Shut up, shut up
Shut up, shut up
Posted 10:57pm (Mla time) Feb 06, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the February 7, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
DIDAGEN Dilangalen, current spokesperson of Joseph Estrada, had an interesting letter last Wednesday. (PDI, 2/2/05)
"Being one of those who speak with President Estrada on a regular basis," he says, "I can assure Conrado de Quiros that the former is in full control of his mental faculties when he states that he is ready to take up the cudgels for our countrymen who have lost hope in a better future under the current administration." Unfortunately, he says, too many Filipinos, including me, "blindly believe whatever the elite and the vested interest groups say about (Erap) or his administration."
There is no truth, he says, to what I said in a column that Edsa 1 and 2 were sparked by the people rising to end a tyranny. Erap, he says, was no tyrant. "(Erap) won the presidential elections with the widest margin ever recorded in Philippine electoral history...Contrary to De Quiros' claims, it was not the sovereign will of the people that led to President Estrada's ouster, but the will of the few who could not bear the thought of a President attending to the needs of the many above the caprices of a powerful few."
All the sins attributed to the Erap government, he says, riot even more in the GMA administration. Illegal gambling is everywhere, and the country currently ranks among the most corrupt in the world. "De Quiros should think about doing his share in stopping this hypocrisy."
What can I say? Dilangalen must have been limiting his reading fare lately to other columnists, which is why his literary skills still need polishing. I can assure him that his failure to read me on a consistent basis is his loss, not mine. But if he had taken to improving his mind by reading me, he would have known-as my enemies do, gnashing their teeth and sending not very veiled threats my way-that I have been doing more than my share in trying to "stop the hypocrisy."
I have no problem with his premise: I will go farther and say that no government has plunged decency to an all-time low since Marcos than the current one. But I have a problem with his solution. As I've also said in previous columns, the way out of the GMA (Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo) rut is not to go back to the Erap farce. The way out of this pass is to go forward, not backward.
It's time he gave the "Erap para sa mahirap" line a break. That line has been discredited long ago. There was little in Erap's rule that resonated with the masa, there was everything in it that reeked of elite. Or the worst form of elite, which was crony. You could not find a bigger crony then than Lucio Tan, who had government at his beck and call and who indeed conscripted Erap to mug labor-that is the masa, my dear Dilangalen-with an onerous 10-year cessation of collective bargaining. Fortunately, the PAL unions, Fasap chief of them, refused to buckle under.
As tyranny goes, if I recall right, the outcry against Erap jumped to another level, or took on a more strident note, with an act of tyranny in a committee convened to hear Chavit Singson's charges against Erap. A congressman prevented Singson from talking by repeatedly shouting-well, it wasn't "Shut up! Shut up!"-"Mr. Chairman! Mr. Chairman!" The gagging of Singson produced the opposite effect, which was to make his voice roar. The congressman's name was Didagen Dilangalen.
It's true Erap won by the biggest electoral margin any president has had. But it's just as true that he lost the trust of the very people who voted for him. Dilangalen forgets the one thing that made Edsa 2 a popular revolt and not just an elite one. That was the impeachment trial, which gripped the public imagination to a point that it completely shoved aside the most popular telenovelas of the time. The TV sets in sidewalk eateries featured the impeachment trial, and restaurants and bars loudly asked patrons to watch the trial in the "big screen" and in air-conditioned luxury, much as they did the PBA games.
The trial, not unlike the telenovelas, was a morality play, a drama between good and evil, between the underworld bullies and the heroic underdogs, given a face by the "men in black," the de-campanilla lawyers in suits, arrayed in defense of Erap on one side, and on the other, the often inarticulate congressmen who had forgotten their lawyerly skills but who fought on, armed only with truth and courage. Guess whom the masa sided with.
If there is any valuable lesson in fact to be gotten from Edsa 1 and 2, it is simply this: No popular support, no Edsa.
To this day, I cannot understand why anyone would imagine it is the easiest thing in the world to mount an Edsa. The worry that we would be making a travesty of Edsa by having a 3 or 4 or 5 is simply unfounded. "People power" does not happen by chance, or by caprice or fiat. It happens at the end of a long process of the masa being goaded into action by a detestation of what is and a hope of what can be. The reason the opposition hasn't been able to mount one-though it has been desperately trying to-is not that it cannot get the elite to join them. It is that it cannot get the masa to do so.
For reasons that are patent. The opposition has no credibility. The problem precisely lies in the fact that though most Filipinos are deeply disgusted with the current government, as borne out by all the surveys, they are not able to find an alternative to it. That alternative is not, and cannot be, a return to the very thing the people-yes, the masa chief of them-rejected as anathema to them. The only way to go is forward, not backward.
Just one last thing: Dilangalen says he can assure me Erap is in full control of his mental faculties. Ah, but he presumes he is in the best position to know when someone is.
