Twenty one years ago today is a long time for a lot of people. And most of the Filipinos alive today have no inkling of what had happened on that faithful day. No thanks for people like Tito Sotto, the quintessential comedian of the Philippine politics.

He was an FPJ partisan in 2004, he was until this year, when, typical of a Filipino politician, jumped over the fence. And he even had the gall to claim that FPJ would have supported his decision to join Team Unity. FPJ’s soul must be furious. (Inquirer report)

Then he went on to claim the FPJ’s widow, Susan Roces, supports him. Unfortunately, the journalists were responsible enough not to verify from Ms. Roces herself. (Another point for “responsible” journalism.)

To drive my point made in the first paragraph, Sotto was busy defending his decision:

What I said before has been said. We will not move forward if we dwell in the past. I have to respect the alliances of my new situation, if it ever pushes through. That’s it, let me keep my peace. (emphasis mine; same Inquirer report)

WE WILL NOT MOVE FORWARD IF WE DWELL IN THE PAST. Look where we are now, Mr. Sotto. If the people do not dwell in the past, congratulations. You are on your way to the Senate.

And that’s why, twenty one years later, we are still in the same muck we are in. The same fools are still fooling us, all because we do not dwell in the past.

I’m confused. Is Mike Defensor aspiring for a Senate seat or for a role in a Star Cinema movie? Gauging the TV ads and campaign posters, Mr. Defensor is acting (pun) as if he is an audition.

Instead of presenting his ideas or legislative priorities, he is projecting (pun) himself as someone’s utol (brother). He is confused; he thinks he is running for an executive post.

Then in campaign sorties, he uses the “Ibabahay ko kayo” joke (a double-meaning joke), in allusion to his previous post as housing czar.

He was also a former congressman, representing Quezon City; he was also part of the so-called Spice Boys, those congressmen who made noise during the eve of Estrada’s downfall.

And he also formulated the Defensor Postulate at the height of the Hello Garci scandal. The postulate goes like this:

x=~x

You know, “it’s her voice but she was not the one speaking.”

Brilliant guy. Give him the Best Actor award, please.

As the 2007 electoral campaign drags on slowly, the more Joker Arroyo shows what a joke he has become since the martial law days.

His political career from 2000 onwards has shown a path towards an inconsistency that is hard to understand. In 2001, his campaign ad showed his opening speech at the aborted Estrada impeachment trial, when he said that “we cannot have a country run by a thief.” This year, his ad states that he had defended the Constitution, the Senate, and the Bill of Rights.

So far so good. But he is now under the administration ticket, the administration being headed by someone that tried to bamboozle the Senate’s right to conduct investigations (EO 464) and the right of the people to assemble (CPR, PP 1017). In short, he allied himself with the very same person that he had opposed several times. He allied himself with someone that had tried to cost him his job.

Then he said that Gloria Arroyo is still the best defender of the Constitution. How many times did the Supreme Court declared several administration policies as unconstitutional?

Pag bad ka, lagot ka? Tell that to the Philippine Marines!

DJB has a very strong indictment of Joker Arroyo here and here.

(Absurd – inconsistent with reason or logic or common sense.)

—

This is the first in the (projected) series on the 2007 senatorial candidates.

Today’s column by Atty. Raul Pangalangan ended this way:

I know a young boy from a poor family who, to my delight, qualified as a Physics major in University of the Philippines. But he eventually dropped out, and when I asked his father why, apparently the boy had some difficulty in his sophomore year, lost his scholarship and, in order to re-enroll, was required to refund his earlier subsidies, a legal way of saying, “Get lost.” Last I heard, he was working in a factory, possibly a future Filipino J. Robert Oppenheimer sentenced to the assembly line.

It reminds me of Antoine de Saint Exupery‘s book, Wind, Sand, and Stars. The second to the last paragraph goes this way:

I went back to my sleeping car. I said to myself: Their fate causes these people no suffering. It is not an impulse to charity that has upset me like this. I am not weeping over an eternally open wound. Those who carry the wound do not feel it. It is the human race and not the individual that is wounded here, is outraged here. I do not believe in pity. What torments me tonight is the gardener’s point of view. What torments me is not this poverty to which after all a man can accustom himself as easily as to sloth. Generations of Orientals live in filth and love it. What torments me is not the humps nor hollows nor the ugliness. It is the sight, a little bit in all these men, of Mozart murdered.

