". Of course at both ends there are still differences. Lacson and Erap would probable never associate themselves with Cory Aquino or GMA but in between the two extremes is a murky middle occupied by the same unsavory characters on both sides. I now tend to beleive that there would be little difference, morally, between a Cojuangco presidency and an Arroyo presidency. Hard choices indeed for the few of us who continue to aspire for true moral leadership. Ricky Carandang, [email protected] June 24, 2003 MY REPLY. How can you say that �there would be little difference, morally, between a Cojuangco presidency and an Arroyo presidency�? For all her faults, and she has many, GMA has never been suspected of, or implicated in, any plot to assassinate anyone, or of having grabbed billions of pesos worth of public funds, or of being the number one crony of the biggest crook in Philippine history. ����������������������������� Bravo Tony. Keep on firing and get those bastards out of this planet. Cheers. Ding Roces, [email protected] Australia June 25, 2003 ���������������������������� Tony, Keep it up. Keep it going. Beautifully done. I posted this article in several newsgroups. Personally, I believe you are right on!!!! Don't stop here. Don't stop now. Particularly, I noticed with keen interest your reference to the suspected MLO (money laundering operations) of Ping...hehehehe...nicely done. In the spirit of keeping the information flow going, let me attached here some threads from the newsgroup of the PCIJ (Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism) on two pertinent subjects: the election in 2004 and the Ping Lacson debacle in the USA. I sent these two threads, as you will notice, to the campaign headquarter of Raul Roco for President. Personally, I would like to see this guy make it. However, my better judgement tells me that if GMA runs, she will be a sure winner. Then, after I drew this conclusion, I thought to myself, that GMA may not be a bad choice for presidency in 2004. Warmest regards, Pepeton, [email protected] June 26, 2003 ����������������������������� Dear Tony, I really enjoy it when you're mean. Yeah, keep on writing and sock it to 'em. We really need to do something about our political culture. We here in Mindanao are likewise making our own effort to promote alternative politics. We intend to start contesting elections in 2007. This is of course if the country would still be around by then. Unless we can help it, Noli de Castro is going to be president in 2004. SWS or is it Pulse Asia has him tied with Raul Roco at the top with an identical 28% rating. FPJ is second at 14% tied with Ping Lacson. GMA is third with 9% of 6% I think. All the other candidates are far below with ratings of 4% or less. If FPJ doesn't run, I suspect that his vote is going to Noli de Castro because it's the same showbiz vote. If only to prevent a Noli de Castro presidency, the best thing that GMA can do for the nation is to endorse Raul Roco in 2004. This is exactly what Cory Aquino has done when she endorsed Eddie Ramos sans Monching Mitra in 1992. He has been a very close friend of Ninoy but Cory Aquino, heeding the polls, has endorsed Eddie Ramos instead. Her intention has been to save the country from Miriam Santiago. You've been a supporter of Miriam Santiago but I suspect that the events following have now convinced you that it is better that she has not become president. One may argue that Raul Roco is not the ideal presidential candidate. Nonetheless, he is the only candidate with a passing qualification, if one may say so, capable of defeating Noli de Castro. The polls have Eddie Ramos and Miriam Santiago tied at the top in 1992. All the other candidates have been far behind. It is not cheating that has caused the defeat of Miriam Santiago. It is the withdrawal of Erap Estrada in favor of Danding Cojuangco. Eddie Ramos' rating has surged beyond the reach of Miriam Santigao after Erap Estrada's withdrawal. Apparently, his votes have gone to Eddie Ramos and not to Danding Cojuangco. I pay very close attention to the polls because they have been very accurate in predicting the outcome of national elections, from the president down to the senators. Best regards, Gico Dayanghirang, [email protected] Davao City June 26, 2003 OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO |