This is a followup to The Ong Incident, though now I’m thinking that “incident” is too grand a word for such a botched non-event as that was. Lots of links and analysis from Manuel Quezon III, and Inquirer columnist Conrado De Quiros has two columns on what should be done about the president: Curiouser and Curiouser, and Alternatives. Amando Doronilla says heads must roll.

I especially like ultraelectromagnetic’s take:

I mean, Ong does know that even though people call her “Queen of Philippine Showbiz” she (Susan Roces) isn’t really a queen, right? I wish she had turned him down, just to see if Ong would ask Dolphy next (because, you know, he’s the “King of Comedy” … And then I wish Dolphy would turn him down so he’d be forced to ask every other celebrity, and they all turn him down until Ong is forced to ask someone like Jay-R, who’s the “Prince of R&B”.)

Fortunately Susan Roces showed herself to be strong and sensible, refusing to be used by the opposition as a destabilization tool.

So if I’m understanding the current situation in the Philippines correctly, here was the strategy, from my own paranoid musings:

The Marcos/Erap-funded underground opposition attempted to pass off a new round of [faked / illegal] wiretap recordings as “proof” of the Arroyo family’s involvement in jueteng kickbacks and election fraud, via martyr whistleblower Samuel Ong’s highly dramatized public exposé to the media. “Warm bodies” intimidation was provided by by the crowd of easily manipulated Erap/FPJ fans on “vigil” outside Ong’s sanctuary, San Carlos Seminary in Guadalupe. When the authorities came in to arrest Ong, the crowd, enraged by the perceived attempt to suppress evidence of the First Family’s corruption, would form the nucleus of another EDSA rally. The resulting uprising would sweep Gloria from office — by resignation or by surrender to “people power” — and reseat Erap, in a dramatic power grab similar to the same one which ousted him four years ago.

The plot does not seem to have worked.

Like “Edsa III,” none of this seems to have been very well-planned. Divisiveness within the opposition, coupled with “people power fatigue” and a hungry, unmotivated, exhausted lower class, has doomed every one of the loyalist power-grab attempts to failure. So far.

From here on, I will forever associate the Toyota Altis with Samuel Ong and the NBI.

Does someone have a list of attempted power grabs and destabilization plots by the Erap/Marcos underground from “Edsa III” to the “Ong Incident?”

More from Dan Mariano, PCIJ, Sassy Lawyer, Willie Galang, ExpectoRANTS, Pinoy Press, By Jove, and Manuel Quezon III.

BTW, Arroyo and her family need to resign ASAP, IMHO. LOL.