Mrs. Arroyo and other reactionaries are bound to fail because they overestimate their own strength and underestimate the people’s intelligence, determination and capacity to take destiny in their own hands.

By Carol Pagaduan-Araullo
BusinessWorld
Posted by Bulatlat

Not a few friends and even fellow activists have asked whether the right thing to do in the coming May polls is simply to boycott the darned thing what with the numerous signs that bode ill for an honest, fair and clean elections that would give a fighting chance for the electoral Opposition, to win a significant number of congressional and local government seats.

The discredited head of the Commission on Elections refuses to relinquish the job while failing to undertake any major reforms such as the dismantling of the entrenched cheating mafia that has taken hold of the supposedly independent body. This “dagdag-bawas” machinery was allegedly run by the infamous Commissioner Garcillano who is said to have manufactured Mrs. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s spurious win in the 2004 presidential contest.

For her part, Mrs. Arroyo has not heeded calls from the Catholic hierarchy, concerned citizens and its many critics that she, as a gesture of good will, appoints new commissioners to vacant positions who are above reproach and can restore the requisite modicum of impartiality and credibility to the Comelec.

Mrs. Arroyo’s new Defense Secretary is widely perceived to have been involved in the “Hello Garci” high-level and wholesale cheating including its cover-up, with his latest appointment to a coveted post both a reward and political insurance for Mrs. Arroyo. He has, contrary to pronouncements by his predecessor, announced that the armed forces will continue to play its controversial role in “securing peace and order” during the electoral exercise. This is interpreted by many quarters as a flimsy cover for the rampant use of the military once more in favor of Mrs. Arroyo’s candidates.

Some people have been turned off, to the point of giving up any hope in the electoral process, due to the facile switching of sides by supposed anti-GMA opposition figures, who have opportunistically hopped onto the administration’s senatorial wagon. Furthermore, they exclaim in exasperation, don’t Filipinos deserve a better choice than candidates of the pretender-president Gloria versus those anointed by the ousted president Erap?

Many quarters are correct in asserting that the call for Mrs. Arroyo to resign or face ouster still rings true given the illegitimacy of its lying, cheating, stealing and, may we add, murderous and puppet presidency. But the fact that GMA is still in power shows that conditions are not ripe for her extra-constitutional removal given the remaining, formidable forces propping her up vis a vis the current strengths and weaknesses of the broad anti-GMA united front.

A reckoning of GMA’s support would start with continued U.S. backing for its pliant, eager-to-please puppet regime that is deathly afraid of being found wanting in serving the Superpower’s interests in the country and the region. On the other hand, the Bush administration is a lame duck government facing heightening resistance to its policies at home and abroad.

The AFP/PNP, while wracked by dissension among its rank and file and young officer corps, remains loyal to Mrs. Arroyo who has found the right mix of higher budgets to feed the hungry maws of the extremely corrupt and wasteful military and police institutions, abetting illegal gambling and other criminal activities of the generals and senior officers and whipping up their appetite for a bloody counter-insurgency war disguised as part and parcel of the U.S.-led “war against terrorism”.

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