Category: people power

The Tiananmen amnesia

Manila Times Editorial 

Every June 4th, a collective amnesia grips the leaders of China.

On that day in 1989, thousands of soldiers smashed a pro-democracy demonstration of almost a million students and their sympathizers in Tiananmen Square in the heart of Beijing. In the carnage that ensued, thousands of demonstrators were believed to have died.

The days that followed saw a massive wave of repression spread across China. Hundreds were arrested to quell the dissent the “counter-revolutionary riot” at Tienanmen had spawned.

The carnage in the square was strongly condemned by the international community, but the Chinese government was in no mood to listen, bent as it was in stemming what it saw was a dangerous challenge to its supreme authority.

But it was never the intention of the small group of students that had initially marched to Tiananmen several days before the bloodbath to defy authority. They were there to mourn the death days earlier of former Chinese Communist Party General Secretary Hu Yaobang. Hu’s reformist leanings had earned him the admiration of the students and the suspicion of party hardliners.

The students had come to the square to eulogize Hu and hold open discussions on the reforms he espoused. But the gathering quickly grew from several hundred to the thousands. Within days, workers, intellectuals, artists caught the whiff of freedom from Tiananmen, and soon multitudes filled the square. The mood also changed, with the tributes to Hu drowned out by demands for sweeping reforms in government.

The authorities at first tolerated the demonstrators and even held dialogues with them. Flushed with a new sense of people power, the protesters pressed their demands, which ranged from publishing the income of state leaders and their family members to an end to press censorship and more funds for education.

On June 2, party elders led by Deng Xiaoping prevailed on their more liberal colleagues in the politburo to order the army to clear the square of protesters, by force if necessary.

On the night of June 3, a juggernaut of Army troops in full battle gear supported by tanks moved into Tiananmen, mowing down protesters with rifle and machine gun fire. The carnage had begun. Gunshots and cannon bursts would reverberate across much of central Beijing until the following morning.

In the months that followed, security forces all over China carried out hundreds of arrests, as they hunted down the remainder of the protesters and their leaders. It was a methodical, surgical stifling of dissent.

Several countries, including the United States, raged at the bloody crackdown. Some nations clamped a boycott on Chinese goods. Foreign lending agencies suspended loans to China, foreign tourists skipped Chinese destinations. In the midst of it all, Beijing was unremorseful.

It still is to this day, preferring instead to blot out any official memory of what happened in Tiananmen in the spring of 1989.

Mike Chinoy, who was CNN’s bureau chief that year, sees a paradox in Beijing’s denial of Tiananmen. Mr. Chinoy writes: “A quarter of a century later, the Communist Party still feels compelled to use all the powers of the state to convince people inside China that nothing worth remembering happened on a date that, outside the country, will be an occasion for reflection and analysis of what remains the gravest crisis the Party has faced since the revolution of 1949.”

It is this same approach that Beijing is taking in justifying its territorial claims in the West Philippine Sea and East China Sea with Japan. It is using the huge political machinery to brainwash its people into believing that it has the almost divine right to assert its sovereignty on the reefs, islets and shoals that, in fact, belong to its neighbors.

It is a dangerous approach, one that has created potential flashpoints that raise deepening concerns in the Asia-Pacific region.

 

the president, people power, primetime

on facebook and on twitter it’s impossible not to see that indeed the president still has his staunch supporters who are behind him, benefit of the doubt (if any), all the way.  good for him.  makes it harder, even impossible, for coup plotters to make any headway in destablization/ouster efforts — forget it, guys, you failed in gloria’s time just because wala namang ipapalit na katanggaptanggap sa taongbayan, e di lalo pa ngayon, when vp binay, like noli de castro then, seems happy enough watching from the sidelines.  council of state? transition government?  asa pa.

but imagine if the veep were not a traditional politician, rather, bold and audacious enough to take the leap over to the side of the #scrappork movement, complete with a draft petition addressed to the president, with concrete steps toward a rational and transparent budget system (minimal pork discretionary funds, calamities and disasters only), for the approval and signatures of the millionpeoplemarch-ers.  the veep has missed the bus on that one, and so has his buddy senator chiz, and whoever else is seriously planning to run in 2016.

