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Gloria resign move, snap polls heating up
Buoyed by the Thai’s people power success in forcing Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra to resign, both militant groups and the newly organized Senate-led Gloria Resign Movement, as well as the United Opposition (UNO) leaders have stepped up efforts at unification of all anti-Arroyo forces to force President Arroyo into resigning and to hold snap presidential polls.
Militant groups yesterday conducted a protest rally calling again for the stepping down of Mrs. Arroyo, even as riot police were quickly ordered by Malacañang to use fire hoses and truncheons to break up the rally demanding her removal.
Police forcibly repelled demonstrators who, inspired by recent events in Thailand waved banners bearing the message “Oust Gloria,” as they gathered in front of the presidential palace.
The crowd, which had been warned that rallies without permits would be broken up, eventually dispersed after being pushed back several meters by police.
The political opposition reiterated its call for the holding of snap elections, saying it is resigned to the fact that Mrs. Arroyo will not admit her role in the 2004 poll fraud and a string of corruption cases.
In a closed-door meeting by the opposition groups the other night at the Metroclub in Makati City, UNO leader, Makati Mayor Jejomar Binay asked Mrs. Arroyo to heed the cry of the people, set aside Charter change (Cha-cha) and submit the administration to the true will of the people through snap polls.
Leaders of UNO have agreed to block the charter change offensive of the Arroyo administration and expose the signature-buying spree of the administration.
The group also dismissed the people’s initiative for Cha-cha saying it is not the answer to the present predicament of the country. “The manner in which your administration (through the DILG) is pushing for is legally infirm, deceptive, and downright anomalous.”
Uno said the snap elections should be scheduled as soon as possible to give the people the chance to exercise again their right to choose who will lead the country.
From Malaya: ‘Quit’ drive stepped up after Holy Week
Senators to bring case vs Gloria to the people
SENATORS calling for the resignation of President Arroyo will fan out all over the archipelago after the Holy Week to whip support for a snap election as the solution to the current leadership crisis, Senate minority leader Aquilino Pimentel Jr. said yesterday.
Pimentel said the "Gloria resign" campaigners will also start gathering signatures to oppose the Malacañang-sponsored people’s initiative for charter change.
"The Gloria-resign movement will be taken to the provinces and cities. Senators will fan out nationwide to bring to the people the reasons why snap elections should be held so that we can elect a new leader for the nation," Pimentel said.
NOW WE'RE TALKIN SENATOR!
Ellen Tordesillas: Arroyo no Thaksin. More like Marcos or Duvalier.
Malaya Editorial:
The Palace spin masters are right. The situation in the Philippines and that in Thailand are markedly different. Thus, Gloria Arroyo cannot be expected to step down from power like Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra. It all boils down to Thaksin having a sense of honor while Gloria has none. Delicadeza, that is..
Palace officials make it appear that the leadership crisis in the Philippines is less explosive than that in Thailand. For example, here’s a take from presidential adviser for political affairs Gabriel Claudio. He said prospects of stability, harmony and economic progress are "vivid and real" with Arroyo’s continued stay in power. He added that there is "no active outrage" against Arroyo and "no environment of gloom and pessimism."
Where has Claudio been all these days? In Never Never Land? Rallies are practically banned by the expedient of local officials withholding permits. Those who nonetheless march are clubbed and hauled to jail for "illegal assembly." If we believe the Palace, soldiers were even prepared to march on the streets in support of calls for Arroyo’s resignation last February. Arroyo, in fact, had to declare a state of national emergency to meet the purported threats.
Still no manifest sense of outrage at Arroyo’s continued stay in power?
CPR is very effective talaga. Tignan nyo yung nangyari sa Belarus and their short-lived attempt at people power.
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JB Baylon: Delicadeza and Lies
In one of her speeches, snippets of which were carried by TV news reports, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo lobbied with her listeners for charter change, saying that it will mean greater progress because there will be less obstructionist politics with the executive and the legislative functions fused or merged!
Lies!
You see, the proposal of GMA’s allies is not to merge the executive and legislative functions. Not immediately, at least; not while GMA is president. In fact, in the proposal, GMA will remain president and Noli vice president until 2010 – which means that what the proposal in fact does is simply add an extra layer of bureaucracy in a prime minister while relegating the vice president to even greater irrelevance.
Only if GMA’s post of president were to immediately become a creation of the legislature – which may, in some parliamentary governments, be filled in by the parliament itself – will the executive and the legislative be truly fused or merged. But that’s not the intention of GMA’s people – far from it; and while it may be the intention of Joe de Venecia’s people, they know that they will never get to first base with such an idea with GMA’s loyalists.
So what the proposed charter change will actually do is NOT fuse the executive with the legislative – it will only 1) eliminate the Senate immediately and 2) lift the term limits of the congressmen-turned-members-of-parliament.
Read the whole thing.
plus this:
I need not add that calling a change from presidential to parliamentary as an amendment and not a revision of a Constitution is another big lie – only in order to satisfy the Constitutional distinction between amendment and referendum and the clear provision which says that peoples’ initiative can only be used to amendments and not for revisions.
More on the difference between an amendment and a revision.
