Gregorio Matias

Masang Pilipino – member

We had been known as the inventor & propagator of bloodless people power revolt, a revolutionary model emulated by other emerging democratic bastions in the world. But the sad part of it is the realization that despite the two significant people power exercises, the people might have learned & responded, but the direct beneficiary of such a phenomenon, president Gloria Arroyo clearly did not learn the lessons of the past.

Now, the same reasons we had used to oust Erap devoured & haunted Gloria Arroyo like vampires & ghosts on a rampaging spree. This 180 degree turn of events brought about by Gloria Arroyo’s so called lapse of judgment in calling Garci, a comelec official under the guise of protecting her votes yet reeks of her grotesque ambition to stay in office & the countless & endless incidents & cases linking her husband, son & brother-in-law as beneficiaries of jueteng & reasons for its proliferation in the country had truly devastated not only her moral ability & credibility to govern the country, but our beloved Philippines as well.

Gloria’s admission that she indeed was the lady’s voice on the tape talking to commissioner Garci for protection of her votes had eroded the people’s trust on her to govern the country, and on a landslide at that. For who among us in his or her sane mind would trust someone to manage or budget our finances to secure our future in the long term if that same person could not be trusted in the first place? How on earth could we count on somebody to govern for us & ask for our personal sacrifices when she herself says one thing & does otherwise? How could she lead by example if what she had allowed us to perceive or see of her is that of someone who would ask her followers to do what is right while she is at liberty to do its opposite?

Everyone talks about forgiveness, especially those who had vouched & benefited from her. After all, so they say, that if God can forgive, why can’t we. But of course, to err is human & to forgive is divine. But lest we forget, this is not just about running a mere organization or a family, this is running the Philippine government where as a constituent, we believe or are conditioned to believe that the president, if he or she cannot measure up close to being a saint, must at least be the least evil amongst the contenders to the position or among anyone of us in the spirit of leadership by example & moral ascendancy. Sad to say, such qualities & traits had deserted Gloria Arroyo & that there is no doubt she will end up immune & bankrupt from these all along.

Hence, even if the president, along with her men, followers & beneficiaries will summon all the strength that she could muster to get her out from the current crisis, all efforts will be doomed & will just take her away from the frying pan to end up in the fire. This is because one could cheat anyone including oneself thru self-denial & pretense but could Gloria fool around with the truth & God for long?

The indicators are now pouring in. Resignations among Gloria’s own trusted men & women, the deepened divisions of the society, the day-to-day strikes elsewhere founded on all sorts of grievances, & most especially, the further devaluation of the peso which comes on the heels of the latest downgrading we received from international credit institutions such as Moody’s following that of the Philippines’ outlook this week by Standard & Poor’s and Fitch Ratings, who also cited the crisis facing President Arroyo over allegations of electoral fraud and graft involving her family members. Such would tantamount to an interest of several billions of pesos for credits & transactions entered into by the Arroyo government by now which could have translated as additional schools, classrooms, electricity-operated areas, bridges, roads, irrigation systems befitting all the Filipinos.

Hence, the succession of calls asking Gloria to make the supreme sacrifice by resigning her office to arrest the country’s further devastation & decline. But Gloria, true to her character, balks at the suggestion, which even helped me arrive at a conclusion to sever allegiance from her governance having trusted & voted for her in the first place owing to her credentials, apart from being Cory’s bet. After all, if she truly cares for the country & not just her own vested interests, she would have resigned in the face of the crisis & would have done our country a big favor & her memory would still be one to linger upon as that of someone who had chosen to save the country in the end from eventual collapse out of her own initiation.

Now more than ever, we need people like Cory Aquino, Franklin Drilon Noynoy Aquino & LP party, the Hyatt Ten led by Cesar Purisima, Florencio Abad, Dinky Soliman, Emilia Boncodin, Ms. Teresita Deles, San Juan, Guillermo Parayno, Nicolas & others, who are willing to take the beating by the government’s damage control team ever willing to spurn hot lava & molten magma to whoever goes against the president to the point of calling them traitors, instead of patriots, turncoats instead of men & women of wisdom & conscience. Well, what else is new with Philippine politics after all? Damned if you do, damned if you don’t.

I don’t know about how the president, including her staunch supporters like Mike Defensor et al could label women & men of Goodwill, statesmen at that like Cory, Drilon & the Hyatt ten as traitors when at the outset, all you could see is that these men & women stand to lose more counting the government’s finances at embarking on a bloody smear campaign, exhausting all that they could muster & mount against any personalities debunking Gloria’s presidency or advocating for her resignation. These men & women could have chosen to keep quiet & live a quiet, happy, blessed, less-controversial & less-chaotic life. But if they will not talk, who will? If they will not initiate, who else could we trust better? I may not be a lawyer, but experience & logic tells me that the best & most credible witness to a crime is the one who is present & who has actually witnessed or had unintentionally been a part or parcel to its commission. Add to this stance Cory, Drilon & the Hyatt Ten’s friendship to GMA, apart from these men & women’s affiliation with the president personally & professionally and who could not agree with their judgment, perception & advocacy for GMA to resign any better?

Traitors? But on whose account? Against the government or GMA’s selfish interest & leech-like grip to power? Against Michael Defensor’s self-serving & twisted logic? Traitor for having breached the president’s friendship? And especially at a time she needed them the most? But what about the country’s interest, Mr. Mike Defensor? What about the public servant’s moral obligation over their one & only country over which many blood had been shed & lives had been spent for its preservation? If you could see that the country’s welfare & advancement has been held hostage by the same person tasked to advance it on account of her eroded credibility & morality to govern & on the basis of an endless & countless accusations hurled against her husband, son, brother-in-law & party mates concerning jueteng scandals, yet clings to the post teeth, claws & brawl no matter at what cost, or even at the country’s misery, wouldn’t you as a friend care to advise the president to forge decisive & drastic measures to salvage the obvious or cut & cut clean? And certainly, if such advises, solicited or not fell on deaf ears for a while, prolonging the agony of the Filipino people by deviating from the government basic priorities or agenda in exchange of the president’s political survival brought about by her & her party’s insistence, would you impose on those of us & those who do not trust the president to adopt your logic that those who abandon the president in her hour of need are outright traitors who are hated by the Filipinos? You have not only carved your own political downfall by covering lies after lies in your defense of the president & your pursuit of power & political survival but had twisted & given us a new vocabulary to embezzle about. But sad to say, we refuse to sink & dig into your kind of reasoning or we will forever bear the guilt & tirades of our children & our patriotic fellowmen & would allow history to judge us unfairly.

After all, in my own little view, patriotism is best exemplified by anyone who is able to rise up beyond partisan & patronage politics, sever ties against a staunch friend or ally when one senses that the interest or welfare of the country is imperiled by one’s political survival. Most of all, the true mark of a leader who is a cut above the rest is when he or she goes against partisan or patronage politics even to the hatred & dismay of a friend or political ally just to save one’s country at the behest of one’s pure & pristine intentions. After all, patriotism entails a lot from someone towards country than towards friends!

We need more people like Cory Aquino, Franklin Drilon, Dinky Soliman, Cesar Purisima, Emilia, Boncodin, Florencio or Butch Abad, etc., people we call as patriots, no pun intended. These men & women deserve to be known in our history as PATRIOTS, whereas those who tolerate the evil being proliferated against their country, men such as Mike Defensor, Raul Gonzales, Puno, Fidel Ramos, Jose De Venecia et al deserve to be known as SYCOPHANTS & TRAITORS !

Francisco D. Valmoria, Jr.

Hawally, Kuwait

Tel #: (+965) (2623698)