GMA's GLORIAGATE advisers

Trabaho nila'y magisip ng "damage control" schemes para kay Gloria Macapagal Arroyo:

The hard core. Who are the people advising GMA on the Gloriagate tapes scandal and planning damage control moves?

They are: Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita; Defense Secretary and former principal partner of the FIRM, Avelino “Nong” Cruz; Presidential Chief of Staff Rigoberto “Boby” Tiglao, Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez; Pancho Villaraza, GMA's private lawyer; National Security Adviser Bert Gonzales; AFP Chief of Staff Gen. Efren Abu; and Presidential Legislative Liaison Officer Gabby Claudio.

It's of course not surprising that No. 2, Vice President Noli de Castro; No. 3, Senate President Franklin Drilon; and No. 4, Speaker Jose de Venecia, now in Europe, are all out of the loop.

Read this too.

And Cebu wants to secede from the Philippines because they don't want this crook GMA to leave? Kinda reminds me of the Blue State democrats wanting to secede from Bush's "Jesusland". LOL!

Lito Banayo OTOH, bitchslaps Arroyo's "civil society" allies.

I state these legal maxims because of the fears of some, mostly from the "intellectual" elite, that in exposing the truth about the Gloria-Garci tapes, and in requiring Gloria to be truthful about the same, we may be "jumping from the frying pan into the fire".

These self-proclaimed defenders of democracy, of justice, of good governance, of everything that is supposedly correct and transparent, quibble snobbishly about the alternatives — Noli, Ping, Erap, and like the buffoon Toting Bunye, ridicule the so-called alternatives, to which he has impishly added Rez Cortez.

What can liars like Bunye do except obfuscate and muddle? The issue is clear and simple: Did she or didn’t she? Is it she (and Garci) everyone is talking about?

Let people know the whole truth. For if the people, as the conversations in those tapes indubitably show, were cheated of the truth, then justice must be done to the people, for the people, by the people. It is not justice for the dead Fernando Poe Jr., or his grieving widow Susan. It is not justice for Lacson or Roco or Villanueva, Loren or whoever. It is justice for the truly cheated – the Filipino people.

And before we divert the search for truth by questioning alternatives, let us first determine the truth. And let justice be done, to the people and for the people. Fiat justitia, ruat coeli. Though the heavens fall.

***

For how can a liar and a cheat be allowed to rule? An academic doctorate could never justify the subversion of truth, the doctoring of the public will.

For as long as Gloria keeps mum, and Garci is nowhere to be found, in flight or in hiding, then people will by themselves determine the truth as conviction and instincts prevail. So how in heaven’s name could you expect the people to follow the lead of someone who has cheated them of their birthright? Only by force of arms will she be able to preserve her rule.

And that will mean, from here onwards, a transactional governance. Not good governance as she continually bandies but never has accomplished. It will mean giving in to whatever her generals ask. It will mean giving in to the pork and other perks that her senators and congressmen will demand, in exchange for tenuous loyalty. It will mean acceding to the requests of the sip-sips among governors and mayors, just to be assured of their tentative fealty. It will mean transacting good reviews with the media that she could buy, courtesy of a fleet of operators. It will mean forever watching her back, forever on edge. And let good government go hang.

This is the sad and suicidal fate that the nation will face, for as long as truth is not evinced, and justice is undone.

So don’t quibble about alternatives. Anything and anyone is better than a cheat and a fake who clings on to unjust power, who will forever live a lie.