Dyspepsia
Alas, Poor Juan
Philippine politics has finally dug itself into a bottomless pit.. It has been doing that for decades now with some success but at last after repeatedly putting its foot in the mouth and after successively shooting itself in the foot our politicos can claim success in sinking the country into an inextricable quagmire.
What are Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s (GMA) contributions to the morass that we are in. It may not too difficult to discern what exactly she had in mind. If she was not so concerned about being politically and legally correct she could have plainly stated that she was determined, come hell or high water to prevent an incompetent ersatz hero like Fernando Poe, Jr. to come to the country’s Presidency through the assistance of the ousted president, the equally incompetent ersatz hero, Erap Estrada.
Erap has several reasons for the ouster of GMA. Foremost of these is that he could go scot free from the imminent sentencing of the plunder charges against him if a friendlier head of state is installed and that the good times will continue to roll in the aegis of a grateful and ever faithful friend. GMA and so many like thinking Filipinos believe in the guilt of Erap on the plunder charges leveled against him. For the rest of the opposition the motives that can be ascribed are continued munificence that they have enjoyed or might continue to enjoy from Erap and perhaps to an equal degree is the clipping of the political power of GMA. Politicians have never been for the people. Political power and its concomitant material benefit is the end all and be all of our elected officials in Congress and the Senate.
But what of GMA? She is guilty as hell from the election fraud that has been leveled against her. The evidences unearthed by the opposition and the testimonies of people who were once in the inner sanctum of Malacanan Palace are difficult to ignore.
Is the first gentleman guilty of the anomalies in government projects and his involvement in “hueteng”? Of course he is. That these were done to ensure that Fernando Poe, Jr. would not become the President of the Philippines is beside the point.
Observers of Philippine politics will agree that the party in power, who enjoy the advantages of incumbency, will not hesitate to use the wherewithal at their disposal.
In the midst of the brickbat and mud sling melee GMA sort of alluded to the biblical admonition “he who is without sin cast the first stone” even when the first stone has long been hurled.
The bottom line is that GMA is guilty of election fraud. She was single minded about preventing Fernando Poe, Jr. from becoming President and would do it at any cost. In her mind it would have been a fate worst than death for the Filipino people…it would have meant the victory of the discredited and ousted Erap, a victory of dark against light. Such was her conviction. Even if many shared this conviction still the end does not justify the means…and besides she and her husband’s motives have always been suspect.
The opposition on the other hand is guilty of wittingly fielding a popular candidate who by any stretch of the imagination could lead the country competently and with dignity. At the same time they are guilty of abetting the nefarious designs of a patently corrupt ex-President by accepting his political and monetary assistance. What price political victory?
Alas, to us wretched Filipinos it is again a question of choosing the lesser evil, a choice that has been foisted on us most of the time.
posted by wayfarer at 5:08 PM 1 comments
An Old Man's Prattle
I have been irritable lately.
Every time I turn on the TV set all I hear from the news programs are the exposes coming from the opposition regarding the alleged cheating that the winning presidential candidate had perpetrated during the last elections. This has gone for over two year nows from the time the President was proclaimed.
Our lawmakers have spent all their time hearing cases on the alleged massive cheating during the last elections under the guise of these being in aid of legislation. For a country notorious for non-enforcement of laws the last thing we need are more unenforceable laws. Clearly motives for these cases brought to hearings in the legislative halls have been in aid of political goals.
You now begin to question the usefulness of these clowns in formal suits whose salaries we pay for with our taxes. The party list ins are no exception. The so-called street parliamentarians have now been given voice in the legislative halls to fight for their causes and yet you now see them wittingly or unwittingly being made use of in furthering the cause of the damned. They may be in temporary unholy alliance with the forces of the left to topple the current government and resume hostilities against each other once the common mission has been accomplished.
Would the consequences to the country be so disastrous if we didn’t have congressmen and senators? I feel that we are better off without these petty leaders. The congressmen and senators who have used government money for the benefit of the people are rare. The few crumbs that get to the citizenry are those given like personal favors to make them beholden to them. Money spent for projects become a vehicle for graft and also to grant as favors to fawning suppliers or as payback for election fund contributions.
