E·N·Q·U·I·R·Y
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL
The Goebbels in our midst
Sunday, 07 30, 2006
There must be a better way so that those who win the nation’s mandate to govern can work without delay and whimsical obstruction.”
That is a fully loaded statement, based on a terribly wrong premise and assumption. There she was mouthing off again, the presumptive President claiming the victory she never had. Reminiscent of her other statements — “I won fair and square”…“Come, join the victors, so we can build a strong republic”…“Ako ang nanalo”…“Ako ang nakaupo, di ba?”…ad nauseam — the Sona had become once more her vehicle to repeat the lie she has been heaping on the nation.
In her recent grand speech to the nation, the little lady with the big voice once more treated us to the spectacle of her unique ability to talk out of both sides of her mouth at the same time and lying out of both sides. Reader Florencio Q. Pacis could not hide his disgust, and he did not bother to mince words in his e-mailed comment on that lie of the presumptive President: “Each and every Filipino knows only too well that she cheated big time in the 2004 elections. All the efforts she expended to keep the truth from coming out is also known.”
I have some disconcerting news for reader Pacis: “It is the absolute right of the state to supervise the formation of public opinion.” That statement once came from Hitler’s minister of propaganda, the notorious Josef Goebbels, who also passionately believed that a lie repeated many times over will be what the public will believe in the long run. So, Mr. Pacis, let the presumptive President revel in her lies then; perhaps in the repetition of these barefaced lies she can convince the Filipino to believe in the long run that she won over Fernando Poe, Jr. in the May 2004 elections. But we know better, don’t we?
Goebells also said: “Think of the press as a great keyboard on which the government can play.” And that’s a neat explanation why, already two years from the time she stole the presidency from FPJ, her propaganda machinery is still in concerted full throttle, composing cantatas and librettos about how she won fair and square — as background music, as it were, every time she goes into that song-and-dance act. Unluckily for her, not all the members of the press are willing to play her tune.
Unluckily for her, too, not even her closest advisers believe in every word they say about a clear and clean victory having been theirs. And why else would the presumptive President and her advisers go to great lengths at keeping the truth from coming out? The list of atrocious maneuvers engineered from the Palace runs as long as my arm: Relying on the forged certificates of canvass and disregarding altogether the truthful election returns (ERs); spiriting Garcillano out of the country to keep him silent; producing imitation tapes and imputing authorship to Ruado; kidnapping an election officer such as Ali; suborning witnesses such as Zuce; seizing the damning evidence of fraud from the secret hideaway of Tabayoyong; allowing the break-in to the Batasan Complex to substitute the legitimate ERs with those manufactured in Cainta; engineering a bogus impeachment complaint to preempt the filing of the genuine one; obstructing a recount of the votes from Cebu, Bohol, Iloilo and Pampanga; spending P75 million for each congressman for a no vote on the impeachment; refusing to release the Mayuga Report; promoting the generals who figured prominently in the Mindanao fraud operations; arranging a political asylum for Bolante...The rest, trust me, is yet to come.
The presumptive President has no mandate. The rush of impeachment complaints principally based on her cheating, lying and stealing is a testimony to all that. She has to claim differently to put a semblance of legitimacy where she has none.
The presumptive President is not governing at all. That the nation is not moving alongside with its Asian neighbors is all her fault. In the past 24 months, the efforts she should have spent at governing and leading the nation had been directed to convincing the nation she won fair and square. That is all she has been doing. But then, as W. Somerset Maugham once said, “She’s too crafty a woman to invent a new lie when an old one will serve.” Especially when repeated many times over. Her too-focused attention at parrying accusations of her lack of legitimacy to govern has resulted in a dismal lack of performance.
The people opposed to the presumptive President are not engaged in whimsical obstruction. The people have every right to ferret out the truth. It is not obstructionist nor whimsical to assert the truth. That they have this right and the right to exercise it should not be labeled as mere ornery and vexatious dissent.
Despite the rains last Monday, there was a great number of people on the streets leading to the Batasan who railed against the presumptive President’s claim of legitimacy. Now there are two more additional complaints for her impeachment; and many more will be filed the next few days, The message to her should be clear enough: Her lies are not working, and she will continue to hear more of these voices of dissent and discontent in the many more days to come.
Her lies will lie still. The Goebbels around her will not succeed.
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