MANILA, Philippines - You can always tell something's a product of the Palace propaganda corps when it uses the acronym "PGMA." This is officialese for "President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo," a habit that began during the Ramos era and which has gained wide currency among the uninformed. It's simply a manifestation of how low the presidency has sunk in public eyes and the corresponding insecurity felt by officialdom. A president should be significant, and unique, enough not to require a "P" attached to his or her initials. But I suppose the idea is you can't leave such things to chance.
Using "P" plus a president's initials is a telltale fingerprint of officialdom. And so, when a jeepney driver dropped off a stack of flyers at a Mercury Drug branch in New Manila, and the flyer began with the words "Gloria Resign! PGMA-Ibagsak!! This is the shout you will be hearing over the next few days," you know who produced it. No oppositionist or opposition group would ever refer to the President as "PGMA."
The flyer was addressed to parents and bore all the rhetorical flourishes of the Intengan-inspired School of Disinformation and Fear-Mongering. Rallies, the flyer warned, would erupt, resulting in ralliers trying to provoke the anti-dispersal units of our beloved Philippine National Police; parents, it growled, do you want your kids to be dragged into such a situation, ending up chased by the cops and thrown in jail with ordinary criminals?
The reason for this, according to the flyer, was that groups like the Black and White Movement (to which I belong) and militant organizations to be led by Bayan Muna (to which I don't belong) planned to hold demonstrations against the government. Kids, the flyer told parents, are too naïve to realize that rallies aren't parties. Worse, kids tend to be-and the flyer puts it in quotes-"idealistic" and, so, easily influenced.
In some cases school authorities or teachers compel students to attend rallies in exchange for higher grades on exams or quizzes. It's bad enough that parents have to fear falling into bad company and worse habits as dangers of school; now they ought to consider the dangers of their kids wasting their time-and their parents' money-participating in worthless rallies that, in a word, causes trouble.
Wait, there's more. The flyer warned parents that the NPA was prepared to infiltrate rallies to force the police to assault the citizenry, detain troublemakers and thus appear as all-around bad guys. And the flyer closed with an appeal to parents to sternly warn their children that their place is in the classroom, away from traffic, harm, "idealism," and other activities that might wreck their lives. The flyers were unsigned.
Now why would the usual suspects be interested in churning out leaflets for distribution to parents dropping by places like Mercury Drug? The usual suspects probably thought something's up, though demonstrations these days have been few and far between and have sparked little public interest. Someone must have been under the impression though, as of three weeks ago, that the situation was developing in a way not necessarily favorable to the present dispensation. And so, that someone must have felt it was time to indulge in a little fear-mongering at public expense.
It might have been due to a hangover from the public resentment over the President's bungled proposal for a Bangsamoro Juridical Entity; or worry over the way things were unfolding in the global economy; or a preemptive move to defuse opposition to the latest administration coalition scheme to amend the Constitution; it might even be due to unease over October being impeachment season. It might have been all of these things, or none of these things.
Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of men? Even former provincials of the Society of Jesus?
This is, indeed, a worrisome time for officialdom because they've never had it so good and yet they are increasingly feeling intimations of their own political mortality. While Bayani Fernando has been decorating the countryside with his trademark pink posters-I recently saw a bunch on display in Bacolod City-the ruling coalition has no real candidates to speak of for the presidency; it is hard-pressed to even find viable candidates for the Senate, even though Health Secretary Francisco Duque seems to think he can milk breastfeeding as an issue for a potential run.
The administration's advantage is in logistics. But if the efforts to form a super-party by the Ramos-De Venecia Wing of the Lakas-CMD by means of a coalition with the Nacionalistas and, possibly, the Nationalist People's Coalition are true, then surely the usual suspects know this will be more palatable to the public than the Frankenstein-like stitching together of Lakas and Kampi could ever possibly be. Such a reconfiguration would inevitably result in some of those presently in power finding themselves out of it: think of Speaker Prospero Nograles, and the old fuddy-duddies in the President's Cabinet.
Which is why back on Sept. 24, when Business Mirror columnist Manuel Buencamino wrote a satirical column in which the President, confiding in her diary, confided that she was a prisoner of her own people, his satire, as all the best satire does, had at its heart, the truth. In a paragraph straight out of Solidaridad, he enumerated the President's home court advantages: a majority in the Supreme Court; a pet Ombudsman and justice secretary; the state security services and the Catholic hierarchy at her beck and call.
The President's "Family," her Mafia-style official one, is dying to stay, even if they remain her nominal subordinates. Because they then get to enjoy what they so delight in, today: power without responsibility, the delights of authority without accountability, since their surest defense, legally and politically, is the President's efforts at self-preservation.
