Category: marcos

Kidnap? . . . Karma!

Tuesday, the 11th, that saw Digong arrested upon ICC and Interpol orders when he returned from Hong Kong, and forthwith detained in Villamor Air Base (not Crame, as a distraught vlogger thought), and by the end of the day flown off on a jet plane, one-way, to Dubai and finally the Hague, was breathtaking, as in startling, thrilling, stunning, in its seamless execution.

At every point, I expected things to go sideways — no jurisdiction? due process not observed? fake arrest warrant? health concerns? TRO? — just because alam naman natin ang batas dito sa Pinas, kanya-kanyang interpretation depending on where one stands in the political spectrum. That the Palace managed to stay out of the unfolding fray, media-wise, was remarkable, even impressive. Ika nga ni Manolo Quezon sa “The last hurrah”:

And so, the Great Eagle Father came home, possibly for the last time. He was arrested with a degree of dignity, not to mention surgical precision and efficiency, I’d previously thought impossible to achieve in our shambolic republic. https://opinion.inquirer.net/181551/the-last-hurrah-2

As it turned out, the rumors that swirled around over the weekend, na he was in Hong Kong kunwari to campaign for the votes of Hong Kong OFWs and KOJCs, actually to ask China for asylum because nabulungan sila about an ICC arrest order… it would seem that the rumors were based on good intel.

Nuong umuwi siya Tuesday morning into the arms of police who arrested him in the plane pa lang, the big question was: Bakit umuwi? Could it be that China said no, and he had nowhere else to go? It was late in the afternoon of Tuesday, nasa Villamor pa siya, when this was posted by the Philippines Defense Forces Forum:

The intel suggests that Xi Jinping smoked Duterte, ignored his requests for political asylum, and had him told to leave Hong Kong upon learning that Interpol had already received an arrest warrant from the ICC. While China is not a member of the ICC, it is a member of Interpol and would likely avoid an embarrassing backlash from other member states by protecting Duterte.
https://www.facebook.com/philippinesdefense/posts/

Digong and Sara claim Digong was kidnapped. But a kidnap is done stealthily — this arrest was done openly, backed by a warrant of arrest. Like Digong used to say, there’s a time for everything, and here it is, a time to pay, for heinous crimes against humanity. A matter of karma. We reap what we sow.

Ika nga ni Atty Claire Castro re the DDS claim na “nakabuti naman ang drug war sa karamihan ng ating mga kababayan”: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lc-DXedRNJk

Dapat natin i-determine, anong klaseng kabutihan? … Itanong natin, war on drugs, kasama ang tokhang? kasama ang pagpatay [na] walang due process? kasama yung sasabihan ng pulis…o sige, sabihin mo sa kanya lumaban, para matapos na at mabawasan na ang problema sa Pilipinas? Hindi siya dapat polisiya ng gobyerno in the first place. It’s against the law! Killing is against the law! Wala nga tayong death penalty sa Pilipinas. Uunahan mo pa na patayin. Ang masama, wala pang hearing… So hindi natin matatanggap na yung war on drugs na pinairal ni dating Pangulong Duterte ay tamà. Kung may naitulong sa iba, paano naman yung namatayan. Kung merong nabiktima itong drug users, then the victims can file cases against these drug users. Pero hindi natin matatanggap na polisiya siya na dapat sundin ng isang gobyerno.

Good to be reminded, lalo na’t emotions are running high, ranging from bittersweet joy (justice!) to grief (gone!) and everything in between, which can get really cheesy, like a “public intellectual” saying that it didn’t have to come to this, meaning what? That Duterte should have behaved better maybe? Hindi dapat dumulog sa ICC? Hindi dapat inilipad si Duterte sa Hague? Hayaan na lang na  malusutan ang katakut-takot na indiscriminate extra-judicial killings by his death squads?

Isip isip. There’s right and there’s wrong. Karma rules.

*

What Duterte’s warrant of arrest reveals by Joel Ruiz Butuyan

The law finally caught up with Duterte and his death squads by Karishma Vaswani

Duterte’s arrest: A reckoning for justice by Antonio Contreras

Cue the wailing and gnashing of teeth by Ben Kritz

Llamas exaggerates

This is what he said on Richard Heydarian‘s vlog a week ago, a day or so before the People’s Impeachment Movement (PIM) announced the signature drive.

