E·N·Q·U·I·R·Y
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL
The opposition we deserve
Sunday, 12 10, 2006
Amman, Jordan. — During the recess here at the conference on the United Nations Convention Against Corruption, this article is written on the assumption that the fraudulently illegitimate and scandalously immoral Constituent Assembly (Con-ass) of the House of Representatives will be junked by the Filipino people; consequently, the May 2007 elections will be held as scheduled.
Sen. Edgardo Angara, president of the Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino (LDP), was not off the mark when he decried the announcement of a unity ticket for the Senate in the May 2007 elections as a bit premature because it lacked the necessary groundwork for a united opposition.
Not that Angara was sourgraping, that he was excluded from the list or that the LDP was not even mentioned as a party to the coalition. It is the fact that the makeup of the ticket simply does not offer an alternative to the Filipino people. Which is not intelligent politics at all. Expectedly, the premature announcement by the spokesman of former President Joseph Estrada has only served to confuse and sow distrust among the members of the opposition.
Why, indeed, should a list be bandied about when there is even no platform of government that is available as another choice to supplant the government of Gloria Arroyo? Many of those in the list have questionable credentials to be counted among the ranks of the opposition, and it looks like their only qualification is their newly discovered revulsion for Arroyo.
It is not wise to include, for instance, Kiko Pangilinan in the line-up. The people have not forgotten his role in the railroaded national canvass in 2004. So, what guarantee is there that the 18 million who voted for Fernando Poe Jr. will vote for Pangilinan? Certainly this fair-weather turncoat will lose in any fair canvass of the votes. That slot for him should have been given to any one of those who are truly deserving, such as Rolex Suplico or Harry Roque.
Besides, in the remote possibility that the newly-minted opposition wannabes get elected, what assurance is there that they will stick it out with the opposition once they get chummy again with Arroyo, after they have gotten what they wanted from the opposition? They are the kind of political butterflies that the opposition does not deserve.
Unless Erap is amenable to having them in his line-up just to make sure they lose in the polls — in revenge for their betrayal of his presidency in 2001 and for cheating FPJ out of the presidency in 2004 — Pangilinan, et al. have no business being in the opposition slate. Their change of color betrays their ignoble intentions.
A coalition of limp wings — among them the five-member sprig of the Liberal Party — hardly sends a message of strength. It is, to put it mercifully, a jury-rigged coalition of convenience; at worst, a coalition for disaster. For who is the voter that can put his trust in an alliance composed of members who were on opposite ends in 2004 or, farther back, in 2001? Although politics makes strange bedfellows, how can the sensible voter see any reason why those who robbed him of his vote in 2004, or stole the presidency in 2001, be now deserving of his support? Erap may have forgiven them for his own reasons, but the greater mass of the people who have been aggrieved certainly will not. Erap’s pusong mamon, or forgiving heart, is not transferable to the people.
The problem of looking at individuals as the personification of the bad government is that it tends to perpetuate a kind of government that does not allow for change. Individuals who lead the nation are sooner or later gone, but the same kind of government will persist even if such individuals are gone and others take over the reins of government. For as long as platforms do not guide governance, there will be no opposition or administration in the scheme of things to offer alternatives; only politicians whose only mission is to dislodge those who are incumbent. Tomorrow, Arroyo could be gone, but her kind of government will still be there. Same dog, different collar.
The LDP has been wrongly branded a company union of the government, principally on the canard that Angara has been dancing the Charter change (Cha-cha) with Arroyo. But then again, this is a fabrication, belied strongly by Angara’s public statements against the Con-ass espoused by Speaker Jose de Venecia.
The LDP’s brand of opposition is moored on a platform that offers an alternative to the current government. Together with Erap’s Pwersa ng Masa, Nene Pimentel’s PDP-Laban and other legitimate opposition political parties, LDP was instrumental in putting up the Koalisyon Ng Nagkakaisang Pilipino (KNP) in 2003, born out of the need to present an alternative to the government of Arroyo.
Even as the KNP may have been cheated out of victory in 2004, the dream of the KNP must live, today more than ever. If the opposition parties have to come up with an alternative, they should be united under a common platform. The LDP remains as the dominant opposition party; the KNP is still there; and, Jejomar Binay now leads the emergent United Nationalist Opposition (UNO). Together, they could very well be the vehicle for a truly direction-driven opposition.
Those in the opposition need not exist under a common desire to inflict the worst on Arroyo once they secure the majority in either or both Houses of the Congress. They must find common ground to pursue a declared policy that shall give birth to a government that upholds the dignity of the Filipino spirit, not the rapaciousness of the privileged few.
It is time the opposition wised up and sorted itself out before it’s too late. The opposition could lose again … and again … and again.
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