Military rule
IT is ironic that the second woman who last benefited from “people
power” would be the same woman who would crush it. Madam Gloria
Macapagal-Arroyo succeeded to become president, thanks and no
thanks to the multitude of placard-bearing people who took to the
streets to oust a corrupt president. Another woman, Susan Roces,
the widow of her defeated poll rival, called her a cheat and
demanded her to descend posthaste from her lofty perch. But GMA
prevailed, with help from former President Ramos who was to rue
later that he had been had by this woman who proved to be wiser
and tougher than the late dictator Marcos. Her staying power
partly hinges on the fact that the opposition — an odd mixture of
leftists, Erap loyalists, rightists, charlatans, unemployed and
has-been politicians, criminals, gambling lords, and
schizophrenics – until now fails to come up with a credible
standard-bearer. Name it, the opposition has it, making it more
difficult to find those who are true with their cause.
It was déjà vu for former President Cory Aquino to lead last
week’s EDSA anniversary that transformed into a call for GMA to
step down. But alas, the latest EDSA people power failed to gather
enough steam, tempered rather than agitated, by the arrest of
suspected coup plotters and the declaration of a state of
emergency. With her Proclamation 1017, petite GMA prevailed and
loomed larger than the phalanx of anti-riot policemen and Army
soldiers dispatched to quell any sign of imminent revolt.
While we are not GMA loyalists, as in fact we prayed that a
bloodless people power would for the third time triumph on that
fateful February weekend, we felt somehow relieved that the
alleged coup plotters failed in their bid to seize power from
GMA’s corrupt government.
For all the heartaches and the sufferings that we have been
through as a nation, the last thing we need is a government
salvaged by generals to whom the spoils of war would be their
reward. While we are not “disputing the valor and dedication of
some of these officers”, we strongly feel against a government
ruled by victorious men in uniform.
Because we already see that more generals and even enterprising
junior officers have been too much pampered and cajoled in the
civilian state of affairs, their noses stuck too much in politics
— we fear for our nation run by soldiers whose power comes from
the barrel of a gun. Under a military regime or a government
beholden to its armed soldiers, there will follow an endless cycle
of strife and violence where the weak and the vanquished shed
blood or are hauled into prison camps. We should be warned by a
TIME reader who wrote that the fall of an empire, particularly by
a military regime, is always preceded by harsh, tyrannous
treatment of its people. This happened and continues to happen in
Latin America, Africa, and the Middle East where people die like
chicken and pig.
Because we allowed politics and corruption to destroy EDSA’s
legacy of a reformed nation, we Filipinos are perpetually hostaged
by destabilization threats, especially by the more adventurous
armed soldiers that try to snatch power at every chance because
they think they, too, have grievances against this government
which in the first place has coddled and politicized them to serve
someone’s greed and selfish interest.