Ronald Llamas. Nabalitaan ko lang na may mga grupo ng mga religious na balak mag-launch ng people’s impeachment movement. … Kung babagal-bagal ang senado, kung ayaw ng senado na mag-convene, kami ang magco-convene, a people’s impeachment, at itong mga articles of impeachment, mga complaints, paguusapan pa namin, kami na mismo, at baka magpapirma kami ng several million signatures. Dahil sabi ng senate president walang clamor … gagawa ng clamor ang mga religious … balita ko next week. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UY3Av300cnE&t=1830s 

Na-excite naman ako, LOL. I guess because it reminded of Chino Roces’s signature campaign in November ’85 to convince Cory to run for  president should Marcos call snap elections, and Chino and his peeps gathered 1.2M in less than a month — martial law pa noon! — and the rest is history.  I thought that PIM’s launch would signal the immediate start of signature-gathering in church patios and malls and street corners and online websites, as in forthwith, right away.

Alas. The “launch” on the eve of Ash Wednesday was simply an announcement of intent, and their self-imposed deadline for just one (not several) million signatures is June 8, Pentecost Sunday. June 8!!! By then, according to SP Chiz’s proposed calendar, the Senate would have convened as an impeachment court anyway, so what difference would a million sigs make?

Bakit walang urgency, kung “forthwith” ang ipinaglalaban? Anyare?

People were asking na, where do we go to sign? can we offer, volunteer, our spaces to help gather signatures? kailangan kaya may official I.D.s ang mga pipirma? at kung ano-ano pa. Sayang. It was a great idea.

I had imagined that even just a million signatures could be gathered by a well-organized team by the end of March, and the appeal could be for the Senate to convene as an impeachment court early in April, and then to suspend around the 25th, thus giving re-electionists the final two weeks before the May 12 elections to make their final pitches on the ground, and then to resume in June…

And then again, former Senate Prez Frank Drilon said yesterday on ANC’s Hot Copy with Karen Davila that he thinks the religious orgs are “barking at (sic) the wrong tree”. That the appeal should be addressed to PBBM, not SP Chiz.

Drilon. Senate President Escudero cannot start the trial UNLESS the president calls congress to a special session because (it is) the convening of a special session (that) will make the convening of the impeachment trial court compulsory. … But it cannot start today because there is no session. And therefore the remedy is for the president to call a special session. … He can say: I am calling a special session so the Senate can address its constitutional duty to convene an impeachment court. The discretion of the president to call a special session is ABSOLUTE.

Ang problema, while the president has said he is willing to call a special session, he will do so only if or when the Senate requests it, and the senators (except for Koko Pimentel and Risa Hontiveros) are adamant, as in, no way, busy sila sa kampanya. “Too much to ask” of Senators, say pa ni Cynthia Villar. I imagine that the president is on the same page — he dreams of a 12-0 win  — and will not be moved by a million, even several million, signatures?

So far, no update from Llamas on the signature drive — no response to Drilon’s advice — not even just to correct himself. Maybe the attitude is, matatabunan naman agad, no one’s keeping track, so he feels free to exaggerate, lalo na kung sa vlog lang naman. Ayos.

Atty. Claire on EDSA & media #Resibo

Dati ko na siyang napapanood, nung una sa Teleradyo, “Usapang de Campanilla” yata yon, taking calls, giving legal advice. Now on YouTube her “Batas with Atty. Claire Castro” vlog has been one of my regular stops. She’s always worth checking out because she focuses on an issue at a time, making himay himay from the perspective of a lawyer, and always citing her sources, no matter how time- or tech-consuming.

She never struck me as pro-BBM, and she says she didn’t vote for him. But she supports the government daw, and when asked to help fight the stream of fake news from the DDS as election campaigns heat up, she said yes. Of course antiBBM vloggers and pfundits wonder if Atty. Claire is ready to lie for the Marcoses if push comes to shove, I suppose. She’s quick to assure that she will decide on the basis of hard evidence. As in, where’s the evidence that the prez had anything to do with the Tallano-gold story. Nasaan ang resibo?

Or where’s the evidence that the prez has downgraded EDSA Day, it’s still a “special” working holiday and people are “encouraged to join any event to commemorate” the special event. To this no one  followed up with, pero ma’am, paano yung mga may trabaho? Although Christian Esguerra, for one, did push back, and Atty. Claire did not disappoint.

Esguerra. Anong sagot niyo roon sa sinasabing under BBM lalong nalilibing ang spirit of EDSA? https://www.youtube.com/

Atty. Claire.  You are encouraged to join any event … walang paghahadlang.  … Mahirap sabihin that the president is trying to  erase the memory of EDSA People Power…sa utak ng mga Pilipino. Otherwise, baka pinagbawal yan… wala siyang idnidiktang ganoon….