We end up with substandard infrastructure and haphazardly done service facilities to our people. Most of the projects have a life span that do not exceed the terms of office of these rapacious satraps. The citizens pay so much to give them palatial offices and work places. They are provided generously with the wherewithal to make them efficient with what they are constitutionally mandated to do and yet a lot of them see the pork barrels as cookie jars.
I cannot understand how so many politicians can be so without scruples so as to advocate the cause of the ousted President Erap who patently stole so much money from the government that up to now he is still able to have under his control his minions comprised of the best minds in his former government, his party and the worst of the riff raff in his enforcement staff.
I do not believe that the fortunes he amassed came only from illegal gambling and the usual government contract scams. It must come from something that is able generate in a scale beyond the magnitude of graft and illegal gambling. It must be something that is a continuing enterprise which would make them afford the incessant funding of the shirtless masses to take to the streets and to maintain the loyalties of so called idealistic organizations and the commissioning of expensive legal luminaries and the support of influential personae. The magnitude of the resources is mind-boggling. Have they dug a tunnel into Fort Knox?, discovered the philosopher’s stone?, cornered the international drug trade?, who knows what evil providence have come to them?
What drives a respected venerable senator who is near the end of his illustrious career to take the side of a criminal president is beyond me. What is equally surprising is how an ivy leaguer ex-senator who was acclaimed as the defender of the oppressed, fighter for patriotic causes, who gave up a law practice in the US to join the struggle for a better government in his country, and one who could never be accused of corruption because as a senator he was facetiously accused of unexplained poverty pick up the cudgels for the Elevated Dropout. Who could explain the motivations of a young, brilliant and well-bred congressman who is supposed to still have a pristine college idealism to zealously side with the Leading Lecher. Who would have expected the darling of the senate, a respected media celebrity turned senator and who once shed copious conscience tears to so agilely shed her shame and fly towards the roost of the Divined tippler.
I can understand necessity as a strong motive. The motivation of a hungry stomach, the shivering cold of the homeless, the exaggerated sense of gratitude of sycophants placed in undeserved positions, those in close proximity, relatives and cronies scrambling at crumbs like remoras clinging to a shark, those overly paid doers of the unthinkable deeds on his behalf and those under some kind of duress. While these do not mitigate their acts there is at least an iota of an explanation for their behavior.
So many of his supporters have benefited from the whimsical disposition of his munificence. I heard that he could be very generous spontaneously. We have all heard of the million peso “balatos” to special friends cheering him on in mahjong. He must have paid fortunes to maintain the loyalty of his minions. Where has dignity gone?
How else could one explain the loyalty of a coterie of supposedly good and honest men that make up his cabinet and the otherwise evanescent loyalty of the corrupt military.
“Share the action” must have been his motto and “Happy Days” his minions’ song.
It is lamentable the way media has succumbed to the lure of the lucre. There isn’t an hour on prime time where you don’t hear the playing up of rumors and the unsubtle goading of media personalities to fire up the emotions of the rabble. Media in their advertising blurbs unabashedly declare how virtuous and courageous they are in airing without fear and with impartiality the current events; but aren’t these just readings of scripts in press kits provided by partisan groups.
They are purveying hellish heralds that would make Goehring’s Nazi propaganda look amateurish. The forces of the dark side have harnessed the best and the brightest of our communicators. It has not spared the brightest sons and daughters of our advertising community. They have lent their expertise to forward the cause of the damned.
More than ever I am now convinced that robber barons are descended upon us. I am enjoining the young and decent, the still uncorrupted to fight and if you cannot beat them don’t join them but flee to climes where you can raise your children in an upright way, where heroes are truly deserving of emulation, where the corrupt rich are not the models your young ones will follow.
I see little hope for the fatherland. Given another ten years most of the young who stayed would have joined the legion of damned or if they are not able to join they would be wallowing in the misery of poverty or be a part of the hunted underground community of the upright, the decent, and the respectable.
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high:
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
by narrow domestic walls;
Where the words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into
The dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening
Thought and action-
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake
R. Tagore from Gitanjali
posted by wayfarer at 4:32 PM 5 comments
Philippine politics has finally dug itself into a bottomless pit.. It has been doing that for decades now with some success but at last after repeatedly putting its foot in the mouth and after successively shooting itself in the foot our politicos can claim success in sinking the country into an inextricable quagmire.
