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Erap, Trillanes vs national insecurity

DIE HARD III

Herman Tiu Laurel

11/16/2007

Wahab Akbar ruled his province as a fiefdom: one wife as governor, another mayor and himself congressman. His personal army is said to be 600-strong with an arsenal that rivals the Armed Forces of the Philippines. He has reputedly left a trail of blood in his alleged land-grabbing spree and allied with and betrayed various Muslim rebel groups in his drive to power. He is said to be a major Muslim warlord ally and asset of Noberto Gonzales, among the many Gloria’s NSA has adopted and eventually discarded such as Nur Misuari and the more benign Farouk Hussin. A long list of groups raring to decapitate Wahab makes the pinpointing of the brains behind his murder nearly an impossible task, especially when the state itself is also suspect.

The bomb blast in Congress is the latest of a rising trend toward violent chaos in our society, reviving the sense among many citizens that the recent Glorietta 2 incident was just an initial episode in a long reported campaign of terror to justify draconian measures by the desperately shaky Gloria regime. It is often called the “strategy of terror” and it could be conducted by one or several forces which may be working together or against each other, telegraphing political messages and their destructive power through such terror incidents; but the sum total of it is a breakdown of law, order and civilized society as we had known in the past.

We are under a regime born of chaos — the five bombing incidents dubbed the FIDEL blasts, reportedly engineered by Gloria and her conspirators in the year 2000 that led to Edsa II and their power-grab. The legacy of that is the substitution of law with force in the conduct of state and social affairs, starting with the murder of two-dozen civilians at Edsa III, the unconstitutional declaration of a state of rebellion, the suppression of the right to assembly through Batasang Pambansa 880 to break up rallies, the neo-martial law Executive Order 1017, the denial of public accountability with EO 464, the anti-human anti-terror law, the extra-judicial executions, ad nausea.

“If we resort to lawlessness, the only thing we can hope for is civil war, untold bloodshed, and the end of our dreams” — Archie Lee Moore. And that is what we have gotten from the lawless ouster of an elected president, lawless prosecution of that president, lawless “election” of the power in Malacañang, lawless incarceration of protesting idealistic senior and young officers, lawless exploitation in our economy, ad infinitum. Capping all this lawlessness is the ascension of an avowed anti-Filipino terrorist by the name of Norberto Gonzales who has a track record of complicity with foreign subversion and record of terrorist acts against the Philippines.

To consolidate power, it is alleged that Gonzales gathered lawless elements of society around him, like Akbar. The two have been tagged in worse situations: the heinous entrapment, ambush and mutilation of soldiers of the Philippine Marines in Basilan last July — said to create a pretext to deploy recalcitrant troops away from Metro Manila to preclude a revolt during the lawless conviction of deposed President Estrada scheduled for the months to follow. The Marines do not hide their satisfaction in the death of Akbar, but even Gloria’s investigators would not pin blame on them as, on their oath, the disciplined Marines would never hurt innocent civilians just to get at an enemy.

The real issue is not Akbar’s death, neither is it who the culprit is nor is it the possible connection with Comelec legal department chief Alioden Dalaig’s murder that could point to political rivals’ election cheating in Basilan. The issue is — the state of national insecurity, the sense or doom and gloom brought about by the national chaos, the collapse of any sense of social order brought about by the current regime. Can the country survive another three years of this, as those preaching forbearance of Gloria Arroyo’s catastrophes proposes? Of course, the country will always survive, but only at a cost the nation can ill afford.

National insecurity also permeates the people’s fast worsening economic life. The recent SWS survey on the impact of the strong peso saying it only hurts 30 percent and has no effect on 57 percent is misleading, because the export and OFW sectors comprise 70 percent of the national economy. OFW families have lost 25 percent of their incomes and equivalent contraction in consumption of goods and services that will shrink retail sales. Meanwhile, soaring corporate incomes have become a daily fare: Last week, the Lopezes’ First Gas profits soared 50 percent. Yesterday, Ayala income soared 41 percent on telecom overpriced services, while government debt rose 2.8 percent the past month.

For seven years now, this state of lawlessness and national insecurity have gone on — a downward spiral searching for a bottom. Who’s going to help the country stop the fall before we reach the end of the pit from where there’s no return? Estrada is back to the hustings to present his case and act on the hunger of the poor; Senator Trillanes is exposing evil shenanigans of Gloria’s henchmen, consolidating citizens’ groups, while continuing to propose imperative Senate legislation such as the anti-debt resolution. These two are showing the right way.

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