because the pork issue isn’t going away, and those who think pray swear it will are grossly grievously mistaken.  that a million people aren’t gathering in the streets doesn’t mean people power is passe or dead or at a loss; it only means that the people are a thinking people and they are levelling up, knowing full well that that it’s going to take more than an EDSA ala uno and dos, i.e., cosmetic changes, to get rid of the corrupt pork system, and they WILL find a way.  the only thing that will stop them is if the president beats them to the draw, sorry na lang ang kanyang mga kakonchaba.  now THAT would be pang-primetime.

the president & people power #cj trial

am seriously disturbed by this part of the president’s tagumpay ng bayan speech last 16 feb in the first of “townhall meetings” to mark the 10-day run-up to the 26th EDSA anniversary on feb 25:

The impeachment trial of Mr. Corona in the Senate began on the 16th of January. I chose to observe the proceedings and to keep my silence; my faith in due process remains steadfast. But what has been happening now? Speculation and commentary have muddled the true issues; it is as if we are purposely being confused and misled so our interest in the proceedings would fade. Will Juan and Juana de la Cruz allow themselves to be shut out of this process? Will we allow a select few to decide the fate of all? [emphasis mine]

certainly sounds to me like a call for people power: due process is too confusing, oust corona now.  going by edsa history, it’s looking like he might try for another fake, um, okay, orchestrated, edsa a la gma in 2001.  but in contrast to gma who had the grace, delicadeza, whatever (feels weird saying something sort of positive about her) to keep her distance from the erap impeachment trial, this president is known, okay, said, to have been part of the impeach-corona project since the hacienda luisita ruling, and now that the trial isn’t delivering as quickly and surely as he hoped, this president is himself openly agitating the public, it would seem, not to wait for the senate impeachment court’s decision but to decide the fate of corona in the streets now na, or maybe on feb 25?

winnie monsod is disturbed too:

… the President (if the news reports are accurate) is not only practically inciting the people to take matters into their own hands, but is also showing a dismal ignorance about how the will of the people is to be served. As in “Would Juan de la Cruz allow himself to be left out of this process? Are we going to let only a few to decide for all of us?” Good grief. Doesn’t he realize that he is one of those “few,” as are all legislators and local executives, and that they were chosen by the people precisely to carry out their will? Or does he want every decision to be subject to ratification by the people? Ridiculous, right? The implication is that we can ignore, with impunity, the rule of law, the absence of which in this country has held back our growth and development.

Demagoguery is a dangerous tool—and can boomerang on the persons using it.

of course the prez’s spokesgirl abigail valte denies it:

Malacañang on Friday denied that President Benigno Aquino 3rd was calling on the youth to march to EDSA and stage another “People Power” uprising once Chief Justice Renato Corona is cleared by the Senate impeachment court.

…Valte said Mr. Aquino has also the right to voice out his opinion.

“All the President was asking for is to take a stand, be informed, know what is happening,” she said.

hmm.  but read about the aquino admin’s full throttle preparations for the People Power anniversary celeb next week.

Secretary Coloma said that the Edsa People Power Commission has been lining up several activities in 26 different venues all over the country for the celebration that will focus on the innate Filipino spirit of volunteerism, unity and concern in achieving national progress.

and jojo robles’ The anti-Corona road tour

Sources have intimated that a top political operator of the palace has started mobilizing heads of local government units who hold top positions in the Union of Local Authorities of the Philippines to stage rallies in favor of Aquino’s anti-Corona position. The point man of the palace’s political operative is reportedly a prominent mayor of a northern province who used to be a fair-haired boy of the Arroyo administration.

