Tribune Editorial: The Truth Revealed about Edsa Dos

The truth revealed

EDITORIAL

01/22/2008

Catholic bishops have been denying they had worked to plot a coup d’etat against then sitting President Joseph Estrada in January 2001, claiming the Edsa ll revolt was a “spontaneous” popular uprising against Estrada.

This, despite the fact that the Tribune prior to the mounted coup by Gloria Arroyo, her military and her elite forces, had already published as its banner, some seven years ago, the “confidential report” from the Vatican forbidding the bishops and clergy from staging a revolt against Estrada, stressing in that report that Estrada was a popularly and democratically elected president and that the Church should not interfere in political matters as the Vatican feared that the Catholic faith would be compromised, if not lost among the Filipino faithful.

Seven years after the fact, the Inquirer came up with its banner saying that Jaime Cardinal Sin opposed the Vatican order and pushed Edsa II, as he had threatened to resign as archbishop of Manila.

The truth is, having been given that Vatican order, the entire community of bishops in the Philippines all disobeyed the Vatican, including the then papal nuncio, as the order was for all the bishops, and the bishops knew of this Vatican ban, but disobeyed it — and the Pope — which does not speak well of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP).

As for Jaime Sin threatening to resign, that’s a laugh, considering the fact that when it was his time to retire, he still didn’t want to do so. More: Even as he had already been retired, he insisted on staying at the Villa San Miguel, despite the fact that a new archbishop of Manila was appointed by the Vatican.

Still, the Inquirer report, seven years late, establishes more proof that indeed, Edsa II was not a spontaneous revolt, but a well-planned coup d’etat by Gloria Arroyo, the Supreme Court (SC) justices, bishops, the military and business groups, led by the Makati Business Club.

As reported, Sin, as archbishop, could easily call on the students from Catholic schools to make up a crowd at Edsa.

There was no real trigger. Gloria and the then political opposition, along with her elite coup plotters, merely used the second envelope excuse to make it appear that Edsa ll was a spontaneous revolt.

The Inquirer reported that as Sin opposed the Vatican order, a mediator, in the person of then Associate Justice Artemio Panganiban, worked things out between Sin and the Vatican.

So what was the business of an SC justice acting as mediator, if not for the fact that he was also in on the Gloria coup plot to oust Estrada?

It has been recorded in Panganiban’s book, Reforms in the Judiciary and admitted by him, that he and then Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr., decided to swear in Gloria even when they were aware of the fact that Estrada had not resigned and was in fact still in Malacañang.

This just proves that the high court justices willfully violated the Constitution and covered up their crime by inventing the doctrine of “constructive resignation” to legitimize the illegitimate and unconstitutional. Davide swore in the usurper knowing that there was no vacancy in the high office and, it must be stressed, as the so-called Angara diary was not even published as yet. How then could the SC justify the unconstitutional removal of Estrada when the court did not even know of the diary’s existence when they swore in Gloria Arroyo as president?

The justices were in on that coup plot and they know it.

Even Davide was already in on that plot, which was why he did nothing to stop the prosecutors and the evil civil socialites during the impeachment trial.

As early as October, 2000, the Tribune also exposed the coup plot by Gloria and her elite forces, with the plot called “Oplan in Excelsis,” which detailed a meeting of the coup plotters to depose Estrada and install Gloria.

That was October 2000. The Edsa revolt was staged in January 2001.

But long before that — a year before, to be exact — Gloria Arroyo was already plotting the ouster of Estrada with her military, the bishops, the leftists and the business groups. This, she herself has admitted publicly before her then allies, the members of the Council of the Philippines (Copa) in a posh hotel in Makati sometime in late February 2001, and even proudly introduced her co-coup plotters in the military and police.

If there continues to be division today; if there is no enthusiasm for Edsa II anniversaries, it is mainly because there never was a true popular uprising against the popular Estrada, who continues to hold the trust of the Filipino masses.

The elite staged a coup and succeeded in installing Gloria and her government. But they succeeded, too, in destroying the rule of law, the Constitution and democracy.