Elections in 2010?
Editorial
‘Elections in 2010? We’ll believe it when we
see it.’
Gloria Arroyo is trying to pull
off another smoke and mirrors trick with her seemingly frenzied efforts to
force Lakas and Kampi into a merger to ensure a win for her candidates in
the 2010 elections. At noon of June 30, 2010 she is politically dead meat.
An overwhelming victory by Lakas-Kampi candidates in Congress and local
government units will not save her and Mike from the retribution sure to be
exacted by a people they savaged over nine years of misrule.
The time for accounting will come in due time. Even a victory
by Noli de Castro, the administration’s best bet for the presidency, will not
shield Gloria and Mike from the certainty of facing trial for plunder, among
other crimes. De Castro, if he wins, has one paramount consideration: to govern.
That requires dumping the baggage that is Gloria on Day One. Or even well before
that.
De Castro has to distance himself from Arroyo, as he is
distancing himself already now, to improve his chances of making it in 2010.
That, of course, has to be balanced by the need to harness the ruling parties’
vote-delivery infrastructure and to tap the money of the Treasury.
Congressmen and local executives have even less reasons to
help Gloria after her exit. Most of them may be singing hosannas for Gloria now.
They need their pork and the occasional cash in grocery bags. But they will as
effortlessly turn their coats when the time comes as they have so done in the
past.
Had Joseph Estrada not been ousted in 2001, there would be no
Lakas now, and certainly no Kampi. Most of the sitting elected officials would
be proudly sporting the pin of Partido ng Masang Pilipino.
Gloria’s call for the merger of Lakas and Kampi in
preparation for the elections of 2010, thus, should be taken with a strong dose
of skepticism. The prospects of elections a year from now are intended to lull
people into complacency. Her goal remains the same: Stay in power beyond her
term.
The House could resume dancing the Cha-Cha at any moment
although the chamber likely waiting for the packing of the Supreme Court this
year with Arroyo loyalists before pushing through a constituent assembly by its
lonesome.
Then there also is still time to lay the groundwork for the
declaration of a state of national emergency. A relatively junior general is
being groomed to succeed AFP chief Gen. Alexander Yano. His primary
qualification is abiding loyalty to Gloria whom he served as aide when she was
senator and later as chief of the Presidential Security Group. Large-scale
hostilities in the South and urban terror attacks could easily be orchestrated.
And with a compliant Supreme Court, martial rule could be dubiously cloaked with
constitutionality.
Elections in 2010? We’ll believe it when we see it. | 
