Ten wrong and unpopular legacies
A YEAR ago, when the President had some of the weakest approval ratings, the Chief Executive said: “When history looks back, I’d rather be judged as solving problems and being correct, rather than being popular.” Thus spoke President Bush.Last March Sen. Ralph Recto said, “I’d rather be right than popular.”
So it was that one of GMA’s punch lines last Monday was one of the oldest clichés in the book. The hitch is one can be wrong and unpopular too to a wised-up citizenry.
1. A year ago, GMA spoke out in favor of Charter change, which was wrong, unpopular and unconstitutional, but she put behind it the prestige of her office. That is one of her legacies.
2. We have a new abomination, the Human Security Act, another legacy confirming why Bismarck said two things people should not see being made: laws and sausages. Awful. Looking at it, I can better understand why Churchill said that “[t]he quality of a nation’s civilization can be largely measured by the methods it uses in the enforcement of its criminal laws.”
2.1. The new Act is criminal in nature. Its uncanalized invasion and destruction of privacy, the cherished right to be let and left alone, is another horrid legacy to remember GMA by.
3. Human-rights violations in the form of abductions and extrajudicial killings are another legacy. The SONA star last year was Gen. Jovito “Berdugo” Palparan, last heard to be still looking for some appointive or elective job. GMA realized soon enough that he represented another garbage of a legacy.
3.1. Holmes said even a dog knows when it is being kicked or stumbled over. Now, when Chief Justice Rey Puno convened a summit meeting on extrajudicial killings, GMA was slapped hard indeed. She had made the unprecedented meeting necessary.
4. GMA critics say another legacy is we are now seen as No. 1 in corruption. Her defenders mumble we are only No. 2.
5. Another legacy is that she is seen to be a captive of the military and of alien interests. She is only as strong as they want her to be, with the trade-off being survival. Did Truman brag?
5.1. It was said that government agents abducted the wife and three teenaged kids of the leader of the kidnap-for-ransom gang to force the release of Fr. Giancarlo Bossi. No probe was ordered. Fearing the military and police, she showed the same chilling callousness when abduction was mentioned by Garci.
6. Her subservience to the military and police is exceeded only by her genuflecting to the Americans, Italians and other aliens, doing for them what she would not do for Pinoy victims.
To solve kidnappings, we can well offer money the way the Americans make it work in Mindanao. Else, we can have JayJay Burgos’ name changed to Giuseppe Burgossi, to get results.
6.1. In the case of JayJay, when Prosecutor Emmanuel Velasco named certain suspects from the military, Injustice Secretary Raul M. Gonzalez fell all over himself to relieve him.
7. Another legacy is the low to which she has dragged the electoral process. An egregious choice was that of Comelec Chairman Ben Abalos, universally distrusted save in his own household.
8. Opening the country wide open to foreign interests completes our enslavement. They come while our people in the millions leave as their investments benefit but a few of our own plutocracy who are very wealthy to begin with. When the region prospers, we cannot help but improve too.
9. Dysfunctional families, fornication and indiscipline all over, and a fake educational system are among her souvenirs.
9.1. Our environment is degraded. The DENR is now a way station for one biding his time to get another post. Lito Atienza lusts after Local Government or Tourism but there is no vacancy. DILG Secretary Ronnie Puno was the one who bragged that to rescue Fr. Bossi, the key was “sauce for the goose was sauce for the gander.” Sounds too much like raping the rapist.
This is the same imaginative fellow who in the Ducat caper saw the incompetent policemen behaving like the Kestone cops. His remedy: throw the remote control monitor at the TV. Angie Reyes for Energy? Naming people with no obvious qualification for the jobs concerned is another sorry legacy.
10. The problem has been GMA is only tough when it comes to ensuring her survival. Abbe Sieyes, asked about his role during the Terror, answered: “I survived.” Is that all? What a legacy as she presides over the liquidation of all the values we held dear, integrity, competence and delicadeza.
We hope our nation will survive, and it will, and finally have a leader who will be right and popular, the opposite of GMA. In a democracy, we can reject Gloria Arroyo’s legacy based on Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.”
She is unpopular for a reason. She is often wrong too. Her legacy is a society sans values and is in a state of moral rot.
