mubarak / marcos / endgame

Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak said he will not run for a new term in office in September elections, but rejected demands that he step down immediately and leave the country, vowing to die on Egypt’s soil, in a television address Tuesday after a dramatic day in which a quarter-million protesters called on him to go.

Mubarak said he would serve out the rest of his term working to ensure a “peaceful transfer of power” and carry out amendments to rules on presidential elections.

in feb 86 marcos too was loathe to go.   until the very last minute marcos was trying to convince enrile to return to the fold.   the last phone call was feb 25 past 8 a.m.   enrile was getting ready to leave camp crame for cory’s inauguration in club filipino.   marcos suggested a provisional government that enrile would lead, but he marcos would stay on as honorary president.   huling hirit kumbaga.

President Obama, clearly frustrated by Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak’s intention to retain his hold on power until elections later this year, said Tuesday evening that he has told Mubarak that a transition to representative government “must begin now.”

In brief remarks at the White House, Obama made no mention of Mubarak’s announcement that he had decided not to stand for reelection. Instead, Obama said he had told the Egyptian president in a telephone call that this was a “moment of transformation” in Egypt and that “the status quo is not sustainable.”

president reagan too was loathe to publicly and directly ask marcos to resign.   early in the morning of feb 24 he sent a private message that the marcoses would be welcome in the u.s.   also he gave instructions that marcos be “approached carefully” and “asked rather than told” to depart.   it was not until 7:30 in the evening that the white house finally “endorsed the provisional government of Mrs. Corazon Aquino, abandoning a 20-year ally in Mr. Marcos for the sake of a ‘peaceful transition’ in the Philippines.” . . . “Attempts to prolong the life of the present regime by violence are futile. A solution to this crisis can only be achieved through a peaceful transition to a new government.”

Angry demonstrators, fed up with Mubarak’s three-decade rule, jeered at the president’s remarks while watching his speech on TV in Tahrir Square on Tuesday night and chanted that he should go immediately.

Senior Egyptian opposition figure Mohamed ElBaradei, who has expressed readiness to lead the country’s popular uprising, has said that the people’s message is clear and they want Mubarak out now and not in September.

After Mubarak’s address, the protesters said that this Friday would be the “Friday of departure” for the president and announced that they would be gathering at his palace on Friday afternoon.

in feb 86 while the coryistas were still focused on shielding the edsa camps from marcos forces, leftist groups, acting on the false alarm that the marcoses were gone, had moved on to mendiola, only to find that the rumors were false.   but it was these militants who baited soldiers to fire warning shots, which freaked out the marcoses who thought that the edsa crowds were coming to attack the palace.  (the coryistas came too but only after cory’s inauguration.) and so they started making plans to move out and asked the americans for transpo to get to paoay.   but paoay’s airport had no lights so they had to make a stopover in clark that night.   which gave the new government time to consider the implications of allowing marcos to get to paoay.   in the end cory ordered that the marcoses be flown out of the philippines to prevent further civil unrest.

yes, a nonviolent seige on the pharaoh’s palace, it’s time.

egypt / edsa

in the beginning it seemed like egypt was doing an edsa.   and then it became clear that, where we had cory-in-waiting to replace marcos, the anti-mubarak forces have no leader to replace the dictator with, and are/were depending on, expecting, the united states, perceived to be the power behind mubarak, to take care of removing him and installing a transition government until elections can be held.   which brings home the effect of 30 long years of martial law.   suwerte pa rin tayo, 14 years lang, not long enough for censorship and suppression to dumb down the pre-martial law generation.

but there are some similarities.   like reagan in 1986, obama seems to need convincing that it’s time for america’s friend to cut, and cut cleanly.   the fear here in 1986 was that the communists might take over a weak new leader, and there go the U.S. bases.   the fear now in egypt is that the the muslim brotherhood might take over a weak new leader, and there goes israel beloved.

