PP1017 and Inside the Philippines Coup Plot: A prequel to the “Return of the Comeback”
Posted by: Fats in: Fats, Vitamins & Minerals > Wika at Hirap > Media WatchA response to “Inside the Philippines Coup Plot” - A TIME reporter witnesses a meeting of opponents of Philippines President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, by Bryan Walsh. Friday, Feb. 24, 2006. Reported by Nelly Sindayen.
No official details have been released about the nature of the alleged coup, but on Thursday evening a TIME reporter witnessed a meeting held at the home of Jose Cojuangco, brother of former Philippine President Corazon Aquino, where plans were being hatched for what one of the ringleaders called a “withdrawal of support” from President Arroyo. More than a dozen middle-level officials and businessmen were at the meeting, which went well past one in the morning. While Cojuangco’s daughter Mikee kept the buffet table piled high with chicken sandwiches, macaroni salad, corn and cookies, Pastor Saycon, a businessman and longtime Arroyo critic, planned for a new government.
As the others listened, Saycon spoke over the phone to a person he identified as an American official in Washington, assuring him that the post-coup regime would still be friendly to the U.S. “You will still be our friend, not China,” he said. Then, Saycon phoned a man whom he addressed as ” Delta” and identified as General Lim. Over the speaker phone, Lim confirmed that it was “all systems go” for the planned movement against Arroyo. According to Saycon, a military component was to march on Friday morning to the EDSA Shrine in Manila, where the 20th anniversary of the People Power revolution was to be celebrated. At the shrine they would be met by a contingent of Catholic bishops, and a Marine general would read a statement withdrawing support from Arroyo’s government. The bishops, according to Saycon, had one request: that the coup be bloodless.
The TIME report has all the clichés of a fly-by-night suspense-action film. Released to Philippine media as “Chronology of Conspiracy” by Malacañang Palace and out on-line through the TIME website as early as the day a State of National Emergency (PP1017) was declared, “Inside the Philippines Coup Plot” is as lame as the U.S. media/state mouthpiece acclaim of the supposedly “anti-political” stunt (declaring to resign) of former Bolivian president Carlos Mesa (which, to the disappointment of U.S. media propaganda, eventually opened the way to the election of the country’s first indigenous president, the socialist Aymarsa Indian Evo Morales).
However, the key difference between politics in the Philippines and in Bolivia, is that the ridicule and triviality, the shallow and pretentious take implied in the reports, have taken shape in the cinematic, telenovela-esque, soapy if not saccahrine political life in the Philippines. Escaping from the political noise barrage, we take refuge in the daily voyeuristic pop-lobotomy of “Big Brother” and the shock-therapy of “American Idol” and “Fear Factor.” Our own homebrew “Wowowee” proved to be the deadliest (a gameshow stampede of the poor that resulted to the death of 72 people, mostly elderly women, scrambling to enter the stadium for a chance to win a prize). On the Internet, e-mail barrage range from the pessimistic (”Open Letter to Our Leaders: Why We Are Not Out In The Streets”) to the cynical (”No to self-censorship!”), from the sophomoric (Rebel without a Clue: Walking to EDSA”) to the opportunistic (”Black Friday Bulletin - Flash Protest”).
Thus says Filipino actress/singer Rachel Alejandro:
We are having a hard enough time trying to survive, why can’t we just get along?
And Atty. Romeo Capulong at Crispin Beltran’s inquest:
We cannot expect impartiality and justice.
In other words, according to postmodern social theory: “nilihism without anxiety”, “a new superficiality”, “there is no outside the text”, “there are no origins or fixed references but only an intertextual play of signifiers on a level of surface without depth and without foundation”, “culture is an endless play of imitation which signals the end of authenticity and reality, thus “hyperreality”, with the death of the subject the past becomes unreachable.”
Here, the extent of people’s current political involvement can be described as a dismemberment of mind from body, of the intelligensia from the worker, of theory from practice. In the Philippine experiment, an inverse connection between the national economy and political stablity seems to have taken place. It is within these conditions that people are most easily controlled and manipulated. But such conditions can be transformed, they can be changed. Randy David proposes the following basic tasks (from “The National Situation” 7 Feb. 2006 speech at the Manila Polo Club):
“First, to end the scourge of absolute poverty once and for all, no matter what it takes. The stampede of the poor in Ultra is only a grim reminder of this unjust reality we must all help to end. Second, to educate everyone of our people, especially the young, in order to equip them for living in a highly competitive world. Third, to rebuild the physical infrastructure of our country, and to protect its environment from long-term damage. And lastly, to create stable institutions appropriate to a complex and modern society — in a climate of freedom, tolerance, and openness.”
I could agree with Randy David, but at a more abstract level, I would be more careful with basic agendas on education, infrastructure and economy. Undoubtedly, these are interconnected and these interconnections will need to be made more explicit. The tasks needed are actually much greater because we would need to first challenge all our established assumptions and operations of education, infrastructure and economy. Otherwise, all our well-meaning agendas and tasks would again result to PP1017, a sequel if not yet another prequel to the return of the comeback.
