Category: de quiros

edsarevolution.com

finally gave up trying to get photos of EDSA 86 first, though some did come in — thanks, people — but not nearly enough.

anyway, like katrina says, it’s the text that’s important, a pdf file would do.   but joel, after reading my last post, surprised us with a cool website and a hot, as in, perfect! domain name, edsarevolution.com no less, that he had been saving pala for a moment such as this.

yes, a moment, a time, such as this, only two months away from presidential elections, with the aquino-villar race in a dead heat, neck and neck sa surveys, a statistical tie that could prove sustainable all the way to may, and the aquino camp threatening to do an EDSA if noynoy is cheated.

say ni de quiros sa facebook:

I believe it. If cheating happens again, Edsa will happen again.

seems to me what he’s really saying is:  if noynoy loses, it means he was cheated, and EDSA will happen again.   which is troubling.

if the race is this tight to the very end, the winner could win without cheating as long as he has the smarts and the logistics on may 10 to fetch rural voters, provide them with sample ballots, take them to polling centers, feed them and take them home, or give them pamasahe pauwi.   that’s the way it was in my lola’s time and that’s the way it still is in many many rural areas across the country, so i’m told.

of course it would be a different matter if noynoy were able to race ahead, surveys-wise, in the next sixty days so that losing means there’s cheating, which would be truly unacceptable.   then an EDSA scenario would indeed be called for.   but hopefully, not an edsa dos because that would mean noynoy plotting with, and being forever beholden to, the military, as in arroyo’s case.

rather, hopefully an EDSA 86, and therefore not just a gathering of noynoy crowds sa shrine or wherever because that’s not all it will take to win the battle decisively.   in ’86 it was cory’s and the people’s boycott campaign that figured significantly, i suspect, in enrile’s decision to break away from marcos; his fellow cronies must have urged him to act, to bolt, and stop the boycott somehow any how.    day one of EDSA was day 7 of the boycott.

but EDSA is not the answer if the race is tight all the way to voting day.   noong ’86 isa lang ang kalaban, si marcos.   ngayong 2010 ang daming naglalaban-laban.   it’s not black or white, it’s  various shades of gray.   also, what’s to prevent the contested winner from mounting his own edsa?   paano na ‘yon?   paramihan na lang ng tao?   and what’s to prevent the obvious losers from joining the contested winner’s camp and all of them ganging up on noynoy?   magulo ‘yon.

unfortunately noynoy does not have a franchise on EDSA.   unfortunate, because a villar presidency scares me.    he can’t be spending all that money out of the goodness of his heart, expecting nothing in exchange.

for now, misgivings and all, sisters and all, i’m beginning to think noynoy is the least “evil” and parang i’d rather live with him than with villar in the next six years.   though i still wish he’d get more resolved and creative about hacienda luisita and agrarian reform, and i still wish he didn’t count so much on kris and boy abunda to bring in the votes.

de quiros, aquino, edsa

conrado de quiros is sounding like a broken record these days, insisting that “edsa” &  “people power” and “good vs. evil” are the themes to work on if we want to see noynoy aquino again racing ahead of the pack like after his mom died.

and so a guy asked him daw:

“DON’T you think that transforming the choice into a moral one is a little too high for the masa to grasp? Don’t you think the better tack would be to talk about gut issues (malapit sa bituka)?”

the noted columnist’s reply is so last decade:

Not at all.

To begin with, you would not be transforming anything. You would not be raising or reducing or reshaping anything. That was exactly how the masa saw the choice from the very start, when Cory died and Noynoy Aquino announced his intention to run: the choice was a moral one. It was not a gratuitous choice between presidential candidates, between Noynoy and Villar (Villar never even figured in the equation), between what the candidates had to offer. It was a desperate choice between the GMA curse and the Cory legacy, between Noynoy (or what he represented) and Gloria (or what she is), between life and death.

It was a choice between Good and Evil.

The fact that Noynoy got more than 60 percent showed this wasn’t merely a middle-class or elite sentiment…

yes, but that was then, we were in grief, we were emotional and romantic, we wanted more of cory and ninoy (not of gma) and noynoy seemed like the next best thing.   but this is now, we have been through a lot since cory died — killer floods, the ampatuan massacre, the murder of the rh bill, and now the illegal arrest and torture of 43 ngo health workers — and some of us are looking for answers to many questions beyond who-what is good who-what is evil, according to whom?   dams are good in times of reasonable rain, but evil in times of excessive rain.   due process is good, but why is it that the law is more protective of the rights of indicted evil-doers?   and where is due process for the health workers accused of being bomb-makers?   is the military good or evil?    is contraception good or evil?   it’s all too muddled to work as a winnowing concept and yet de quiros thinks the world of this good vs. evil theme.

For a long, long time, GMA was seen as the worst leader this country has ever had after Marcos, or for some even before Marcos. Yet all that it elicited from the public was cynicism and text jokes. It was only after Cory died and Noynoy arose in her wake that the cynicism turned into a revulsion for an intolerable situation and the text jokes turned into an epic desire to change things.