The initial salvo is supposed to be a rally that will be the culmination of the people power anniversary. The pro-administration shindig is supposed to have as participants the crowds that will be gathered by local officials from amongst their own constituents; and, as any mayor and governor knows, such crowds cost money.

ah, initial salvo lang ang feb 25 rally?  whatever, there’s a lot of mobilizing going on behind the scenes, including the information campaign that the 188 reps mounted a week or so ago to keep their respective constituents informed on the Senate trial developments, which of course the corona camp sees as part of a sinister ‘People Power’ plot vs Corona.

and then there’s the Left.  with akbayan partylist rep arlene kaka bag-ao and bayan muna partylist rep neri colmenares in the prosecution team, it would seem that the Left is united and squarely behind the aquino admin on this one.  how would they handle kaya a call for people power.

and what about hacienda luisita. corona has not minced words, the prez wants him out not just because of his gloria connection but because of his stand on hacienda luisita.   so i wonder what the Left’s stand is on the cojuangcos’ desired (and exorbitant) compensation of 10B? maybe they actually hope to be a restraining influence on the president?

let’s remember that the Left lost a lot of credibility in the time of edsa tres — when the masa, whom leftists claim to represent and champion in the halls of congress and in the countryside, rose up to protest the illegal ouster and ill treatment of the president they had voted into office.  the leftists were mostly on gloria’s side then.  now naman they’re on aquino’s side.  how progressive is that, really, aligning with the ruling elite — the oppressors mismo, witting or not, of the masa?

what would be progressive is if the Left were to take a stand for due process, no matter how long it takes, no matter who wins, because to ignore the rule of law na naman, as in edsa dos, would be as disastrous for nation and the interests of the masses as gma’s 9-year rule was.

yes, nakakapagod, nakakainis, nakakalito, nakakadismaya, ang nangyayari sa impeachment trial sa senado, thanks to a bumbling prosection, pero nandiyan na ‘yan, let due process take its course.  it is for the senate to speed things up without losing its balance, and it is for us to be patient, to learn what we can from this rare public event, and to see it through to the end.  let us finish what we started, just because it is the right thing to do.

besides, what if noynoy calls out his people and corona supporters rise up too?  the president does not have a franchise on people power, even if he thinks he does.

armida: what if, people power vs SC

read armida siguion-reyna‘s What people want.  she ends with thoughts of people power.

I’ve been told there are lawyers invoking “the rule of law” and the Philippine Constitution, and I understand where they’re coming from. But, and this is a big but for me, what about the rule of justice? What about what people want? Is the law bigger than the people’s will?

When Corazon Aquino took her oath of office as 11th President of the Philippines, Filipinos generally did not demand for a recount of the ballots cast in the 1986 snap elections because four days of revolutionary people power took precedence over legally cast ballots. Marcos loyalists believed that it was still Marcos who won the vote, pero ang kagustuhan ng lumabas na nakararaming taong-bayan sa Edsa I ang namayani, naluklok si Cory bilang pangulo.

When Gloria Arroyo pledged allegiance on the Bible held by then Supreme Court Justice Hilario Davide Jr., with a crowd much, much lesser than the first Edsa, the duo combined to make legal her ascent into the presidency, kesyo President Estrada had by then already resigned and by that resignation rendered the Office of the Chief Executive vacant, kesyo this, kesyo that. Napamukha nilang legal ang illegal and thus managed to overrule the gargantuan mass that made up Edsa III, much, much bigger than what passed off as Edsa II.

Exactly how many times was the law twisted and flouted to make the nation believe that Arroyo won over Fernando Poe Jr. in 2004? Only God in heaven knows. Still, even without knowing for sure how often the woman has manipulated legalities, the law cannot be bigger than the people’s will.

Bakit hindi magtawag ng tao, sa Edsa kung sa Edsa. Sa Luneta, kung sa Luneta, sa kahit saan, para sagutin ang tanong: Gusto n’yo bang makulong si Gloria Arroyo?

And my goodness, if people come in droves, if, say, two million show up, how can the Supreme Court (SC) overrule so clear a manifestation of popular will? If in the past, fewer numbers installed presidents, surely much larger figures can jail another.

It’s what the people want that matters, it’s the spirit of the law that must prevail over what’s legal or made to appear legal, as here in this case it doesn’t matter who has got more evidence or less of it. Basta’t come hell or high water, eight in the SC will always vote for Arroyo wrong or right, and only five will go against her.

This, unless people power’s truly dead and gone.