Every time the Marcos government was poised to seize the upper hand, the Palace or the prime movers and shakers in the shaky government would issue contradictory orders, or delay, and delay, and delay…So it’s not that Marcos was concerned with the well-being of his countrymen, but rather, he delayed too long (Fabian Ver had wanted the massacre to take place as soon as possible; Marcos said no, on TV; to this day, even some of his critics give him credit for doing so); and so, when he ordered the people gathered at Edsa massacred, the momentum had shifted to the rebels….  Up to the morning of the day he fell from power, it seemed quite possible he could counter-attack by summoning reinforcements from the provinces.In retrospect, Ferdinand Marcos and Joseph Ejercito Estrada knew what had to be done, but were incapable of summoning the iron-clad resolve to do what needed to be done; they hesitated when their enemies, normally more cautious than they, had themselves thrown caution to the winds….  if Estrada, after leaving the Palace by barge, had holed up in Makati and dared those rallying at Edsa to engage in urban street fighting there, or even in the crowded streets of San Juan -or anywhere else.Cory Aquino faced down coup attempts by holing up in the Palace’s Guest House and her Arlegui residence; President Arroyo’s done the same.

Philippines Free Press, July 15, 1939.

Indonesia and Vietnam are breathing down our necks.Sayang.The day-to-day erosion of the people’s trust in our institutions is that in an increasingly dysfunctional political system – this, to me, is the most worrisome source of Sayang in our society today.I am certain that many Filipinos agree with me about this, particularly this expanding cavity in our very souls, this sense of loss that all of us are feeling today… Sayang.The latest surveys show public satisfaction for all top four government institutions significantly declining compared to the previous quarter.From a net positive 32 rating in September, the Senate has declined 13 points, to a positive-19 as of year-end.The House of Representatives’ net satisfaction score fell from positive 18 to only positive 3.The Supreme Court dropped from positive 24 in September to a neutral net positive 5 in December….  As of September last year, investments in this sector reached more than $150 million, multiples of what it was for the entire 2006.Demand and prices of metals in the world market is currently being driven by the appetite of China and other industrializing states.We must take advantage of this, as our country is one of the most endowed in mineral resources: it is is 3rd in the world in terms of gold reserves, 4th in copper, 5th in nickel and 6th in chromite.In order for mining to continue to be a viable and acceptable enterprise, though, the local community’s trust must be ensured.And it is the government’s job to ensure that trust: To guarantee that all environmental and health safeguards are in place, that the community is included and not estranged, that concerns are taken into consideration and not simply compensated; and that any windfall is not taken at the expense of environmental degradation.Kung hindi … Sayang!Agriculture has, and will continue to come to life as prices for basic foodstuffs have risen.For once, the stars are aligned for the agriculture sector….  If it were performing as it should be, we would not be experiencing this much distrust and jadedness from the citizenry.With the declining trust in our institutions, we see the phenomenon of individuals empowering themselves through their own initiative.While I am proud of our people and their resilience and dogged determination to create opportunities for themselves, I am greatly saddened that they can only find these opportunities abroad.What kind of a country have we become that we cannot even offer a future for our people, that Filipinos must move away to find decent futures for their children?As for myself, I love this country: I’m here for life; and I intend to do all I can to try and help fix this situation.Our people’s estrangement from politics has made it easier for government – as the most organized and powerful entity – to do as it wishes, having long abandoned the need to have public opinion on its side.And when Government no longer cares about public opinion, it begins to test the limits of abuse and malfeasance.Jonas Burgos, son of one of the country’s staunchest defenders of democracy and free speech, has been missing for more than a hundred days.

Considering the phenomenon has been reported as being around since the 1980s, it could be a deranged veteran from the heyday of the US bases in Clark and Subic.  The Americans, after all, composed this song:monkeys_zamboanga 1.mp3 Or, we ought to consider this, it could be a deranged Filipino, too.  As the famous comedy_-_filipino_sex 1.mp3 audio file put it, a “Filipino pancit-eating mother hamper” (not work safe, not for kids, click the link at your own peril!).

imbroglio |imˈbrōlyō|noun ( pl. -glios)an extremely confused, complicated, or embarrassing situation : the Watergate imbroglio.• archaic a confused heap.ORIGIN mid 18th cent.: Italian, from imbrogliare ‘confuse’ ; related to embroil .As I mentioned last week, the Journal of Democracy has an article on the Philippines by Paul D.  Hutchcroft, titled “The Arroyo imbroglio in the Philippines.”