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Pinoy majority: Comelec execs must resign—Pulse
Filipinos haven’t quite forgotten or forgiven President Arroyo and her election body officials, close to two years after a national election, as majority of Filipinos, or 52 percent, want Commission on Elections (Comelec) commissioners to resign on account of the unresolved controversies in the conduct of the May 2004 polls, a March 2006 nationwide Pulse Asia Survey released yesterday disclosed.
An even greater majority, or 62 percent, are also not in favor of lifting elected officials’ term limits, as the survey results show that the sizable majority disapprove of allowing elected officials to run for office as many times as possible. Only 38 percent of respondents said they are in favor of the lifting of term limits for elected officials...
About one in two Filipinos (54 percent), or 26 million Filipino adults, are not in favor of changing the country’s presidential government to a parliamentary one. Only 33 percent of Filipinos favor such shift while 13 percent are undecided on the matter.
Public sentiment — whether in favor of shifting to a parliamentary government and even indecision on the matter — is generally constant across the country’s geographic areas and in socio-economic classes, the survey organization pointed out.
More: P1.6B poll modernization fund seen fueling GMA’s Cha-cha train
Tribune edit: Funding the Cha cha train
There is something fishy about a recent meeting of the Development Budget Coordinating Committee (DBCC), composed chiefly of Gloria’s economic team, last Monday for supposedly setting the quarterly fiscal targets.
hmmm... read the whole thing.
and this hits the nail right on the head:
Under Gloria and her cabal, growth data, trade figures (scroll down), labor employment numbers are doctored, just as election results are rigged and election documents are manufactured. The DBMM’s move to source the Cha-cha Express no longer surprises.
So true, so true...
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Black and White Movement: No to PIG, Yes to Snap Elections! - Then Let's Move On
The solution is to confront the issue squarely. Let GMA seek a fresh mandate from the people through snap elections, to settle once and for all the issue of legitimacy.
The trick is to engage all sectors to abide by the results of the election. GMA can show good faith by using the vast resources of her office to “influence” the revamp of the Comelec into a more credible body. (She might even be surprised at how much goodwill this will generate for her.) In exchange, the anti-GMA groups will commit to stop all protest actions if the people decide to give her a fresh mandate.
Some might argue that there are legal obstacles. But I think they are much easier to hurdle than the obstacles facing the chacha train today. And if GMA’s strategists will only look at this option objectively, they will discover this to be a far better means to resolve the crisis in GMA’s favor. She has the advantage of the incumbent. And if, as they claim, the opposition remains fragmented – they could probably never agree to rally behind a single candidate.
And to those who keep asking, “Who is your alternative?”… Well, the answer now lies in your hands. More importantly, this will put a closure to the legitimacy issue that all started with the Garci tape.
NO. Charter change is not the answer. The answer is SNAP elections.
If you want to end the current political crisis, I invite you to sign up in our online petition www.petitiononline.com/no2PIG. We may never reach 8 million petitioners but if there are enough decent Filipinos who will join this clamor, then maybe we can influence our leaders to make it happen.
Then and only then can we all truly say, “Let’s move on!”
I've already signed the online petition.
Rudy Romero: Without Thaksin, Thai's moving on
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Colonel who hit AFP resort ‘rehabilitated’
THE military leadership has given controversial Army Col. Ricardo Morales another brigade to command, 10 months after he was relieved as head of a brigade in Mindanao for questioning the military’s construction of a resort hotel in Boracay...
Morales, a member of the PMA Class 1977, was relieved in June last year as commander of the Compostela Valley-based 404th Brigade for spreading e-mails through a yahoo group, exclusive for PMA graduates, criticizing the construction of the resort on Boracay island.
The resort was a project of then AFP chief Gen. Efren Abu.
"How can the 60-room resort in Boracay improve the AFP’s capability to fight? Who determined this priority? We have hospitals without medicine and they spend money for this resort?" Morales said in the e-mail.
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Herman Tiu Laurel comapares Thaksin to Erap.
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Ernie Maceda's tidbits:
The Sandiganbayan has granted President Erap’s motion to be allowed to attend a birthday Mass at nearby St. Peter’s Church on Wednesday, April 19, 2006 at 8 a.m. before proceeding to the court for his 4th day of testimony...Due to the value-added tax, everybody has used it as an excuse to raise prices. At the Asian Eye Institute, consultation fees have been increased from P500 to P1,120. Even the lowly dimsum siomai has been increased from P60 to P90 at our favorite take-out Chinese restaurant...Iloilo City is agog over the gruesome murders of businessman Francisco Uygongco Tan, his wife Cynthia and five-year-old daughter Katherine...Criminal Investigation and Detection Group operatives are suspects in the case...Former Transportation and Communications Secretary Josefina Trinidad-Lichauco says her former student, GMA, is deranged... The Ombudsman reports that the Philippine National Police is the runaway topnotcher among offices with cases at the anti-graft agency...PNP has 2,005 pending cases with 111 ranking officers charged...Former Chief Justice Andres Narvasa believes that the evidence presented against Erap is not sufficient to convict him...San Juan Mayor JV Ejercito is in the top 12 senatorial preference in the latest Pulse Asia survey.
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