also, an imminent economic collapse, though not because of a deliberate boycott of government and crony businesses but just because everything has shut down and millions, maybe billions, are being lost everyday, must find mubarak, having lost all credibility with what seems a majority of egyptian people, under extreme pressure to ship out.   it would seem too that the hope of european leaders is for america to fly him out a la marcos, let him fall with some dignity rather than be put to trial a la saddam hussein, as some egyptian protestors wish.

so far i haven’t heard any news of a split military, which greatly helped our people power in ’86.   but who knows what’s going on behind the scenes.

too bad that nobel laureate elbaradai is an expat pala and therefore not really wellknown or well-loved in egypt.   he’s the perfect leader for the transition, i would think, and the people of egypt could do worse than to rally behind him.   a united opposition can bring down mubarak quite quickly, and give obama no choice but to support a transition government and start over re israel and the middle east.

~~~

Revolution
Is Mubarak’s time up?
Obama’s Mideast Moment of Truth
Will Egypt mobilize or radicalize Arab youth?
Democracy’s Drawback
Egypt without Mubaraks: Sampson Option or New Political Order?

angelo reyes: selective memory

THE POVERTY OF WORDS
Theodore Te

Listening to the public hearing called by the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee to investigate the toxic deal entered into by the Ombudsman and the Special Prosecutor with former AFP Comptroller Carlos F. Garcia, I realized the poverty of the English language in expressing the sense of anger, outrage, and disbelief that I felt while listening to Angelo Reyes, former AFP Chief of Staff and Secretary of Defense, and a former comptroller Jacinto Ligot publicly claiming convenient memory loss in relation to charges that Reyes and other AFP Chiefs of Staff received retirement money running to as high as Fifty Million Pesos and monthly stipends of about Five Million Pesos.

“Angry”, “Enraged” and “Appalled” fail to scratch the surface in describing the emotions running through me as I listened to a public airing of dirty linen in the AFP hierarchy by its former budget director. There were no words then and there are none now, at least in the English language, to describe the anger, the rage, the utter sense of disbelief at the moral depravity of these “officers and gentlemen” in their cavalier treatment of people’s funds.

Handing out the people’s money to Generals to welcome them into the fold or send them off into yet another cushy job was apparently a way of life for them, and the monies that they handed out were not petty cash. These ran into the tens of millions, and not for one occasion but were given monthly! In what government manual these comptrollers saw the justification for being able to hand out money like that I will never know; I work for the government and I have yet to see a government manual that will allow me to hand out the people’s money like it was a personal expense account.

Never mind that the money that was being handed out could have been used for soldiers’ welfare; never mind that it could have gone to basic, minimum, and much needed protective gear and equipment like combat boots and field rations; never mind that it could have gone to housing, let alone better housing; never mind that it could have gone to better use for our soldiers in the field.

Mind only that the money lined the pockets of those few, those exalted, those influential, those connected enough to make it to the top tier of the AFP hierarchy; mind only that they think they are “entitled” to this money because they have stars on their epaulets while our soldiers gaze at the stars in open battle fields wondering when the wars will end; mind only that even as their pockets, wallets and bank accounts are filled to bursting with these amounts that they conveniently forget receiving such amounts.

The King’s (or Queen’s) English is such a beautiful language, yet on this occasion I find it so poor, so mendicant, so totally insufficient and inadequate to express what I, and I am certain many others, feel while listening to an account of plunder that would stir even the most jaded of hearts to anger.

Filipino is a much more beautiful language. It conveys feelings, emotions, passions and desires with greater profundity than English. Reflecting on how I felt, I thought that perhaps nakakagalit, nakakapoot, nakakapanlumo could better capture what was stirred in me by the revelations at the hearing yesterday.

I do not profess expertise in either English or Filipino and thus may correctly, under these circumstances, profess to be a “man of few words.”

