Wednesday, 09 07, 2005
No matter how hard Gloria Arroyo and
her allies
stop and kill the impeachment process,
she still
won't be able to rule. That much is clear.
She can
no more stop the protest actions against
her than
she can order the waves to move back.
But she thinks she can, as there are
reportedly
ploys by her to use the iron fist in getting
the
people to toe the line once her allies in
Congress
kill the impeachment process at the
plenary.
The talk is that an emergency rule will be
put in
place, with the regime getting more
repressive.
Earlier, Executive Secretary Eduardo
Ermita
disclosed the constitutional means with
which to
crack down on Palace foes, such as
declaring
martial law or emergency rule, or some
such
measure.
Martial law is out, because under the
Constitution,
she can only do this for a limited period,
and she
will have to get Congress' nod, for either
martial law
or emergency rule. She can also declare
a state of
rebellion, and perhaps even get her
allies in the
Supreme Court to rule this as
constitutional. The
SC already gave its nod to this in 2001.
But even if she does, can she succeed in
stopping
the moves to oust her by street
parliamentarians?
What is clear is that she has almost nil
public
support and will lose even more of her
remaining
allies if she resorts to strongman rule. It
will have to
come to a point that Marcos had
reached, when
even the declaration of martial rule
failed to instill
fear in the people, and the fight went on.
Not even her bishops who continue to
support her
and her immoral regime will have to step
back and
make that decision to dump her, since
they too,
would really show that they are against
the people.
They will have lost all moral ground and
become
totally irrelevant. As of now, they are
already in the
path of irrelevance, without their church
hierarchy
being in control of their priests, who are
better at
seeing the amorality of the bishops'
stance through
their pastoral letter.
And the bishops certainly know that, even
for the
Catholic religion, instilling discipline in
their priests
and nuns as well as making them toe the
line on
faith, doctrine and their claimed moral
teachings is
a must to keep the religion going.
When the priests start questioning an
official stand
of their bishops, this is already a sign of
trouble
brewing in the local institutional church.
But how long does Gloria think she can
hold on to
military support when a people are
already against
the regime and for good reason?
There can be no denying that Gloria
used all
means to prevent the evidence from
being made
public and being proved, whether in
Senate
hearings or in the impeachment hearings
at the
committee on justice.
Poll commissioner Virgilio Garcillano, for
one,
certainly couldn't have left the country
without the
clear assistance of Malacaang officials.
That is for
sure, especially when the Singapore
authorities
have reportedly confirmed that
Garcillano did arrive
in that country through a Subic aircraft,
which
means that those officials called to testify
certainly
perjured themselves.
And there is now surfacing evidence
supporting the
wiretap tapes' conversations of the poll
rigging
as discussed in the tapes.
It will be remembered that in 1986, the
military was
certainly behind then President Marcos,
as were
the then members of parliament. And the
issue
then, whether one remembers it, was the
cheating
in the polls which parliament tried to
suppress.
There was a coup staged by the military
that failed
as a coup. But when the people rose
against
Marcos while the rebel soldiers were in a
defensive
position, having closeted themselves in
the twin
camps, even the military generals and
the rank-
and-file, had to take a position of being
with, or
against the people. In the end, they had
to go with
the people.
It is a worse situation that Gloria finds
herself in,
what with the economy going downhill
and the
political instability rising with more street
protests
that will surely impact negatively on the
fiscal and
economic crises she now faces.
It would have been different if the
economy were
prospering, because no leader can get a
people to
rail against her when economically things
still look
rosy. Neither the elite, nor the masses
would even
think of staging street protests against her.
But with the spiraling prices of goods and
services,
and with business dead and dying, with
no hope of
attracting foreign investors to come to our
shores,
along with a President who thinks only of
surviving
politically, plus the burden of having
additional
taxation in e-VAT along with the oil
crisis, Gloria
Arroyo had better put it in her head that
she stands
no chance of surviving politically and
economically.
It's curtains for her. She can go quickly
and
peacefully, or get ousted messily. It's
really her
choice.
tribune