What are Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s (GMA) contributions to the morass that we are in. It may not too difficult to discern what exactly she had in mind. If she was not so concerned about being politically and legally correct she could have plainly stated that she was determined, come hell or high water to prevent an incompetent ersatz hero like Fernando Poe, Jr. to come to the country’s Presidency through the assistance of the ousted president, the equally incompetent ersatz hero, Erap Estrada.
Erap has several reasons for the ouster of GMA. Foremost of these is that he could go scot free from the imminent sentencing of the plunder charges against him if a friendlier head of state is installed and that the good times will continue to roll in the aegis of a grateful and ever faithful friend. GMA and so many like thinking Filipinos believe in the guilt of Erap on the plunder charges leveled against him. For the rest of the opposition the motives that can be ascribed are continued munificence that they have enjoyed or might continue to enjoy from Erap and perhaps to an equal degree is the clipping of the political power of GMA. Politicians have never been for the people. Political power and its concomitant material benefit is the end all and be all of our elected officials in Congress and the Senate.
But what of GMA? She is guilty as hell from the election fraud that has been leveled against her. The evidences unearthed by the opposition and the testimonies of people who were once in the inner sanctum of Malacanan Palace are difficult to ignore.
Is the first gentleman guilty of the anomalies in government projects and his involvement in “hueteng”? Of course he is. That these were done to ensure that Fernando Poe, Jr. would not become the President of the Philippines is beside the point.
Observers of Philippine politics will agree that the party in power, who enjoy the advantages of incumbency, will not hesitate to use the wherewithal at their disposal.
In the midst of the brickbat and mud sling melee GMA sort of alluded to the biblical admonition “he who is without sin cast the first stone” even when the first stone has long been hurled.
The bottom line is that GMA is guilty of election fraud. She was single minded about preventing Fernando Poe, Jr. from becoming President and would do it at any cost. In her mind it would have been a fate worst than death for the Filipino people…it would have meant the victory of the discredited and ousted Erap, a victory of dark against light. Such was her conviction. Even if many shared this conviction still the end does not justify the means…and besides she and her husband’s motives have always been suspect.
The opposition on the other hand is guilty of wittingly fielding a popular candidate who by any stretch of the imagination could lead the country competently and with dignity. At the same time they are guilty of abetting the nefarious designs of a patently corrupt ex-President by accepting his political and monetary assistance. What price political victory?
Alas, to us wretched Filipinos it is again a question of choosing the lesser evil, a choice that has been foisted on us most of the time.
posted by wayfarer at 5:08 PM 1 comments
An Old Man's Prattle
I have been irritable lately.
Every time I turn on the TV set all I hear from the news programs are the exposes coming from the opposition regarding the alleged cheating that the winning presidential candidate had perpetrated during the last elections. This has gone for over two year nows from the time the President was proclaimed.
Our lawmakers have spent all their time hearing cases on the alleged massive cheating during the last elections under the guise of these being in aid of legislation. For a country notorious for non-enforcement of laws the last thing we need are more unenforceable laws. Clearly motives for these cases brought to hearings in the legislative halls have been in aid of political goals.
You now begin to question the usefulness of these clowns in formal suits whose salaries we pay for with our taxes. The party list ins are no exception. The so-called street parliamentarians have now been given voice in the legislative halls to fight for their causes and yet you now see them wittingly or unwittingly being made use of in furthering the cause of the damned. They may be in temporary unholy alliance with the forces of the left to topple the current government and resume hostilities against each other once the common mission has been accomplished.
Would the consequences to the country be so disastrous if we didn’t have congressmen and senators? I feel that we are better off without these petty leaders. The congressmen and senators who have used government money for the benefit of the people are rare. The few crumbs that get to the citizenry are those given like personal favors to make them beholden to them. Money spent for projects become a vehicle for graft and also to grant as favors to fawning suppliers or as payback for election fund contributions.
We end up with substandard infrastructure and haphazardly done service facilities to our people. Most of the projects have a life span that do not exceed the terms of office of these rapacious satraps. The citizens pay so much to give them palatial offices and work places. They are provided generously with the wherewithal to make them efficient with what they are constitutionally mandated to do and yet a lot of them see the pork barrels as cookie jars.