Siguro we should not put the blame on the president if ever ma-e-erase ang memory ng EDSA.  Tayong taga-  media, if we really want to instill (EDSA) in the minds of the people, the youth, dapat nagpapalabas tayo ng mga  movies, programs sa mainstream TV, ng mga kuwento, para hindi nakakalimutan.  Hindi puro teleserye.

Itong (past) 37 (39 actually) years, ang nangyayari lang, walang pasok.  After walang pasok, paano ba i-co-commemorate ng mga tao. Hindi natin napapanood kung among nangyari sa EDSA revolution. Wala kang napapanoood. So the media should do that. … And they should not blame that to the current administration. Dapat panahon pa ni PNoy merong ganyan every year.

Na totoo naman. While on the one hand the Marcoses worked hard to diss and dismiss EDSA via social media, on the other, the mainstream media, academe, and government, and the oligarchs behind these institutions, have never cared to really talk the truths about EDSA — how it happened, why it happened — because it would mean revealing EDSA as a template for Change, Nonviolent Change; it would mean talking about the civil disobedience and the crony boycott that preceded and continued into EDSA, and how the economy was reeling, and the people were so engaged and ready to take to the streets.

Radio and TV talkshows and programs and docus about the 10 days of boycotts and barricades, based on indisputable sources would mean empowering the people to do as we did in 1986, and, I imagine, to do EDSA even better next time by shooting (so to speak) not just to oust a Marcos but for systemic, deep-seated, changes in the economic and social and political order. All anathema, of course, to the ruling elite.

PAHABOL

Mga resibo, mainit-init pa: “Bongbong evades, lies about EDSA.” Miguel Reyes of the Third World Studies Center and Vera Files tracks BBM’s comments on EDSA through the years, since 1989, mostly dismissive. “Nothing to celebrate …. Bigo ang EDSA 1 …” at kung ano-ano pa. Kung maniniwala ka sa kanya, e di wow, kalibing-libing nga.

 

 

Impeachment & budget blues, pre-2025

First they agitate us into thinking on and going along with moves to impeach the VP but now that complaints have been filed they are refusing to sign on — instead they’re continuing daw with the QuadComm hearings on January 25, which makes me think that the point pala (tilà) is not really to impeach (not too quickly anyway?) but to critique and weaken the Duterte brand in the run-up to May 2025 elections, maybe in aid of booting out some of Digong’s posse from the Senate?

Sino kaya ang timon? Is this inordinate delay part of a battle plan, or are they all playing it by ear, improvising as they go along, basta never losing sight of the goal, that is, to prevent a Duterte comeback one way or another in 2028. If the latter, that they’re improvising, then I imagine that more than one head is calling the shots, and  there’s a lot of secret convos consults going on behind closed doors, deals being wheeled for sure, and it takes a while for One to decide on anything, too many other heavyweights to consider, which would explain why it feels like we’re all hanging in the air about matters to do with government and governance in this Marcos restoration.

It would also explain why Congress’s 2025 budget is a mess (to put it kindly) with public monies being diverted to campaign ayudas for winning elections, instead of being spent in aid of supporting a development strategy that addresses urgent needs in health, education, and livelihood, in ways more kind and sustainable than dole-outs and ENDOs and other capitalist trickle-down tricks-n-treats.  Which would in turn explain the justifiable outrage and outcry over the unconstitutionality and immorality of it all.

Surely it hasn’t escaped the notice of palace peeps that the PhilHealth–DepEd-Budget issue has inflamed both sides of the Marcos-Duterte divide as well as the pinks and the yellows and the reds — at least that’s the sense I’m getting from mainstream and social media. Is this part of the plan, too, or was this unforeseen? If unforeseen, then nakakataranta siguro, ikot-puwet moments, for the powers-that-be. If foreseen but shrugged off because, maybe, matatabunan ng impeachment bigla, or something huge like that, e di wow.

Today’s good news is, PBBM isn’t signing the Budget on December 20 as scheduled. The prez needs “more time review the national budget amid criticisms over some items.”

Salamat naman. When the DDS are talking “people power” to oust him à la the matandang Marcos, it’s a mistake to dismiss it all as just “a lot of noise” which only reminds of PNoy who shrugged off critics as a “noisy minority” and we saw how his annointed lost the election in 2016.