And so I sit here, trying to conjure up words like nakakagalit, nakakapoot, nakakapanlumo to express how I feel more profoundly than being “angry”, “enraged” or “appalled”; and the realization strikes me that while these filipino words indeed scratch the surface, they nonetheless fail miserably at conveying the depth of anger of a soul reduced to simmering silence by the stark poverty of words.

“big bad blogger”

Jagged Jaded Journalist and the Big Bad Blogger
Danilo Araña Arao

On a slow news day (Sunday), a journalist opts to write about an irresponsible blogger who allegedly conspired with a public relations firm to extort money from a restaurant owner.

It would have been a good story, except for three things: (1) No names were given; (2) minimal details were given on the circumstances behind the restaurant owner’s allegations; and, to make matters worse, (3) the author used only one source (i.e., the restaurant owner named Georgia) in writing her article.

In an article “Please Don’t Give Blogging a Bad Name” published in the Sunday Inquirer Magazine last January 23, journalist Margaux Salcedo interviewed an anonymous female restaurant owner who fell victim to a so-called Big Bad Blogger (BBB) and an unnamed public relations (PR) firm that offered to make BBB stop writing negative reviews about her restaurant “for a price.” The full text is available online at http://showbizandstyle.inquirer.net/sim/sim/view/20110122-315972/Please-Dont-Give-Blogging-a-Bad-Name.

Under ordinary circumstances, I wouldn’t waste your precious time by calling your attention to an article which is better off ignoring. But the reactions of many bloggers on Salcedo’s article prompt me to give my two cents on the issue as there are angles that need to be discussed in the context of standards of responsible writing.

Bloggers have every reason to demand that Salcedo name names and not hide characters behind catchy aliases like BBB. If divulging the identity of the blogger and PR firm is impossible, then it is the responsibility of the journalist to explain why this is so.

At this point, I only need to briefly analyze the form and content to make better sense of the article’s shortcomings. In terms of content, the article provides very limited information and context. As regards the article’s form, Salcedo’s diction needs to be analyzed: For example, the use of the phrase “big bad blogger” gives the impression that the blogger in question is indeed being paid by a PR firm that, in turn, allegedly tries to coerce the restaurant owner to give money.

Salcedo is actually not sure of the connection between BBB and the PR firm. What more can we make of this paragraph written by Salcedo which is full of speculation? “Maybe Georgia is overreacting to a negative review. Maybe The Firm was only claiming to have relations with Big Bad Blogger for their own sinister purposes, unbeknownst to Big Bad Blogger. Or maybe the suspicions are true and Big Bad Blogger bows to the highest bidder. Whatever the case, one thing’s for sure: Georgia is now afraid of the blogging community. And this fear resonates among other restaurateurs who have had the same experience.”

In reading Salcedo’s article, “one thing’s for sure” (to borrow her words): Her uncertainty is due to lack of in-depth research as she failed to get the side of BBB and the concerned PR firm. Even if the journalistic output is packaged as a column article (Menu) in the Sunday magazine, it must be stressed that columnists need to share opinions based on research, particularly multiple sourcing.

A single-sourced article like Salcedo’s, not surprisingly, presents only one side of the story, important details of which are even wanting. There was no effort, for example to get the circumstances behind the restaurant owner’s reaction to the alleged negative review written by BBB.

Unlike some bloggers who argue that the article puts blogging (especially food blogging) in a bad light, I would rather reserve my judgment until more details are provided. While I share their assertion there are indeed irresponsible bloggers in our midst, I don’t think a badly-researched journalistic article like Salcedo’s serves as evidence of this.

The article mainly serves to titillate rather than inform, which can be perceived as “jagged” in the sense that it is of rough quality (or, simply put, a rough draft that should have been improved by meticulous researching and rewriting). One cannot be blamed if Salcedo is also described as “jaded” because of perceived exhaustion to unearth significant data.

Indeed, it is the jagged, jaded journalist who created the big bad blogger on a supposedly slow news day. The basic challenge for bloggers and other concerned readers is to objectively criticize it and not engage in subjective, knee-jerk accusations that do nothing in raising discourse to a higher level.