Indeed. As a former educator, I should know. I saw a lot of young people missing their true vocations, of parents imposing upon their children their dreams and frustrations, of parents not guiding their children in choosing careers, of young people whose dreams are crushed by poverty.

The NCAE is great, but in the end, it will be just like the old NCEE.

Tech/voc education is OK for me; I know that not everyone is suited for university studies. Besides, not everyone can be a lawyer or a doctor; we need technicians and people who will drive the industries. But if what we offer welders and lathe machine operators are minimum wages that can only feed one person, I cannot blame people if they would rather get a college degree.

It is a sad story that seems to have no ending. Mr. Willy Prilles laments that we always shoot ourselves in the foot, and that maddens him. Can’t blame him, because it really makes your blood boil. Read that blog post and weep.

1. Present issues and platform.
2. Debate on issues and ideas.
3. Go easy on turncoats; as John Marzan had said, they can be good Trojan horse.

Care to add more?

What Jove Francisco calls The Great Raid I call simply as Hijacking in broad daylight.

Or maybe not. Remember Mike Defensor’s unity ticket? Then you hear about the Third Force, and now this. Heck, we might just wake up one of these days to find that there are two slates remaining – UNO and the third force that is effectively hijacked by the administration.

Or maybe that’s the game plan after all.

Here’s what have happened so far:

1. Defensor calls for a ticket of unity and reconciliation, composed of admin and opposition candidates
2. Some people clamoring for a third force
3. Pangilinan, Recto and Villar confirms talk on third force idea
4. Then, this Raid – Defensor, Zubiri, and Singson on the third force slate

Conclusion?

William Esposo continues his attempt to justify the viability of a Third Force. Every time he uses history as base of his arguments, the more he loses my respect.

While it is true that both the Liberal and Nacionalista Parties have a glorious political tradition, the truth is that this fact is no longer relevant to the issue. Besides, these parties are good as forgotten, what with the tendency of our people to forget.

Second, these parties are historically contrapelo. The Liberal Party was formed as an offshoot of the Nacionalista Party, being its liberal wing. And now that the two will coalesce smacks of something that Esposo accuses that of UNO and the administration slate.

Esposo should instead base his arguments on the realities of the day, not on what has gone before and is largely forgotten.

On the other hand, Katrina Legarda scoffs at all slates. It seems she will not vote this year. Or maybe she’d go for admin, since she spared the admin slate from words that Legarda used to describe the UNO and the Third Force.

As of now, the Third Force is more of a feeler slate more than anything else, nothing but speculations, like the latest from Senator Ralph Recto, who this time named names. Of course, until the certificates of candidacies are filed, take his words with a ton of salt.

John Marzan suggests a name change for UNO: Unity Coalition. Of course, the parameters for such unity MUST be defined first.

ExpectoRANTS has a reaction to MLQ3’s column in the PDI about EDSA 2. While I was at EDSA on 19th January 2001, I believe that the proper conclusion was for Erap to resign. A confession: I was then working for a defunct technical school, and we were “asked” by the boss to be there “for marketing purposes”. He even gave an order to make sure that the school banner could be seen by TV cameras. So not everyone there are really well-meaning folks, Resty.

Aside from that, if there was travesty of justice, it happened when the prosecutors of the impeachment walked out of the proceedings, effectively hijacking the process. If there was travesty of justice, it happened when the presiding officers of the Impeachment Court did not even dared hailing these hijackers to return. Heck, they were not even cited in contempt.

And the greatest injustice happened when well-meaning people were unwittingly used by people who planned all of these all along.

And the greatest injustice still happens, when the user remains free and wielding power.

I love this script:

DILG: Let’s do this together!
CHR: No thanks!

Now, if only I could draw….

