Not one more electoral swindle

We must now end the unending swindle

As President B. S. Aquino 3rd faces the end of his term, the cry from his official mouthpieces is that his political slogan Daang Matuwid (straight path) should be given at least twenty years. Some nerve! Aquino has been one unmitigated failure, and since August of last year, the National Transformation Council has been calling on him to step down in order to allow a caretaker government to fix the broken constitutional order and introduce system change, before we hold another election.

The kneejerk response to that has been, “Let Aquino finish ‘his six-year term,’ and let the next administration take care of changing everything that needs to be changed later. After all, the next election is just around the corner.” It is a copout really: this is a serious matter, and not enough people can really manage to be serious about the most serious things.

The six years are almost over. We need a clean and honest election to ensure some change after this administration. But we do not see the slightest prospect of a clean and honest election. No effort is being made to remove the players and factors responsible for the rigging of the 2010 and 2013 elections. To the contrary, every effort is being made to ensure that the same players and the same factors remain.

While Malacañang and the ruling Liberal Party are going through the motions of preparing for an election, what we actually see are official maneuvers and manipulations to repeat the 2010 and 2013 elections, courtesy of Smartmatic under the new international chairmanship of the global political operator Lord Mark Malloch-Brown. And what we hear is the mantra on “daang matuwid” being good for another 18 to 20 years.

How can the hypocritical slogan be any good still, after it has crashed again and again since 2010? It first crashed on site when Smartmatic and the Comelec rigged the 2010 “election” by illegally divesting the precinct count optical scan (PCSOS) machine of all its security and safety features and accuracy mechanisms, resulting in a “de facto” rather than de jure Aquino government.

This was repeated in 2013 when Aquino personally intervened in the “hocus PCOS” to bring about the 60-30-10 senatorial results in favor of his candidates, even in areas where they were not known.

It crashed again when Aquino used the congressional Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) and the so-called Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP), which the Supreme Court has both declared unconstitutional, to bribe the members of Congress in order to impeach and remove Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona and enact the widely opposed Reproductive Health legislation.

The crash continued after the Corona impeachment trial when Aquino seized virtual control of the three branches of government, in violation of the Constitution, notably the doctrine of checks and balances and the separation of powers. The bribery of senators and congressmen, and the unauthorized realignment of funds for purposes also not authorized by Congress were impeachable crimes, but precisely because PNoy had the members of Congress eating out of his hands through the pork barrel system, he could no longer be impeached. The House of Representatives has the exclusive power to impeach, and the Senate the sole power to try and decide all cases of impeachment.

“Daang matuwid” crashed yet again when PNoy refused to respond promptly and adequately to the humanitarian disaster caused by super typhoon Yolanda/Haiyan, which flattened the whole city of Tacloban, Leyte, and destroyed Guiuan, Samar and other parts of Eastern Visayas. Foreign governments and international institutions rushed to the scene and poured all sorts of resources into the search, rescue, relief and rehabilitation operations, but to this day, Aquino has failed to make a thorough accounting of what has been received in foreign assistance and donations, and how much of it has gone to the intended recipients.

It crashed yet once more when PNoy assumed direct command of the police special operation “Exodus” against some terrorist targets in Mamasapano, Maguindanao, but employed a suspended national police chief as operations officer, after cutting out the proper officials from the established chain of command, and then ordered the military reinforcement units to “stand down” when the Special Action Force commandos came under attack from the combined forces of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front and the Bangsamoro Islamic Freedom Fighters. This resulted in the massacre of 44 SAF commandos.

Aquino’s accountability was never discussed in the various official inquiries conducted by the Philippine National Police, and the two Houses of Congress. The heroism of the SAF 44 was never acknowledged, even in passing, during Aquino’s final State of the Nation Address to Congress and in his speech at the 114th anniversary of the PNP.

Reputedly upon orders of Malacañang, the names of the fallen SAF heroes were stricken off the list of awardees for their exemplary service to the Republic without any explanation. The only apparent explanation is that Aquino could not stand handing out the awards to the widows , some of whom are capable of refusing the award and accusing him to his face of having sent their husbands to their avoidable death.

“Daang matuwid”crashed and continues to crash as PNoy refused and continues to refuse to prosecute all those involved in rigging the 2010 and 2013 elections, and those involved in the manipulation and misuse of the PDAF and the DAP, despite the clear directive of the Supreme Court to the prosecutorial arms of government to prosecute everyone. At the same time, PNoy continues to credit himself for jailing his predecessor Gloria Macapagal Arroyo on a yet untried criminal case, and for jailing Opposition Senators Juan Ponce Enrile, Ramon Revilla Jr. and Jinggoy Estrada on charges, from which his own political allies have been routinely and arbitrarily spared.

Now, we are being threatened with more of the same for the rest of this generation and the next. This is perversity in the extreme. We cannot simply sit back and relax. We need to fight back, and fighting back could mean doing something much more decisive and definitive than taking part in one more rotten presidential election.

In the last 12 months, we have seen all sorts of political posturing from various individuals who wanted to be seen as national leaders but who had (and have) nothing to say to the nation. One statement alone stands out during that period, and from it has emanated many other derivative declarations. This was the Lipa Declaration of August 27, 2014. I invite my patriotic Filipino readers to revisit that statement.

That statement said:
“We believe that, a crisis of unprecedented proportions has befallen our nation. The life of the nation is in grave peril from the very political forces that are primarily ordained to protect, promote and advance its well-being, but which are aggressively undermining its moral, religious, social, cultural, constitutional and legal foundations;

“That, unbridled and unpunished corruption and widespread misuse of political and economic power in all layers of society have not only destroyed our common conception of right and wrong, good and bad, just and unjust, legal and illegal, but also put our people, especially the poor, at the mercy of those who have the power to dictate the course and conduct of our development for their own selfish ends;

“That, far from preserving and defending the Constitution, as he swore to do when he assumed office, the incumbent president B. S. Aquino 3rd has subverted and violated it by corrupting Congress, intimidating the Judiciary, taking over the Treasury, manipulated the automated voting system and perverting the constitutional impeachment process;

“President B. S. Aquino 3rd has also damaged the moral fabric of Philippine society by bribing members of Congress not only to impeach and remove a sitting Supreme Court Chief Justice but also to enact a law which imposes population control, in defiance not only of the Constitution but above all of the moral law, the customs, culture and consciences of Filipinos.

“Therefore, faithful to the objective moral law and to the universally honored constitutional principle that sovereignty resides in the people and all government authority emanates from them, we declare that President B. S. Aquino 3rd has lost the moral right to lead the nation, and has become a danger to the Philippine democratic and republican state and to the peace, freedom, security and moral and spiritual wellbeing on the Filipino people.

“We declare that we have lost all trust and confidence in President Aquino, and we call upon him to immediately relinquish his position, and we call upon the National Transformation Council to assume the urgent and necessary task of restoring our damaged political institutions before we begin to consider electing a new government under normal political conditions.”

With all due respect to those who have been trying to agitate our people to support one more Smartmatic-run election, our situation has not changed from the time the Lipa Assembly issued this Declaration on Aug 27, 2014. Now, as then, the deliverance of our people will not come from one more rotten election with pseudo political leaders and foreign interventionist forces participating. It can only come from an honest to goodness Philippine revolution.

That revolution could be bloodless or bloody; that will depend on the free will of our sovereign, God-fearing people. But the rule of evil must end, and only a genuine moral, spiritual and political revolution can end it, not one more electoral swindle. - Francisco Tatad, The Manila Times

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