Last Saturday’s Makati rally was an Opposition and Left rally supported by the churches, the middle class, and the business community. That Malacañang chose to ignore the broadness of the participation and expectedly pointed to its relatively small size of 8,000-10,000 shows the political impact. It’s a quavering lower lip and a stiff upper lip.
Nobody billed the Makati rally beforehand as a rally for a people power initiative. It was precisely a warning of one. The broadness was the significant message, not the numbers.
The GMA administration is now in a quandary. Many of its allies in the HOR are wavering in their Con-Ass advocacy–they know the political message and are taking the prudent road.
This week counts as the last days of Congressional session before the holiday break. If Con-Ass is not passed now, it will have a more desperate timeline in the first quarter of 2009. It may require the iron hand then.
There is the suspicion that various accommodations by the GMA administration of Danding Cojuangco’s San Miguel point to a negotiated political agreement to use the Cojuangco influence in the AFP to augment its own. GSIS and other government shares in Meralco were given to the conglomerate. A favorable Sandigangbayan decision on the coco levy issue was then issued.
It may be that the GMA group is being taken for a ride on this but there is a need to be vigilant about military and police moves in the coming weeks. We are certainly entering a critical period in the political crisis.
The stiff upper lip may be that of a martial ruler.
I understand San Miguel will also get 51% of Petron.
Now,Mrs. Arroyo has signalled that her unparalleled and unprincipled attack on the Constitution has a new and venomous side angle:It’s just a NUMBERS game!
Forget the arguments,forget the rationale,it’s all about numbers!
Her attempt to downgrade the Makati rally with two words “crowd size” is a great insult to the religious, political, business and civic society leaders who led the inter-faith rally.
More importantly,it ignores the honest,patriotic questioning from the thousands of protesters about the the key issues of her Con Ass proposal .
[…] there’s no reason to quit the fight while mercenary motives are still in play, as Mon Casiple broadly hints at in his follow-up post to the above: This week counts as the last days of […]
[…] there’s no reason to quit the fight while mercenary motives are still in play, as Mon Casiple broadly hints at in his follow-up post to the above: This week counts as the last days of […]
“The GMA administration is now in a quandary. Many of its allies in the HOR are wavering in their Con-Ass advocacy–they know the political message and are taking the prudent road.”
True, members of the HOR are fond of making last-minute heroic actions. It can be remembered that during the time of Erap, he controlled the HOR But the Reps broke their ties with Erap. It was so because the Reps and by extension elected public officials are known to be vote-maximizer. Continued identification with the Admin ran the risk of not being re-elected come election time. A choice therefore is made between personal loyalty and political survival.