moderating greed

a writ of amparo, a writ of habeas corpus, and a grand media circus later, high-profile witness jun lozada of the nbn-zte anomaly was finally released from prior police "protection" and surfaced at the la salle greenhills accompanied by several nuns and priests. i have just read the transcript of lozada's statement. i am no political science expert. and not that my opinion matters greatly, but anyhow, i feel history is taking place here, so here's my random take on the more exciting teledrama that is pinoy politics as of 6:17 pm, feb. 7, 2008. i'm having a hard time organizing my thoughts and putting them in a whole paragraph, so i'm doing this in numbered form. now, pass on the popcorn.

1. "Jun, you moderate their greed." from romulo neri to lozada, implicating former comelec chairperson benjamin abalos and his cohorts of getting millions of "commission" from the overpriced telecommunications deal. this is my favorite line in lozada's statement since it basically summarizes what this latest political hullabaloo is all about. but any respectable citizen, upon hearing that, will never see anything moderate in there! they're talking about a 130 million DOLLAR kickback that they're going to get from, where else, but our taxes! and then lozada said, "siguro kalahati pupuwede..." no, sir, it's not pwede! do the math. if there's anything it's not, it's MODERATE!

2. it is in times like these that i am actually happy to have the opposition senators in the background, some of them i find too talkative while making too little sense in ordinary days. i don't care if it's political ambition that makes all of them want to endear themselves to the public and drives them to have something to boast come 2010 campaign. whether in aid of legislation, or pure grandstanding, this is just going to be like getting rid of the higher-level monsters first, then going after the other bad guys later.

3. prior to this "miscommunication" or outright kidnapping event, filipinos watched the marathon congressional session that eventually led to the ouster of JDV. close to an hour of "valedictory" speech full of accusations, pinpointing, and sour-graping... too late a hero now, they say. and i wonder if de venecia still has the credibility after keeping the truth all these years and after getting every chance of photo op with the president just a few days ago, all in the name of political survival. anyway, upon seeing the satisfied faces of arroyo's kins thereafter, i have never felt more politically helpless since justice davide empathetically declared, "the no votes have it." and to complete the comparison, JDV, neri, and lozada to me are this administration's atong ang, chavit singson, and clarissa ocampo. we all know what happened next.

4. this may strike as kind of off-topic but i'd like to think this is a vindication of sen. antonio trillanes, and the rest of his disillusioned lot. his advocacy has always been that against corruption. you could hear it in his speeches, and it's all over his website and master's thesis. i may be biased since i voted for him (although i am not really agreeable to his means of getting his point across), but why do you think all this stealing and corruption reached the highest scale and record magnitude? i'd say because filipinos have ceased to be as vigilant, there is so much apathy, and we choose to stay in our own comfort zones, secured, happy, employed, and entertained. i'd like to reiterate the soldiers' cry at the height of the manila pen incident, "just because you are comfortable does not mean nothing is wrong."

5. from garci, to lintang bedol, and now this... i can't see any way for gloria to get out of this mess. she can't pull off another televised admission of crime now, this is too heavy an issue, and it is not even sure if she's directly involved or only her husband is. she can use little power in the senate since her camp is an obvious minority, with some who are non-solid pro-administration and who also have, understandably, 2010 ambitions. she can order the full implementation of EO 464 to supress other officials should they want to expose more skeletons and further derail her sinking leadership. but the depth of this issue does not only involve active senior officials which this memorandum covers and, add to that, the previous testimonies of neri and lozada had already caused a lot of damage. so i'm thinking of two possible endings to this worst ever controversy: gloria will file an annulment, then subjects mike to senate and court inquiries that will both eventually find him guilty, and he'll rot in jail with abalos as his cellmate OR gloria and mike will stick together through thick and thin, they'll make sure abalos will forever shut up (whatever it takes, paging esperon and razon!), then new house speaker nograles will railroad the approval of the cha-cha, and we will all see ourselves in the subject of international headlines for yet another (inevitable) EDSA 3. or is it 4?

haaaay, i never thought i'd live to see the day when my mother would tell me it's looking a lot like martial law AGAIN. creepy.