Biggest political lie

From: Balai Malai
To: Demosthenes B. Donato
Sent: Monday, March 03, 2008 4:36 AM
Subject: (Biggest Political Lie)

Hi Batchmates,

Before anything else, I would like to say that I seek you in peace and respect as fellow Ateneo Law School batchmates. I have closely monitored with increasingly anxiety the NBN/Lozada stories. To be honest, I am disturbed by the political advocacy calling for "regime change"... The content and message of the e-mail petition calling for resignation speaks for itself. From my end, I will just cite the article of Carmen N. Pedrosa below whose view I share in relation to what's going on (since the time GMA pulled out Angelo dela Cruz from Iraq, and actively sought out Chinese investments, up to the present)...

I admit I am frustrated that many of us continue to revere (the) former President (Corazon Cojuangco-Aquino) as the leading light (and infallible icon) of democracy. If there is anything she did right, it was that she handed power to her Constitutional successor in 1992. The rumors I now hear about the First Gentleman are the same rumors I heard before about Mrs. Aquino and her relatives (then called Kamag-anak, Inc.). The only difference is that I purposely chose to disbelieve the rumors about then President Aquino out of my euphoria from People's Power. Now I know I was mistaken. If we should mature politically as a people, we should learn to do away with stereotyping, i.e. that Marcos and his supporters were (all) evil, and that Aquino and her civil society associates are (all) saints. That is the BIGGEST POLITICAL LIE we all need to overcome. Let the laws be applied (fairly and equally) to (everyone) regardless of our political leanings. Otherwise, we will keep on repeating the same political mistakes we have done before.

Sincerely,
Dindo Donato
Ateneo Law Batch 88

Fascism in the streets
FROM A DISTANCE
By Carmen N. Pedrosa
Sunday, March 2, 2008

One headline said it all “The crowd is the statement.” What about the millions of other Filipinos who were not there and who do not agree with the statement? I hope they will not be forced to submit to action sought by “the crowd” that would affect the entire country and consequently their own lives. Must they be deprived just because a group of vested interests were able to gather a crowd? Ok let’s be generous and say there were 75,000 who gathered there according to the organizers themselves. The police said 15,000 and they give a scientific reason for their estimate. Director Geary Barias, chief of the National Capital Region Police Office reasoned that if the corner of Ayala and Paseo de Roxas measured half a hectare, or 5,000 square meters and you had three people per square meter then the logical estimate would be 15,000 people. Even with that estimate it would have been too crowded for the space of a square meter and it did not look that crowded even with deliberate panning only in parts were it was ‘crowded’.

When a few segments of society are able to assert their will by force, with whatever weapon, there is one word for it — fascism. They were describing the whole event as festive, not violent at all even if the intention was to force President GMA’s ouster by “the crowd”. Speaking of truth, the singing and laughing churchgoers and prayerful society matrons is also an extra constitutional means to get rid of the president. It also means to those of us unable to put up crowds for lack of time and money or corporate sponsors that it bypasses the political institutions for decision making — elections. And that is not until 2010. Something I had always thought these groups hold precious.

Although fascist is the last word they would want to be called, that is what the group was about in Ayala last Friday. They wanted to force President GMA out because they had “enough” people in the streets. I also know how these are gathered. Why is it happening? Why can a few members of the clergy, some oligarchs and the opposition gather a crowd and then claim they speak for the nation? Because that is the truth they would not admit or tell us. They may be a motley group but they symbolize real power in this country — the church, the oligarchy and colonial operators — not the military or the government as these are so often accused who can be made to cave in when the time comes.

Fascismo, its Italian name comes from fascio means, “bundle, (political) group,” and its emblem, “the fasces, a bundle of rods bound around a projecting axe-head that was carried before an ancient Roman magistrate by an attendant as a symbol of authority and power.” It might have been founded by Mussolini as an authoritarian political movement but it is also widely used as a political term to mean the use of force. Last Friday, the fascist weapon was “the crowd”, but in truth just a few rods that compose the power in this country.

It is easy to be misled when they gather a crowd and brand it as people power, and mouth freedom and democracy. But look closer and connect the dots — something else appears — the crowds are mere props of the oligarchic bundle of rods. The massing of crowds for regime change has come to be known in the Philippines as EDSA. It was successful twice that a third is being attempted again.

Mainly it is a fight of elites with one group out in the cold who want to seize power — sila naman. If that were the only reason, we would not have this fever pitch push to make it happen before 2010. That is the giveaway that I have often written about in the past. It is the flexing of muscle of political operators who want to prove they can do it at anytime by pushing the right buttons.

One day perhaps an assiduous history student will write it all down. It is not just about NBN or ZTE but about the struggle for power between the US and China.

* * *

I found it the height of irony that former presidents Corazon Aquino and Joseph Estrada should be both at the rally. Cory Aquino was put up after one EDSA as the massing of crowds and the other was put down in another. But that should tell you a lot. It can be done either way. One thing is clear if President GMA resigns, it will prove yet again that the fascists and their foreign sponsors rule.

It is worth noting that it was a Vice President of the United States Henry Wallace who was the first to clearly and accurately point out who the real American fascists are, and what they’re up to. “The really dangerous American fascists are not those who are hooked up directly or indirectly with the Axis. The FBI has its finger on those. The dangerous American fascist is the man who wants to do in the United States in an American way what Hitler did in Germany in a Prussian way. The American fascist would prefer not to use violence. His method is to poison the channels of public information. With a fascist the problem is never how best to present the truth to the public but how best to use the news to deceive the public into giving the fascist and his group more money or more power.” So is it in the Philippines.

The Makati Business Club’s omnipresence in the rally (reportedly footing the bill for the rally) is not surprising. Italian Giovanni Gentile wrote in the Encyclopedia Italiana: “Fascism should more appropriately be called corporatism because it is a merger of state and corporate power.”

It may be that the Arroyos are guilty of the same but we must be able to distinguish between true democrats and those who pretend to be democrats by using democratic lexicon. “American fascists would have to lie to the people in order to gain power. And, because they were in bed with the nation’s largest corporations — who could gain control of newspapers and broadcast media — they could promote their lies with ease. Their newspapers and propaganda carefully cultivate every fissure of disunity, every crack in the common front against fascism. They use every opportunity to impugn democracy. They demand free enterprise, but are the spokesmen for monopoly and vested interest. Their final objective toward which all their deceit is directed is to capture political power so that, using the power of the state and the power of the market simultaneously, they may keep the common man in eternal subjection,” Wallace added. That is not difficult to translate in Philippine terms circa 2008 and the interpretation of recent events by media owned or influenced by big business.