Freedom from Arroyo

While we really take for granted our freedoms in the United States, in other countries, freedoms are sometimes curtailed in the name of political stability or political viability. In the Philippines, that country's president, Gloria Arroyo, just last week declared a "state of emergency" due to a supposed coup plot, (pitting communists and military adventurists from the left and the right, imagine that marriage) among other things.

She effectively shut down a newspaper that doesn't like the way she governs, has arrested and detained several prominent opposition leaders, including Randy David, a University of the Philippines sociology professor known for speaking his mind, and considered by some to be a radical; arrested other opposition leaders such as Crispin Beltran, banned rallies and assemblies, muzzled the media under threat of retaliation, and a whole list of other things. In doing such Marcosian things, Arroyo is just setting the stage for her final pathetic downfall. She is claiming to preserve national security in declaring her state of emergency, yet it seems that the state of emergency is in her own paranoid mind, and she is walking a serious tightrope in declaring the state of emergency in the veil of national security. Even Estrada didn't pull these stupid stunts. By doing what she has done, she has sent the country back to the early 1970s, when a young president named Marcos took over the newspapers and arrested his political opponents, and declared martial law due to a "communist threat". Sound familiar? Well folks that is what is happening right now.

What Arroyo has done is damaged the democratic principles that cost Ninoy Aquino his life, which his wife Corazon Aquino worked hard to preserve during her six years in office. What is happening is Arroyo is just trying to grab and maintain political power when more than half the country wants her out.

She was eager to be appointed president by the Philippine Supreme Court back when the coup d'etat against Estrada was carried out, and then she fixed the 2004 election effectively extending her term to 10 years. Her husband has been accused of corruption, and yet this country is going backward when a country like Vietnam, which ended a war just 30+ years ago, is poised to over take the Philippines economically and politically.


It is time for Arroyo to go home to the province from which she came.