The
Victory Party of 100,000 people at the Luneta last Sunday is not reflective of
the true sense of victory already in the hearts of many people. Numbering by the
millions.
For
after all, the Supreme Court had already whipped the errant administration five
times - in the anti-dissent Palace executive orders (sounds like Marcos) and the
People's Initiative. The Constituent Assembly asinine concept was also booed by
the entire nation and most organized churches; the Palace and its bootlicking
minions then retreated like a defeated army of stragglers. Celebrating Thanksgiving
Day at the Luneta was then a redundancy.
Thus
Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita's belittling of the numbers in Luneta is another
case of misreading political barometers. Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye is even
more pathetic-when he vainly tried to put words into the mouth of the prelates
rally-saying that the call of the "people of the cloth" for change in
character included the reporters (media, he meant) when everyone (including the
international press) knew what the Prayer Rally was all about.
With
allies like those, GMA does not need any enemies.
Then
adding insult to injury to people's intelligence, Ermita says that while GMA is
laying off hard-line moves for charter change, she cannot control what her Congressional
allies and the ULAP (local executives) will do on the new possible modes for political
change. People know, of course, that all three belong to one anatomy and one hand
or leg will not move without the direction of the brain.
Then
the arrogant Joe De Venecia who will claim credit for anything these days - including
the rising of the sun in the East - calls for politicians and the church leaders
to come to a convergence point - with the view of healing wounds - but still pushing
with his agenda for Charter Change.
Salivating
for a position he will never get a national mandate from, JDV refuses to see that
2 of every 3 Filipinos do not want charter change now. Maybe he should start re-reading
the prophet-writer Kahlil Gibran who speaks thus: "He brings disaster upon
his nation, he who never sows a seed, or lays a brick or weaves a garment but
makes politics his occupation"
The
distrust for politicians of Joe's mold is at its monumental height. The noble
prelates say JDV is an ambitious man, and the prelates are honorable men.
Consider
that after the churches had spoken vehemently against his baby - another hare
brained called Con-Ass - JDV had the temerity to say (after Sunday's Prayer Rally)
that he and his allies "may have lost a battle but we will win the war."
Which
means this whole shebang is but a chess game. The Palace retreat was merely to
defuse national anger against the unmitigated greed and shameless arrogance of
the Con-Ass plotters. But when they make the next move, it will not be in retreat
but a clear chess offensive.
Good
thing the nation and the churches already take Palace pronouncements with a salt
and has learned to play the Palace game - by thinking five moves ahead in the
chessboard when moving the Rook to eat the Tower, so to speak. People, tongue-in-cheek,
liken the Palace to Pag-asa, whose pronouncements on the weather is the opposite
to reality.
The
Palace strategic thinkers who snicker with undisguised glee on the relative thinness
of the Sunday crowd are courting disaster. Because, in truth, the political pendulum
just swung dramatically for the first time - and the stirrings of a justifiable
unrest are beginning to take root. And mind you, the discontent is not isolated
in Manila alone.
This
episode restored power back to the people - in the sense that the Palace blinked
upon reading the smoldering anger raging like lava inside many Filipinos' blood.
The episode proved that people are smarter than what Government assumes them to
be and are generally courageous even in the face of obviously Marcosian scare
tactics and extra judicial killings (700 dead and counting).
The
episode says of a Church finding back the prophetic voice it lost with the demise
of His Immensity the Great Cardinal Sin (what a name for one so virtuous). Suddenly
there is a Red Sea to be parted, there are tablets of Divine Law to be thrown
and broken on the backs of offenders. There is a Calvary to be risked and a crucifixion
if necessary - to save this nation from those who bears it ill. The Church has
spoken - with clarity and courage once again.
Finally
the episode has exposed the lessons learned by the Great Unwashed about the faults
of EDSA I and EDSA II.
They
had lent too much trust and built too much expectation on politicians to bring
them to the Promised Land. This year 2006 - twenty years after we deposed a dictator
who drive this country to penury and political dehydration - we seemed to have
moved so little from where we have been.
We
are afraid that the next political storm will be lethal - the upheaval will have
to mean a drastic removal of the cancerous poison emaciating the system - the
individuals and the institutions - and the power and the gold that propped them
up - will have to be surgically excised, never to live again.
Because
unless the call of the Church plea for "character change" - directed
mainly at those who brought our country to political, economic and moral ruins
- go unheeded and at the soonest possible time - the social time bomb could finally
erupt on our faces.
Because
the stakes are higher today and the Comelec shakeup and electoral reforms are
not yet in place - we are threatened by an imperfect storm in summer called the
May Elections, the end result of which will bring us - not one step forward -
but two steps backward. A bloody and violent one.
If
it not a pleasant Christmas thought. But let's try to be merry. | 
