|
|
||
Home | From the Soldiers | The Struggle for Change | Withdrawal of Support | The Armed Forces | The Nation | Issues and Concerns -------------------------------------------------- From the People | Soldiers of the People | About Us | Links --------------------------------------------------
|
||
|
================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= ================= Restiveness Redux Angling for Support ================= ================= ================= Coup d'Etat: A Practical Handbook ================= |
Criminals Conrado de Quiros, Philippine Daily Inquirer, July 10, 2006
Malacañang says it is variously plotting to oust Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, plotting to mutiny against GMA, plotting to coup-curucu-coup GMA. Take your pick. Well, what Lim did say, as the video shows, was a “withdrawal of support.” Is that any different from the withdrawal of support of Angelo Reyes, or indeed GMA herself, from Erap? Ah, but it is. For reasons that indict not Lim but the people he plotted to withdraw support from. Reyes’—and GMA’s—withdrawal of support from Erap (former President Joseph Estrada) was a withdrawal of support from an elected president. At the time Erap was ousted, the impeachment proceedings against him hadn’t finished. Half the senators had merely walked out of the impeachment court. They had done so because their colleagues, who were the majority, had tried to block the truth from being known, the truth in the form of the so-called “Second Envelope,” which they voted not to open. To this day, that remains the fundamental moral justification for Erap’s ouster: He had betrayed the public trust; his supporters in the Senate-cum-impeachment-court had merely tried to prevent the truth from coming out. By contrast, Lim’s withdrawal of support was a withdrawal of support from an unelected president. There is the “Hello Garci” to prove that beyond a shadow of doubt. That isn’t just a moral justification for ousting GMA, that is a legal justification for jailing her. GMA hadn’t just betrayed the public trust, she had screwed the voters’ votes. The only reason she remains in power is that her supporters act as though the “Hello Garci” does not exist, and she has prevented witnesses, like Gen. Francisco Gudani and Col. Alexander Balutan from showing her to have robbed the voters of Tawi-Tawi and environs of their votes. Now, tell me, how is the desperate effort of Erap’s friends to prevent the Second Envelope from being opened different from GMA’s desperate effort to prevent Gudani and Balutan from opening their mouths? Well, the second is worse. Far, far, worse. Yet Erap is in jail and GMA is in Malacañang. If Lim committed any crime, it is only in trying to talk his superiors, who were the top brass of the AFP, into joining his cause. He seems to have been confident he had done so when he agreed to give that interview. To this day, I cannot comprehend how he could have possibly thought that his superiors, who had corruption charges hanging on their heads and were even then being fattened off the fat of the land by their commander-in-theft, could have been persuaded to bite the hand that fed them. Indeed, if Lim committed any crime, it is only the crime of idealism, or optimism, of believing that his superiors could be capable of finally thinking of country before self, of being satiated at some point, of being alarmed at the hellish pass their country had been plunged into, enough to say, “Tama na, sobra na, abuso na.” If Lim committed any crime, it is only the crime of wanting to avoid bloodshed, which was what made him want to talk to his superiors to begin with, the younger officers already incensed at the way the AFP had been utterly perverted and used like petty riffraff to steal the vote in Muslim Mindanao; and ready to storm the gates of Hell or Malacañang, whichever held more demons. Truly, those are heinous crimes in this country today. To continue to believe in the decency of other people, including generals, and the wisdom of bloodless uprisings—that is deserving of the firing squad. Indeed, even if Lim’s actions constitute a coup plot and not just a mere withdrawal of support, what of it? If it were so, then it would have been a coup to end a coup. Indeed it would have been a popular coup to end a widely detested coup. For make no mistake about it, the GMA regime is the product of a coup. It is a coup regime. It is a junta held by a few people. It is a seizure of power, no more and no less than Ferdinand Marcos’ martial law was a seizure of power, albeit one done through the ballot rather than the bullet, by Garci rather than by goons, by farce rather than by force. It is no less vicious and murderous for being so, the usurpation now currently being propped up by the thuggish ways of dictatorship. Illegitimacy is the handmaiden of dictatorship. So it was in Marcos’ time, so it is in GMA’s time. The real crime isn’t Lim plotting to oust GMA and attempting to get his fellows in uniform to go along with him, it is GMA actually ousting democracy, whose cornerstone is that the people may be ruled only by the leaders they voted for, and conscripting the very sectors of society that once ousted a president who had betrayed the public trust to go along with her. The real accessories to the crime are not the civilians and military officers who did go along to end a vicious farce; it is the bishops who thought to lend a halo to a usurper, shown by the “Hello Garci” tape to be willing to agree to kidnapping to silence a witness; the businessmen who kept asking, “But who do we replace her with?” as though an illegitimate leader can ever be better than a dog; the pillars of civil society who proved that they were hollower than the prop pillars Hollywood used for “Samson and Delilah”; the congressmen whose only heroic act was to look at the faces of the heroes in the peso bills that flooded the Batasan during the impeachment bid; the lawyers who argued that there could possibly be any shred of sanity, not to speak of legality, in preventing Gudani and Balutan from telling the world GMA was a cheat apart from a liar; the tired, cynical and resignation-filled Filipinos who kept saying, “Sige na lang, let’s move on,” as though life could ever move a muscle while being pinned down by a rubble called Injustice. Look at them: Criminals all. =====================================
