Has The High Court Brought The Aquino Presidency Down? The seeming defeat of the palace in the Supreme Court ruling over the Development Acceleration Program is being squeezed to the pulp by the most intense propaganda war ever, to oust President Noynoy Aquino. Some groups would even twist the wording and intent of the landmark SC decision to concoct his and Budget Secretary Butch Abads culpability in violating the laws of the country. Already, PNoy is being lined for impeachment. And a case of plunder has been slammed on Sec. Abad. For all its worth, the surge of bad publicity stemming from the DAP fiasco has been exploited to the hilt to demonize the president barely a week of the courts ruling, a short time to reasonably digest the content and intent of it, but apparently enough for some to make him ripe for the fall. Will the early batting for impeachment and premature filing of cases, obviously opportunistic political maneuvers, succeed? They may if they already reflect the genuine sentiment of the people - that is, the overwhelming majority of Filipinos who have not only voted for PNoy, but kept him on a high level of approval four years since day one in office. Will an impeachment push through? If indeed it gets to first and second base in the Lower House, will it go to the desired end: Aquinos removal from office? With the votes needed for the presidents impeachment still strongly lined up on his side, the legal, political and moral arguments for it flimsy and hollow, and no favorable opinion foreseeable in the public at large, it is assured of going straight to the thrash can. A removal from office of a sitting president via impeachment may not even be in the cards of Madame Auring this time and over the next two years. Will there be as much as an indictment for plunder of Abad? Despite his last names being mangled to spell as A Bad Secretary, nothing of the sort is forthcoming. Yes, one case of this nature has already been filed at the Ombudsman by a leftist youth party list, belonging to the Makabayan Block. But the rush to it in a matter of days, the mere citing of SC ruling as basis, and the reckless short shrift to general accusations with no concrete proof made It out to be more of a publicity stunt than a genuine search for justice. The Department of Justice and the National Bureau of Investigation took almost a year poring over tons of documentary evidence, taking sworn statements of several whistle blowers not to speak of testimonies all over the archipelago of mayors and other officials involved, the stunning Commission on Audit report on the 2007-2009 PDAF irregularity, a serial expose in a major daily, and of course the Million Peoples March, to file cases of plunder against three powerful political personalities. No one is saying the Budget Sec stole billions of pesos in peoples money. All everyone is saying is that the SC declared certain acts under DAP to be unconstitutional. If for alleged criminal liability over DAP and other supposed instances of betrayal of the public trust as positioned by the left, it will take an act no longer confined to the legal system to challenge the prevailing political order, more so take out PNoy from office. Again, this involves the combination of a groundswell of anti-government rallies into their tens or hundreds of thousands on the one hand, and military defections to the protest movement on the other. For the people no longer to be able to live the way they are, under an Aquino regime, is not enough. There must also be the regimes inability to rule the way it used to. The sign is that it has lost handle on the military apparatus to crush the challenge and stay feasibly in power. To plot the whole scenario of an early stepping down from office by PNoy is at this time wishful thinking. In some old political texts, the situation stated above is called a profound revolutionary crisis, when the ouster of the powers-that-be is already in order. Of course the remaining forces of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo will be overjoyed to witness that. Of course also, Jinggoy Estrada, Bong Revilla and Juan Ponce Enrile along with their camp followers would be falling off their seats with elation to see the man who has been instrumental in their present woes go. Of course, for some reasons, the vestiges of the Marcos dictatorship - Bongbong and Imelda et al, will just be all too glad to have the chance to revise history. Of course again, the rabid rooters of the left who seem to have been stricken with ideological-political incoherence, and degenerated to vicious personal attacks in the craze to get the hated Aquino scion out of office, would be reaching orgasmic highs over a dubious tactical or strategic victory. That is why, for all the self-serving reasons of these fractious political formations and partly because of them, there isnt going to be any popular upheaval of sorts to oust PNoy. Weighing the credibility of the leading and motive forces behind the bat for his ouster, the people are guaranteed to shy away. Their kind is not the one with the moral ascendancy to inspire a national catharsis or a battle against evil. More so if the call is to take extralegal/extra-constitutional means. Remember that the immediate basis for wanting PNoy out is the unconstitutional acts done under DAP, as declared by the high court. Will an unconstitutional means then do to punish him for a course of action outside the parameters set by the constitution? A political uprising is out of the question now . The terrible disruption the cataclysm will create on the orderly lives of millions and the deeply pernicious havoc it will wreak on the countrys economy will invite but very few adherents to the cause, So say goodbye to Edsa, I and II will never happen again, not at least over the next two and a half years. Analysts doubt if, given the challenged credibility of the oust-Aquino proponents, the critical mass of the people will believe much more trust in their word. Will their idea be gripped by the masses and become a material force to sweep PNoy out of power? That is suntok sa buwan. As for the ND left, they only have all the years of continuous tactical lapses and political fumbling to blame if they cant still whip up any respectable number on the streets. In the second Aquino presidency, they have even handled their politics more dismally than before. All the drama and extravaganza of costly effigy-burning, gimmicky antics, shouting of slogans, and flaunting of big streamers would dramatically fail to arouse and mobilize the masses. In fact, they time and again aroused instead curses of stranded, sweating and inconvenienced commuters because of the traffic bedlam that they create. One wonders if the hundreds of thousands of pesos spent for those pathetic rage-and-laugh events had better gone to buying rice for the poor. So, what did all the hullabaloo at taking the president to task on DAP and the propa extravaganza about ousting him so far amount to? Shakespeare may have put it more vividly: sound and fury signifying nothing! Except perhaps for a few percentage points deducted from PNoys approval rating come the next survey.
Posted on: Fri, 11 Jul 2014 05:52:26 +0000
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