Anyway, ABS-CBN’s Halalan 2007 is now up. It seems my Monday speculation was partially wrong. It is “Boto Mo, I-Patrol Mo”, and it is a citizen reporting scheme via MMS/3G.

And, something’s up at EDSA Shrine right now. Exactly six years ago today, the 1987 Constitution suffered from a vacuum, a new President was sworn in when the incumbent was neither dead, nor resigned, nor permanently incapacitated, nor convicted in an impeachment trial. And look where we are now.

Is preventing violence worth the destruction of our institutions, the rape of our values? MLQ3 is right, history will judge us, and it will be harsh.

The debate about the Third Flank or Force continues.

William Esposo’s column is a rather strongly-worded argument for a Third Flank. Willy Prilles hopes there will be a Third Force if the current trend (the names being floated as UNO candidates) goes.

MLQ3 pragmatically believes that such a force will lead to a disaster and will benefit Gloria Arroyo. John Marzan agrees and further adds that the idea is probably concocted by someone in the Fortress by the Pasig.

Esposo’s column is like a long exposition of a dilemma presenting several horns, all unacceptable:

* The United Opposition, composed of remnants of Marcos and Estrada regimes, already rejected by voters
* The administration, generating so much stink
* The Communist Left
* The Military Right

There is another horn to this dilemma, which is unacceptable to others but acceptable to Esposo and Patricia Evangelista – the third force.

The UNO is unacceptable because Esposo believes it carries the Estrada banner. In short, the UNO wants this election to be a continuation of EDSA 2. For Evangelista, she cannot accept it out of principle; after all, these are the people why EDSA 2 had to happen.

To attack this horn, read this post by DJB.

The administration is unacceptable because it has put us where we are right now, and electing its slate means virtual acceptance of the current situation.

To attack this horn, read Belinda Cunanan and Alex Magno.

The military right is unacceptable, so is the communist left, for historical reasons.

And the last horn, the third force. To attack this horn, I leave you to MLQ3 and John Marzan. And this comment by Manuel Buencamino in MLQ3’s blog:

Now a third force, which some people propose as the way out of the evil of choosing between two lessers, looks tempting but we must bear in mind whether we want to take the risk of allowing the greater evil to win because our forces became divided.

There’s actually another horn, equally unacceptable: do not vote at all.

William Esposo made a bad medical analogy, as what MLQ3 had said. He made another one, that of World War I. That war did end monarchies in Europe, but it had also left a lot of unfinished business and more problems, that another war was needed to resolve them.

Or maybe he meant it that way. 2007 will probably lead to the administration losing the battle but not the war, and 2010 will be another battle.

If there’s one convincing argument against the issue of a Third Flank (I should have used this word as opposed to Plank), it is Manuel Buencamino’s Business Mirror column for this week.

However, the fact remains: the opposition will turn off some people if its slate turns out to be as how the administration “frames” it. The question now is this: how many of them will either vote for the administration slate or not vote at all? In either case, the administration benefits.

How big is this chunk of voters that might be alienated by the opposition slate due to framing? Regardless of the size, the opposition should exert effort to prove the framing wrong. It has already committed that error in 2004; it cannot afford to commit the same mistakes again.

The opposition must present a very credible slate. The administration only has to present an acceptable one.

Here’s what I think the opposition should do:

1. Turn the tables by making its own frame.
2. Deal on issues. Deal about the lies, not about the liars. Do not limit itself with pro-impeachment issues; think of a post-Arroyo platform.
3. Present a credible and understandable platform that is clearly different with the administration.
4. Convince the people that they have a choice and that the opposition is the better choice.
5. Present a VERY CREDIBLE senatorial AND local ticket. The war will be won if the local battles are won. Get at least 100 House seats, or more.

And address what MLQ3 thinks is a three-pronged strategy by the administration:

1. Bog down enemies by suspending them; pay back supporters who demand payback for past support by going along with such suspensions;
2. Bog down otherwise credible officials by having them attend to trouble areas;
3. Provide a smokescreen for cheating, intimidation, etc. by saying there are anti-insurgency operations underway.