What Coup? Conrado de Quiros, Philippine Daily Inquirer, July 18, 2006 JUSTICE Secretary Raul Gonzalez’s intention clearly is to show how real the threat to the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo government is and how devious the people making those threats are. He now has proof, he says, that some 20 businessmen financed the threatened coup last February, which could be more if you counted those that gave the destabilizers aid and comfort. Indeed, it’s not just businessmen who are into this. The meeting in Jose “Peping” Cojuangco’s house that Nelly Sindayen mentioned in her Time article, says Gonzalez, was also attended by two high-ranking government officials. “Imagine having Cabinet-level officials attending such a conclave. It means these people are traitors and that is punishable by law.” In fact, all Gonzalez succeeds in doing is to show how deeply alienated the government he is serving is and how, contrary to their own propaganda, the business community is not solidly behind them. I really would wish he would name those who financed or supported or sympathized with Danny Lim’s cause. At the very least it would show that Donald Duck does not speak for the businessmen, he merely speaks for himself. To go by the exact same words he said during Joseph Estrada’s time, pleading with the coup plotters that included Arroyo to give Estrada one more chance, as he was certain the fellow could experience a change of heart, his support for presidents is generic: He has a template expressing undying loyalty to the Big Boss with only the name of the Big Boss left blank. At the very most, it would give the public to see the difference in quality between those trying to prop up an illegitimate regime and those trying to end it. I ardently hope Gonzalez reveals the names of the presumably errant businessmen and Cabinet officials so that we may compare them to Donald Duck and him. The Cabinet-level officials who plotted to overthrow Arroyo are traitors who may expect to be punished by law? They are patriots who may count on the undying gratitude of their countrymen! But truly Gonzalez makes a spectacle of himself every time he invokes the law, which has the sensation of Garci calling his detractors liars. Shouldn’t he really be saying, representing as he does the majesty of the law: “Imagine a presidential candidate plotting like that with Garci! It means she is a traitor and that is punishable by firing squad!”? But then he wouldn’t have been justice secretary to begin with. But my question remains: What coup? Or in relation to the above, what exactly were the businessmen and Cabinet officials whom Gonzalez threatens to identify financing, aiding, or coddling? Shortly after ABS-CBN Broadcasting came out with a video of Lim speaking his mind out during his withdrawal of support on Feb. 23, several TV stations interviewed experts about the history of military intervention in public affairs in this country, specifically the coup attempts. Most of the guests agreed that the politicization of the military, which gave them a “praetorian mentality,” was the prime reason for these attempts. They missed the point. There is a fundamental difference between the coup attempts of the past and Lim’s action, and one that goes well beyond the technicality of the phrase “withdrawal of support.” Two things stand out in particular. One, the coup attempts of the past, notably the ones led by RAM against Cory, were attempts to overthrow a duly constituted authority, one directly and freely established by the people and enjoying the support of the people. The plotters did not mean to conscript public support for their cause—Cory enjoyed that support—they meant to seize power by force and defend it against the people by force. Had they won, they would have needed to pacify a restive public with arms afterward. Lim’s withdrawal of support, on the other hand, was an attempt to overthrow an unduly-instituted authority, one directly and forcibly mounted by fraud. Lim’s statement harped on the use of the military to cheat the voters of their vote. The plotters did not just mean to enlist the public to their cause, they counted on it. Had they won, they would have needed to pacify their countrymen from their joyous, ecstatic and drunken revelry. Two, and more importantly, there is an easy way to tell a coup from something else. A coup is an overthrow of government, with the plotters expressly intending to take over government. It isn’t just an overthrow of power, it is a seizure of power. That was what the RAM coup attempts of the past were: They meant to seize power from “the politicians,” who had presumably betrayed the dreams of Edsa People Power. And that was what Arroyo’s electoral plot was: She meant to seize power for herself and for no other reason than that she liked it. Nowhere in his statement did Lim say he was going to run the government himself. Indeed, as the newspapers and TV stations subsequently reported, his idea was to bring a transitional government into being composed of people other than him. Indeed, civilians rather than generals. But that’s the part, too, that I am unhappy about. I’ve always argued that any attempt to oust the current government -- or end the current junta -- by people power or any other means can only be justified on the basis of snap elections being called afterward. Not by any formal council, transitional or permanent. If the issue is illegitimacy, then the solution is legitimacy. That can only be supplied by new -- and clean -- elections. Anything else opens itself to charges of hidden agenda, personal interest, selfish motives. Indeed, anything else voids the cause for which ending an illegitimate government was undertaken. Why end an unelected rule only to set up another? But right now, I’m all ears. Pray tell us, Mr. Justice Secretary, who are the coup plotters in our midst? =====================================
|
|
|
Home | From the Soldiers | The Struggle for Change | Withdrawal of Support | The Armed Forces | The Nation | Issues and Concerns -------------------------------------------------- From the People | Soldiers of the People | About Us | Links --------------------------------------------------
|
||
PRAY,
WHAT CRIME HAS DANILO LIM COMMITTED?