For the Aquino camp, that means it’s not just enough to harp on the hell that the GMA curse is, or the heaven that the Cory legacy can be, it needs to harp on the hell that the GMA curse is and the heaven that the Cory legacy can be, at the same time. For the Aquino camp, that means that it’s not just enough to harp on Villar as the embodiment, continuation or extension of GMA (literally or in a kindred way) or Noynoy as the inheritor, keeper, and perpetuator of the Cory legacy, it needs to harp on the one as the disease and on the other as the cure.

but what is this heavenly change that cory’s legacy will bring about through noynoy?   mababaw ang kaligayahan ni de quiros.

Who cares about Noynoy’s plans for education? Simply removing the monsters whose very existence teaches the young that lying, cheating and stealing are rewarded and whistle-blowing, telling the truth, and being courageous are punished is an entire curriculum unto itself. Who cares about Noynoy’s plans for economic development? Simply stopping a reign of corruption stops poverty completely literally in that there is no mahirap where there is no korap, and completely spiritually in that nothing impoverishes a country more than an utter lack of moralidad. Who cares about Noynoy’s plans for national security? You arrest the usurpers who made the country home to desperation and insecurity, and line them up against the wall, or its legal equivalent since we don’t have the death penalty anymore, though we can always make an exception, and we will have more security than can be guaranteed by the armed forces or the insurance companies.

but we should care about a presidential candidate’s plans for education; the curriculum problem goes beyond / goes deeper, it’s not just ethical and moral but academic and pedagogic and even a problem of language.   and we should care about noynoy’s plans for economic development because de quiros exaggerates, stopping corruption will not stop poverty “completely literally”: it would only mean a little more money for health education and dole-outs for some but not nearly enough to make a sustainable difference in the lives of the many many poor, not while the oligarchy reigns and the debt policy rules.    and we should care about noynoy’s plans for national security because current policies discriminate against pinoys (think vfa) and civil society (pro-poor ngos) and do nothing to secure our environment, and our very lives, from deadly trash and irresponsible land use and destructive mining and rapid reckless deforestation.

in another column, de quiros waxes nostalgic about edsa and people power and the cory magic.

The Cory magic hasn’t lost its magic, it has simply not been used. Or the Cory magic hasn’t lost its magic, it has simply been lost on the people who held it in their hands but never knew what they had. The Cory magic is Edsa. The Cory magic is People Power. The Cory magic is the glimmer of hope piercing through the dark of despair.

I said last year that the Noynoy camp had a tremendous advantage in that the opening of the year presented two Edsas, January being Edsa II and February being Edsa I. Both resonated with good triumphing over evil, a concept GMA has been at pains to make people forget, which is why she has tried to hide the very thing—and people, who were Cory and Jaime Cardinal Sin—that brought her to power. Both stood to unleash the Cory magic in all its glory.

January came and went, and not a single statement on Edsa, or about Edsa, issued from the lips of the Aquino camp. We’re on the second week of February, and not a single statement on Edsa, or about Edsa, has issued from the lips of the Aquino camp. We’re on the fifth month after Noynoy declared his intention to run, and not much, if not not a single statement, has issued from the lips of the Aquino camp about their cries of anguish and anger from the pit of the land, about the glimmer of hope piercing through the dark of despair, about the people and their power.

The Cory magic is not something that works by itself, it works only by being used. The Cory magic is Edsa, the Cory magic is People Power, the Cory magic is people drawing the line, demanding change, commanding change, shouting at the top of their lungs, “tama na, sobra na, palitan na.” You do not invoke these things, you do not conjure these things, you do not say the magic words that unleash these things—there is no Cory magic.

ah, yes, EDSA.   de quiros makes it seem like we are back in 1986 and the choice is simple, black and white, good vs. evil, cory vs. marcos.    indeed “tama na, sobra na, palitan na” were magic words back then, but it was clear kung sino ang dapat palitan at sino ang dapat ipalit, the opposition being united behind one cory (doy did a mar upon the clamor of the people).   eh hindi naman ganyan ang sitwasyon ngayon.   ang daming choice.   maliban kay mar, walang kandidatong kusang nagbibigaydaan kay noynoy, each one thinks himself/herself as the good one vs. the evil one.   and maybe all of them are right, all in their own small ways.

if the object was were to beat gma’s annointed and everything evil she stands for in the may elections, and if the strategy was were to go by, be guided by, the EDSA tradition, then villar erap gordon gibo jamby perlas bro.eddie and jc, should have, one and all, when cory died, humbly nobly happily rallied behind noynoy as the one opposition candidate.   of course it didn’t happen because there was no clamor to that effect.   the real clamor is for CHANGE but noynoy is only promising small change — to stop corruption and streamline the system, the very system that needs changing.

truth to tell, it’s jamby madrigal and nicanor perlas who are running on platforms of CHANGE, and noynoy and the rest should be giving way to them, i.e., if we are to go by EDSA.   but the people aren’t ready, pinagiisipan pa nila, pinagtatalunan pa, kung sino ano ba talaga ang paniniwalaan, ano nga ba yung tama na, alin ba ang sobra na, paano ba papalitan, atano ang ipapalit.   clearly people power continues on “hold” while seeking to level-up beyond good vs. evil.