“The Global Soul: Jet Lag, Shopping Malls, and the Search for Home” (Pico Iyer)

The late 1930s had witnessed developments that had already begun to weaken the relationship between leaders and followers: the introduction of women’s suffrage in 1937; the gradual extension of suffrage from the propertied that had a monopoly on the vote prior to that point, thus increasingly injecting populism as a means of attracting the masses; an increasingly cosmopolitan, and radical, intelligentsia; and the impatience of young leaders to wrest political control from the leaders that had dominated government for forty years.What emerged as the official response to these trends was a series of constitutional amendments approved in 1940: the restoration of a bicameral congress to replace the unicameral National Assembly, in order to forestall the radical infiltration of the legislature being foremost among them (just how inevitable this was going to be would only be demonstrated after the war, with the election of peasant leaders to represent certain districts in Central Luzon: the Roxas administration had to embark on evicting these leaders from their congressional seats)….  Politicians gladly alternated between outright extortion and (increasingly) indiscreetly being on retainer to financial interests to fuel their campaigns; the old elite, still firmly entrenched in business, demanded protectionist policies in turn to protect their monopolies.STILL, from the 40s to the late 50s enough of the pre-war political leadership survived to give the impression that pre-war solidarity had not only survived, but been rebuilt; but this was a case of old assumptions artificially supported by nostalgia and the old generation’s believing its own propaganda.But with Magsaysay this all came clearly to an end: the old parties built on generations-old networks of leaders had been supplanted by his strategy of barnstorming and media manipulation….  The means for political control and continuity put in place during the Commonwealth were systematically dismantled: bloc voting abolished; the power of the president to appoint mayors taken away; celebrity politics introduced (signaled, for example, by the election of matinee idol Rogelio de la Rosa to the Senate) and with it, the unstoppable transformation of both the standards expected of candidates by the electorate, and the manner in which candidates courted voters.The Last Hurrah of the old cozy relationship between the politicians and businessmen was the Garcia administration: its election as the first plurality, and not majority, presidency in Philippine history again served as a harbinger of the fatally-divided and unresponsive political culture familiar to Filipinos today.The Garcia government, however, nationalist as it was, presented an increasingly clear picture of an elite stripped of actual political power, but canny enough to continue fostering and pandering to a new grasping class, the guerrilla generation with its warlord inclinations.

The Long View Charisma versus routines By Manuel L. Quezon III Philippine Daily Inquirer First Posted 22:48:00 01/09/2008 If you cannot afford to bury your mother, is asking an official for help in the nature of exercising a right or asking for a favor? If you lack the means to pay for medical care for [...]

The trends he sees seem to be taking place here, too, the expansion of the mestizaje because of inter-marriage no longer with Spaniards or Americans but people from literally everywhere in the globe, but a new kind, and the introduction of a greater mix of cultural influences than ever before:National boundaries, however, do not mark the true differences that exist in Latin America….  When you dig into the Latin American past without prejudice, without assuming a party pris, you soon discover that our cultural roots are spread all over the world.Despite Latin America’s universality, one of its recurring obsessions has been defining its identity….  But, as in other parts of the world, this mania for determining historico-social or metaphysical specificity for an agglomeration has caused oceans of Latin American ink to flow, generating ferocious diatribes as well as interminable polemics.The most celebrated and prolonged of all is the confrontation between Hispanists, for whom Latin American history begins with the arrival of Spaniards and Portuguese and the resultant linking of the continent with the Western world, and Indigenists, for whom the genuine reality of the New World resides in the pre-Hispanic civilizations and their descendants, and not in the contemporary heirs of the conquistadors, who still today marginalize and exploit Native Americans.

This is born out by the (admittedly unscientific) observation made by some bloggers and media people I’ve talked to, who’ve noticed that anything to do with the potential candidates for 2010 gets a large, and highly critical, readership.Amando Doronila does not make the above point, but makes a different one that’s difficult to contradict:Truly, 2010 heralds the closure of the turbulent EDSA-driven eras, defined by extra-electoral political change, and the beginning and the normalization of electoral politics now under the specter of military coups or withdrawal of support for sitting civilian governments.This epochal shift gives us the opportunity to make a leadership change that offers this time a wide range of choices.It is the advent of a younger generation in 2010 that makes the next election a qualitative change from the previous leadership handovers.We will be electing in 2010 a new set of leaders who will take power with electoral mandates unblemished by the irregularity of an extra-electoral method of change represented by EDSA I and EDSA II, both marked by military interventions.Year 2010, therefore, will mark a return to normal election processes as a mechanism of political change….  This will be evident in the incoming year as serious contenders make their moves to create the critical mass for their candidacies.In terms of the opposition, Casiple lays out the main challenges, chief of which is the one that Doronila (see his piece above) credits Estrada with setting out to do: consolidate its forces (see Fr. Joaquin Bernas, SJ, however, for his views on past presidents being permanently disqualified from running for the presidency again):The momentary issue for the opposition (or for presidential hopefuls within the ruling coalition) is the possibility of a GMA endrun for a continued stay in power through a constitutional change….  No President likes being unpopular, but any president would prefer actual power, to impotently enjoying the affections of a fickle people.The President’s main task, then, becomes threefold: continuing to pay off political debts but not so recklessly and lavishly as to arouse the people; keeping everyone guessing as to what she truly intends to do in 2010, while pursuing every means to keep every option (including an extension of her term or a change to parliamentary government) on the table without, again, solidifying the opposition; and keeping the pressure valves –the OFW remittance cash cow, a healthy stock and property market, a content upper and middle class- operational.She does not have to do these things particularly well; she never has.