I cannot understand how so many politicians can be so without scruples so as to advocate the cause of the ousted President Erap who patently stole so much money from the government that up to now he is still able to have under his control his minions comprised of the best minds in his former government, his party and the worst of the riff raff in his enforcement staff.
I do not believe that the fortunes he amassed came only from illegal gambling and the usual government contract scams. It must come from something that is able generate in a scale beyond the magnitude of graft and illegal gambling. It must be something that is a continuing enterprise which would make them afford the incessant funding of the shirtless masses to take to the streets and to maintain the loyalties of so called idealistic organizations and the commissioning of expensive legal luminaries and the support of influential personae. The magnitude of the resources is mind-boggling. Have they dug a tunnel into Fort Knox?, discovered the philosopher’s stone?, cornered the international drug trade?, who knows what evil providence have come to them?
What drives a respected venerable senator who is near the end of his illustrious career to take the side of a criminal president is beyond me. What is equally surprising is how an ivy leaguer ex-senator who was acclaimed as the defender of the oppressed, fighter for patriotic causes, who gave up a law practice in the US to join the struggle for a better government in his country, and one who could never be accused of corruption because as a senator he was facetiously accused of unexplained poverty pick up the cudgels for the Elevated Dropout. Who could explain the motivations of a young, brilliant and well-bred congressman who is supposed to still have a pristine college idealism to zealously side with the Leading Lecher. Who would have expected the darling of the senate, a respected media celebrity turned senator and who once shed copious conscience tears to so agilely shed her shame and fly towards the roost of the Divined tippler.
I can understand necessity as a strong motive. The motivation of a hungry stomach, the shivering cold of the homeless, the exaggerated sense of gratitude of sycophants placed in undeserved positions, those in close proximity, relatives and cronies scrambling at crumbs like remoras clinging to a shark, those overly paid doers of the unthinkable deeds on his behalf and those under some kind of duress. While these do not mitigate their acts there is at least an iota of an explanation for their behavior.
So many of his supporters have benefited from the whimsical disposition of his munificence. I heard that he could be very generous spontaneously. We have all heard of the million peso “balatos” to special friends cheering him on in mahjong. He must have paid fortunes to maintain the loyalty of his minions. Where has dignity gone?
How else could one explain the loyalty of a coterie of supposedly good and honest men that make up his cabinet and the otherwise evanescent loyalty of the corrupt military.
“Share the action” must have been his motto and “Happy Days” his minions’ song.
It is lamentable the way media has succumbed to the lure of the lucre. There isn’t an hour on prime time where you don’t hear the playing up of rumors and the unsubtle goading of media personalities to fire up the emotions of the rabble. Media in their advertising blurbs unabashedly declare how virtuous and courageous they are in airing without fear and with impartiality the current events; but aren’t these just readings of scripts in press kits provided by partisan groups.
They are purveying hellish heralds that would make Goehring’s Nazi propaganda look amateurish. The forces of the dark side have harnessed the best and the brightest of our communicators. It has not spared the brightest sons and daughters of our advertising community. They have lent their expertise to forward the cause of the damned.
More than ever I am now convinced that robber barons are descended upon us. I am enjoining the young and decent, the still uncorrupted to fight and if you cannot beat them don’t join them but flee to climes where you can raise your children in an upright way, where heroes are truly deserving of emulation, where the corrupt rich are not the models your young ones will follow.
I see little hope for the fatherland. Given another ten years most of the young who stayed would have joined the legion of damned or if they are not able to join they would be wallowing in the misery of poverty or be a part of the hunted underground community of the upright, the decent, and the respectable.
Where the mind is without fear and the head is held high:
Where knowledge is free;
Where the world has not been broken up into fragments
by narrow domestic walls;
Where the words come out from the depth of truth;
Where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection;
Where the clear stream of reason has not lost its way into
The dreary desert sand of dead habit;
Where the mind is led forward by thee into ever-widening
Thought and action-
Into that heaven of freedom, my Father, let my country awake
R. Tagore from Gitanjali
posted by wayfarer at 4:32 PM 5 comments
posted by bunganga at 11:17 PM
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