Posted 10:57pm (Mla time) Feb 06, 2005
By Conrado de Quiros
Inquirer News Service
Editor's Note: Published on page A14 of the February 7, 2005 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
DIDAGEN Dilangalen, current spokesperson of Joseph Estrada, had an interesting letter last Wednesday. (PDI, 2/2/05)
"Being one of those who speak with President Estrada on a regular basis," he says, "I can assure Conrado de Quiros that the former is in full control of his mental faculties when he states that he is ready to take up the cudgels for our countrymen who have lost hope in a better future under the current administration." Unfortunately, he says, too many Filipinos, including me, "blindly believe whatever the elite and the vested interest groups say about (Erap) or his administration."
There is no truth, he says, to what I said in a column that Edsa 1 and 2 were sparked by the people rising to end a tyranny. Erap, he says, was no tyrant. "(Erap) won the presidential elections with the widest margin ever recorded in Philippine electoral history...Contrary to De Quiros' claims, it was not the sovereign will of the people that led to President Estrada's ouster, but the will of the few who could not bear the thought of a President attending to the needs of the many above the caprices of a powerful few."
All the sins attributed to the Erap government, he says, riot even more in the GMA administration. Illegal gambling is everywhere, and the country currently ranks among the most corrupt in the world. "De Quiros should think about doing his share in stopping this hypocrisy."
What can I say? Dilangalen must have been limiting his reading fare lately to other columnists, which is why his literary skills still need polishing. I can assure him that his failure to read me on a consistent basis is his loss, not mine. But if he had taken to improving his mind by reading me, he would have known-as my enemies do, gnashing their teeth and sending not very veiled threats my way-that I have been doing more than my share in trying to "stop the hypocrisy."
I have no problem with his premise: I will go farther and say that no government has plunged decency to an all-time low since Marcos than the current one. But I have a problem with his solution. As I've also said in previous columns, the way out of the GMA (Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo) rut is not to go back to the Erap farce. The way out of this pass is to go forward, not backward.
It's time he gave the "Erap para sa mahirap" line a break. That line has been discredited long ago. There was little in Erap's rule that resonated with the masa, there was everything in it that reeked of elite. Or the worst form of elite, which was crony. You could not find a bigger crony then than Lucio Tan, who had government at his beck and call and who indeed conscripted Erap to mug labor-that is the masa, my dear Dilangalen-with an onerous 10-year cessation of collective bargaining. Fortunately, the PAL unions, Fasap chief of them, refused to buckle under.
As tyranny goes, if I recall right, the outcry against Erap jumped to another level, or took on a more strident note, with an act of tyranny in a committee convened to hear Chavit Singson's charges against Erap. A congressman prevented Singson from talking by repeatedly shouting-well, it wasn't "Shut up! Shut up!"-"Mr. Chairman! Mr. Chairman!" The gagging of Singson produced the opposite effect, which was to make his voice roar. The congressman's name was Didagen Dilangalen.
It's true Erap won by the biggest electoral margin any president has had. But it's just as true that he lost the trust of the very people who voted for him. Dilangalen forgets the one thing that made Edsa 2 a popular revolt and not just an elite one. That was the impeachment trial, which gripped the public imagination to a point that it completely shoved aside the most popular telenovelas of the time. The TV sets in sidewalk eateries featured the impeachment trial, and restaurants and bars loudly asked patrons to watch the trial in the "big screen" and in air-conditioned luxury, much as they did the PBA games.
The trial, not unlike the telenovelas, was a morality play, a drama between good and evil, between the underworld bullies and the heroic underdogs, given a face by the "men in black," the de-campanilla lawyers in suits, arrayed in defense of Erap on one side, and on the other, the often inarticulate congressmen who had forgotten their lawyerly skills but who fought on, armed only with truth and courage. Guess whom the masa sided with.
If there is any valuable lesson in fact to be gotten from Edsa 1 and 2, it is simply this: No popular support, no Edsa.
To this day, I cannot understand why anyone would imagine it is the easiest thing in the world to mount an Edsa. The worry that we would be making a travesty of Edsa by having a 3 or 4 or 5 is simply unfounded. "People power" does not happen by chance, or by caprice or fiat. It happens at the end of a long process of the masa being goaded into action by a detestation of what is and a hope of what can be. The reason the opposition hasn't been able to mount one-though it has been desperately trying to-is not that it cannot get the elite to join them. It is that it cannot get the masa to do so.
For reasons that are patent. The opposition has no credibility. The problem precisely lies in the fact that though most Filipinos are deeply disgusted with the current government, as borne out by all the surveys, they are not able to find an alternative to it. That alternative is not, and cannot be, a return to the very thing the people-yes, the masa chief of them-rejected as anathema to them. The only way to go is forward, not backward.
Just one last thing: Dilangalen says he can assure me Erap is in full control of his mental faculties. Ah, but he presumes he is in the best position to know when someone is.
posted by Dante at 12:00 AM
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