Streetwise
By Carol Pagaduan-Araullo

Where are the protesters?

Malacañang’s orders to the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces of the
Philippines (ISAFP) to monitor the people’s reaction to the rapidly
deteriorating economic situation, specifically the soaring cost of food and
oil products, betrays its fear of the people’s growing restiveness and its
dread of mounting protests that could trigger anew calls for the resignation
or ouster of de facto President Gloria Arroyo.

The public is being conditioned into thinking that when massive protests –
both organized and spontaneous – take place, these can only be under the
instigation of the “enemies of the state”. In fact, such protests are
legitimate expressions of dissent against the profiteering of oil companies
and of the people’s democratic right to demand redress of grievances against a
government deemed to be in collusion with the oil cartel. The Arroyo regime
is actually laying the ground for even harsher measures to either preempt or
squelch the oncoming wave of mass protests.

The inclusion of the ISAFP in the Energy Contingency Task Force also gives the
military a platform to engage in psychological warfare. Brig. Gen. Romeo
Prestoza, ISAFP Chief and former head of the Presidential Security Command,
has been issuing statements downplaying the possibility of hungry people
rioting, explaining that Filipinos being a “mature people,” would not resort
to such “extreme” measures. Gen. Prestoza is oblivious to the fact that
hunger and destitution is a rather extreme condition that is already driving
people to make the extreme sacrifice of foregoing the daily grind of scraping
together a living in order to take a stand against government policies that
have been causing their plight.

The ISAFP Chief had given in advance the highly intelligent political
assessment that only the “noisy” militant groups are protesting but that “they
only talk and talk without giving solutions” even as he admitted that ISAFP
teams tasked to carry out the presidential directive were still undergoing
seminars in order to understand the “finer details” of the energy and food
crisis. Perhaps Gen. Prestoza’s intelligence agents would care to visit the
websites of these groups, for example, http://www.bayan.ph/; their many
primers and statements are all there, including concrete proposals and
programs that could alleviate the people's suffering in the short and long term.

A recent news feature article in a major daily entitled, “Where have all the
protesters gone?”, gave the impression that I, as chairperson of Bayan, held
the view that “the poor suffering from the unabated increases in fuel, oil and
food prices just prefer to endure the hardship” rather than protest.
Moreover, that even activists were too busy earning a living to undertake the
necessary task of raising the masses’ awareness of the reasons underlying the
current economic crisis and mobilize them to take action to mitigate as well
as resolve their problems. This purported view was then used to give credence
to the abovementioned psywar line of Malacañang as dutifully articulated by
the head of military intelligence.

In the first place, there is no truth to the implied premise that protests
have abated and protesters have vanished into thin air. Protest actions
continue and there is no reason to believe they will disappear altogether.
But it is true that many expect much bigger and more frequent protest actions
given the gravity of the economic crisis and the extent to which government
anomalies have been exposed. Government and its apologists in media have
seized on this seeming apathy by assiduously pushing the line that "people
have grown weary" of protest actions and especially of people power, and want
government to go ahead and solve the nation's problems.

Still no matter how successful the government is in propagating this line and
conjuring the appearance of a contented populace, it can never succeed in
conjuring an illusion of sound economic management, much less of alleviating
the peoples' difficulties in the midst of rising prices of basic commodities
and of rampant corruption and other wrongdoing by the highest public officials.

Why is it then that the people, most especially the sectors who are most
exploited and oppressed by the ruling regime and the existing socio-political
system have yet to pour out into the streets in their hundreds of thousands to
pressure the government into reversing its anti-people policies and programs?

Unfortunately, the Arroyo regime is still able to use deception to wash its
hands of responsibility for the palpable deterioration in the living
conditions of the people. When the economic indicators are rosy, albeit
doctored, government claims full credit while giving unsatisfactory
explanations why these supposed gains are not at all felt by the people. When
there is an indisputable downturn, the phenomenon is attributed to the
workings of world market forces beyond the control of government.

Moreover, the regime is still able to engage in the cover-up of its many
crimes ranging from the “Hello Garci” massive election fraud; to extrajudicial
killings, torture and enforced disappearances; to gargantuan corruption
scandals such as the NBN-ZTE deal; and to the belated and woefully inadequate
relief and rehabilitation measures for victims of Typhoon Frank.

It has been able to use its vast resources and authority to torpedo
impeachment proceedings in Congress; to utilize the Supreme Court to allow the
Executive to commit crimes under the mantle of “executive privilege”; to
kidnap whistleblowers and keep them quiet; to protect guilty officials and
business cronies from investigation and prosecution; to line the pockets of
political opportunists and carpetbaggers masquerading as responsible
government officials; to fill the church coffers for immoral bishops and
clergymen willing to look the other way; to keep corrupt and unprincipled
generals loyal to their equally corrupt and unprincipled Commander-in-Chief;
to protect the economic stakes of foreign and local Big Business and keep them
“apolitical”; and to kowtow to the short-term and strategic interests of the
United States in exchange for the latter’s political blessings and enlarging
foreign aid.

There is also no denying the debilitating and disruptive effects of non-stop
government campaigns of repression and terror in the rural as well urban poor
communities that have displaced countless families; destroyed their
livelihoods and placed them in extreme difficulty and uncertainty; as well as
led to the unsolved murders, illegal arrests and intense harassment of leaders
and organizers of people’s organizations and their supporters from the middle
forces.

While these measures have indeed succeeded in the short term in averting the
massive protest actions similar to those that have earlier erupted for even
lesser reasons, by no means have they removed the sources or reasons for
outrage. On the contrary, the resulting impunity has only further emboldened
the culprits to perpetrate even worse anomalies.

And while the vast majority of people are outraged by the rottenness and greed
of this regime and demand fundamental changes in the system, they are wary of
quick fixes promised by anti-government groups that only focus on calling for
a change in the presidency or administration. They seek real, long-lasting
solutions to the chronic problems of an ailing society periodically convulsed
by acute and recurring crisis. That indicates real political maturity on the
part of the people and should be taken as a challenge by the groups that
oppose the Arroyo regime. #



 

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