Instability to mark GMA's rule
As jockeying grows more frenzied and tensions flare among the principal warring reactionary camps, the reactionary state likewise unleashes more violence and heightens its harassment and intimidation of democratic forces and persons waging legitimate protests, aside from targetting the present regime's main rivals for reactionary rule.
The Arroyo camp engaged in massive fraud and utilized other predatory means just to be able to remain in power. But the billions of pesos worth of funds and government programs it used in its campaign were not enough to ensure Arroyo's victory.
Asserting that the real winner of the presidential polls was Fernando Poe Jr., Arroyo's closest rival, Poe's camp released evidence of election returns that have been tampered with and sought to have these suspicious returns opened and examined. They were repeatedly blocked by the Arroyo camp from doing so. The schemes and squabbles of the opposing camps prolonged the counting.
In a desperate bid to ensure Gloria Arroyo and Noli de Castro's proclamation as president and vice-president, the regime pulled all stops to counter its rivals and the people rising in protest. It brutally suppressed protest actions and railroaded the canvassing and proclamation.
Thousands of armed "anti-riot" police, aside from forces of the AFP National Capital Regional Command were deployed to preempt and disperse rallies and other forms of people's protest. The mere criticism of Arroyo and protests against the fraud perpetrated by the regime were considered violations of law and sufficient grounds for dispersing rallyists. Malaca�ang justified its moves, saying that such barefaced repression was being employed against "agents of anarchy and national chaos." This is no different from the term Hitler used against those who opposed the fascist Nazi regime.
To implement its mailed-fist policy, Malaca�ang's National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales, the military, police and intelligence and psy-war personnel busied themselves with cooking up all kinds of destabilization scenarios supposedly being planned and carried out by the New People's Army (NPA) in collusion with the political opposition and disgruntled military officers and personnel.
To make the destabilization scenario look real, the Presidential Guard Battalion, the AFP and the PNP came out with a fabricated plan involving so-called NPA assassination attempts, first against Norberto Gonzales, former DND Secretary and now NAKTAF chief Angelo Reyes and Comelec Chairman Benjamin Abalos. Of late, Arroyo and Poe were supposed targets as well of an NPA assassination plot. Poe merely laughed off the story and said that it was not the NPA but the Arroyo camp that wants to see his head roll. He said that such scnenario-building was only part of the bigger scheme to block moves by his coalition partners, intimidate the people, and suppress protests against massive electoral fraud.
The Arroyo clique's latest maneuver against its rivals was to file criminal cases against Poe and Loren Legarda's lawyers on June 19. To railroad the vote canvass, Arroyo's political rivals were not even given a reasonable period of time to get replacement lawyers. Shortly after the lawyers left, Arroyo's people speeded up the counting so it could wrap up the canvass the following day.
All of this will nonetheless boomerang on the Arroyo regime. Its suppression of legitimate protests and the opposition and its arm-twisting tactics against the congressional minority just to force a new mandate for Arroyo have merely isolated the regime further from the people.
The political situation continues to seethe. More and more are joining protests against the systematic and widespread cheating and violence in the previous election, the railroaded congressional canvass and the suppression of the people's democratic rights. Arroyo's "victory" has been rammed down the people's throats, but it is a fleeting victory and a hollow one at that. Widespread doubts about her electoral victory will not disappear. Her reign will always be marked by disquiet. The groundswell of protest against the regime will not be stemmed until its eventual ouster.
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