Philippines: What haunts Gloria?

It is rather ironic that Gloria fears people power even though she herself was originally placed into power to a considerable extent by people power. The editorialist it seems to me is looking at the events through the lens of the present rather than how it was seen at the time. Certainly masses of people were involved as well as many clerics and left wing organisations. Now Gloria fears that the people may throw her out using people power again so the hatches are battened down on the anniversary of Edsa II when Joseph Estrada was overthrown. A further irony is that the deposed but pardoned Estrada is more popular than Arroyo!


What haunts Gloria?


EDITORIAL
01/21/2008

The so-called Edsa II revolt, proved to be a historical misnomer because it was actually a coup d’etat led by certain elitist groups and then Vice President Gloria Arroyo, remains in the calendar of Malacañang and yesterday, Jan. 20, should have been a day of celebration and thanksgiving for Gloria.

The day, however, is marked by Gloria with fear and apprehension. For such symbolic occasion for Gloria, the celebration of the event was not even mentioned by Malacañang at all.

Instead of the people that supposedly thronged around the Edsa Shrine seven years ago to witness Gloria’s swearing in by an accomplice in the coup, then Supreme Court Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr., now richly rewarded with an ambassadorial post at the United Nations, what is found around Malacañang on the day were police units on red alert and barricades against people entering the President’s compound.

For a President who flaunts to the world that she was installed to power through a popular people’s uprising, the isolation of Malacañang on Edsa II day was the height of irony. In fact, it could be attributed to Divine Justice and a revelation of the truth, for it was not a popular revolt that had the concurrence of the Filipino people, whom the elite coup plotters can hardly speak for.

Another complete twist of Edsa II was that former President Joseph Estrada, whom she threw out in the coup masquerading as a revolt, is now trusted immensely more than Gloria as borne out in independent confidence surveys.

Gloria’s Edsa II, thus, has lost its meaning in relation to Edsa I, when people power threw out a 21-year-old regime of then President Ferdinand Marcos which was best remembered for the installation of martial law and the shift to the parliamentary form of government that Gloria is now pushing to revive.

The fear that infests Malacañang now is that the people have awakened to the fact that Edsa II was a ruse and that Gloria remains scrambling for a seven-year raison d’etre of her power-grab. For certainly, there is nothing democratic about grabbing power through a coup d’etat.

The show of complete public distrust in Gloria is the result of the questionable way that she remains in power.

It all started with that event at Edsa in 2001 when a popularly elected president was unseated in the guise of restoring decency in government. In a rather grudging fashion, the so-called graft court convicted President Joseph Estrada on the charges of plunder based on the use of jueteng money and insider trading at the stock market, which conviction was utterly unconvincing for the public as a reason for Gloria to take over power, especially as a constitutional process of impeachment was then ongoing.

Add to that the general perception that Gloria had to steal the vote in the 2004 elections from Estrada’s bosom buddy Fernando Poe Jr. to buy a mandate for another six-year term and there is no mystery in her current negative trust rating.

Edsa II, in fact, has been lost in the consciousness of the people, and sad to say, so with it go the other symbolic events that would have instilled the value of the democratic tradition in the country such as the people power revolt, truly a people’s revolt, and even Independence Day.

More than the aberration in the historical calendar, Edsa II trivialized the footsteps to democracy in the country for the simple fact that, like Gloria, it was a bogus people power and the world saw it as such.

Edsa II is all about Gloria and her naked power-grab. It is is about the destruction of democracy and its institutions; the prostitution of military and police and the elite’s robbing of the sovereign will of the people, which grievous theft was upheld by the highly politicized Supreme Court.

Edsa II is Gloria and nothing else.