I, like so many other Filipinos, am massively disappointed in President GMA and her administration, but continued violent maneuvers such as this and Oakwood make me wonder whether this is someone’s sick idea of a destabilization plot.

Villaruel was trying for an Oakwood. He thought he would get lights, camera, and action for his outrageous bravado in trying to take over Manila’s air traffic. The government, however, learned well from the last time something like this happened; they responded immediately with a zero-tolerance blitzkrieg, as well they should have. Legitimate grievances or no, when someone threatens lives like that, forcing planes away from what may be the only airport for a hundred miles, simple expediency dictates the need to take that person out now.

This clearly isn’t a GMA-conspiracy; she has absolutely nothing to gain from this kind of action, especially considering that these destabilizers publicly air their complaints about her government. No, if it were up to her to hire guns to foment chaos, it’s more likely she would pull a Marcos and conduct something which could easily be blamed on a convenient bogeyman: terrorists or communists — not on the military which helped put her in power.

So was Villaruel a hired destabilizer? If so, by whom? Or was he just destabilized in the head?