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From all sectors they come and cry out Gloria Resign

February 29, 2008

DEFYING last-ditch scare tactics, a broad movement of groups seeking President Arroyo’s resignation yesterday mobilized tens of thousand protesters at the interfaith rally at the Ninoy Aquino Monument in Makati City.

Organizers placed the crowd at 80,000 to 85,000. The police figure was 12,000.

Makati City Mayor and United Opposition president Jejomar Binay unleashed a minor political earthquake when he ended his opening remarks by calling on stage former Presidents Corazon Aquino, in her trademark yellow dress, and Joseph Estrada, in a red windbreaker.

Aquino and Estrada gave brief remarks before the crowd, in an apparent effort not to violate the agreed rally protocol that no politician would be allowed on stage, except for Binay who was tasked to deliver a welcome speech.

Aquino and Estrada sat beside each other on the makeshift stage.

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GMA ‘ripe’ for ouster

February 16, 2008

JOSE Maria Sison, founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines, said President Macapagal-Arroyo is “ripe” for ouster as the mass movement calling for her resignation or removal from power started Friday.

“The sheer growth of the legal and peaceful mass actions in the National Capital Region and on a national scale in the coming days, weeks and months can encourage the military and police to withdraw support from the Arroyo ruling clique and can suffice to cause the resignation, impeachment or outright ouster of the illegitimate and morally bankrupt president,” Sison said in a statement to the Journal Group.

He made the comment after over 10,000 people from various sectors and political leanings gathered on Friday in Makati City. The rally was called following the disclosures of former Phil. Forest Corp. president Rodolfo Noel Lozada that First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo intervened in the scuttled $329 million national broadband network deal.

Sison said the prospect for the continuation of the peace process, in limbo for the last four years, will be brighter once Mrs. Arroyo is removed from power.

“The downfall of the Arroyo regime would mean defeating the brutal but futile scheme of the imperialists, militarists and clerico-fascists to paralyze and put aside the peace negotiations and use all-out military force to seek the outright destruction or capitulation of the revolutionary forces and the people,” he said. “So long as Gloria M. Arroyo is in power, she will continue to engage in state terrorism and inflame the armed conflicts in the Philippines. She will use the military and police forces to further entrench herself in power and attack both the legal democratic mass movement and the armed revolutionary movement of the people under the pretext of fighting terrorism,” he added.

He also downplayed the government’s claim that the CPP’s armed wing, the New People’s Army, has dispatched several teams to assassinate Mrs. Arroyo.

Sison said the CPP-NPA is “sympathizing with, and encouraging” the legal and peaceful mass actions in the urban areas while it focuses its military campaigns in the countryside.

CPP spokesman Gregorio “Ka Roger” Rosal earlier confirmed that Mrs. Arroyo, several military officials in Panay island, and National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales have a standing arrest warrant from the guerillas due to various human rights violations.

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Bishop’s Ire

February 16, 2008

GMA Guilty

TWO CATHOLIC bishops yesterday scored Malacañang for allegedly attempting to cover up and divert attention from the $329 million national broadband network scandal.

Caloocan Bishop Deogracias Iñiguez slammed Malacañang over “ploys” to divert public attention away from the broadband deal with China’s ZTE Corp.

Iñiguez said stories about a plot to kill President Macapagal-Arroyo and the move to amend the 1987 Constitution could be among the Palace’s tactics to take the spotlight off the allegedly anomalous deal.

“That’s very possible. Ang obserbasyon natin sa regime na ito at sa ibang panahon isa ‘yan sa crisis management tactics, divert mo ang attention,” he said.

Iñiguez, head of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines public affairs office, also said that it could be possible that mass actions against the alleged overpricing of the aborted NBN project might already be a form of “communal action” that the CBCP had been calling for.

“Kung ito pinag-usapan, there was a common discernment and decision, this is already part of that communal action,” Iñiguez said.

Manila Bishop Teodoro Bacani, Jr. said that if the controversy over the ZTE telecommunications deal causes the downfall of the Arroyo administration, it would not be so much because of the revelations of witness Rodolfo Noel Lozada, Jr. but its attempts at a cover-up.

Bacani branded the actions of Palace officials in the Lozada abduction as “blatant and patent obstruction of justice.”

“These Lozada revelations may indeed bring down the Arroyo administration. If they do, it is not only because of what Lozada has so far revealed, for many already knew these before, but because of the blatant and patent obstruction of justice that the machinery of government and some members of media are trying to pull off in order to save PGMA and her husband Mike Arroyo,” he said.

Bacani stressed that all these elaborate but bungled operations were meant to prevent the truth about the ZTE deal from emerging.

“Lozada is telling the truth. And it is the truth that this administration fears most. The longer the hearings last, the clearer this becomes, what with the stupid, though well planned, answers those involved in the abduction have been giving,” he said.

Bacani is the spiritual adviser of the influential religious group El Shaddai.

He urged the people to take the lead in the campaign for truth.

“Let us not wait for the bishops to lead the action. It is the laity who should take the leading role, and assert themselves, without waiting for the bishops’ go signal, and without wanting to hide behind the habits (cassock) of the bishops, priests, and religious,” he said.

“It is the truth which will set us free. I do hope that we Filipinos will not let this matter die down, but that we will come together, pray together, discuss together, decide together, and act together, to this end, that the truth may prevail, as the CBCP has been urging us,” Bacani said.

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