This is what the candidates of the Genuine Opposition or GO, if they have not been doing it, already, should be telling the Filipino people.

And this is precisely the right time.

During their campaign they should expose the false claims and untruths of Gloria, her political minions and propagandists. That she is the root cause of national instability, of political unrest, of all the unbridled corruption in government, and that she has violated the people’s constitutional rights, such as the right to peaceably assemble and protest, the freedom to speak and of the press.

They all must remind the people that Gloria has absolutely no right to be in Malacañang, that she was not duly-elected by them, that she is an illegitimate president, and therefore the voters must not elect her hand-picked candidates for the Senate and the House of Representatives. For once in control of both houses of Congress they would surely perpetuate her in power even beyond 2010. This is why she has been supporting their candidacies in her sly ways, despite her claim that she’s has not been campaigning.

In other words, the elections in May should be considered a referendum on Gloria Arroyo’s lawless regime.

No matter what Gloria and her flack of mellifluous mouthpieces, the ones who have been feeding and intimidating the print and broadcast media, defending an infinite liar, an hourly promise-breaker, and cheater, the naked truth remains for all the world and the people to see – that has been wielding power unlawfully for the last six years.

Not only this, her propaganda hacks have tried frenziedly to cover up the misdeeds and the failures of Gloria’s corruption-ridden government. But they have not succeeded in hiding the unwanted truth from the public.

That’s why her political cohorts in both the executive and legislative branches as well as her economic managers were literally caught with their pants down when the latest survey conducted by the Political and Economic Risk Consultancy, based in Hong Kong, clearly showed that the Philippines is the "most corrupt economy" in Asia. Their initial knee-jerk reaction was to reject the findings, but in the face of the painful truth they later lamely blamed it all to what they called the "culture of corruption" in the country. Washing their hands, in Pontius Pilate fashion, to show that their hands are clean!

Oh yes, they cited what they claimed were "significant progress" in their anti-graft efforts, which, ironically, was a denial of their denials about the existence of official corruption. But we all know that all they have caught were the "small fries," not the "big fishes" involved in corrupt practices.

Indeed, what they could never deny is the verifiable truth that businessmen in Asia and elsewhere in the world have seen that Gloria’s administration has tolerated, coddled, the crooks, the thieves, the corruptors in high places since the time she grabbed the high office from the dutifully-elected Joseph Estrada in 2001 to the time she cheated Fernando Poe, Jr. of the presidency in 2004.

That PERC report was the first of two recent big, big blows against Gloria and her corrupt government. The second came from official Washington where they categorically stated that she has not done enough to deal with the security forces under her command involved in extra-judicial killings of journalists, lawyers, human rights defenders, church leaders, peasants, women and children in the Philippines.

Before that Washington rebuke of Gloria, Prof. Philip Alston, special rapporteur of the United Nations Human Rights Council, investigated those cases of summary executions and reported last month on the involvement of members of the Armed Forces of the Philippines. And earlier, the US State Department, in its Country Reports on Human Rights Practices for 2006, said that during that year a number of unexplained killings here in the Philippines were committed "apparently by elements of security forces." And the human rights situation here has gone bad that even a presidential commission itself named some Gloria’s military generals as "prime suspects" hind those killings.

That stunning Washington rebuke came in the wake of an inquiry in both the US Senate and the House of Representatives, especially the Senate subcommittee on East Asian and Pacific Affairs, chaired by Sen. Barbara Boxer, on the political assassinations in this country. It heard the testimonies of members of the Philippine ecumenical delegation and their damaging report on those political assassinations.

Once more, Gloria’s propaganda corps, joined by her administration allies, political lackeys, and military minions, went on a spree of denials about the those murder cases. One candidate, who used to be known as a human rights lawyer, shouted "intervention" by the Americans in this country’s internal affairs.

What interference are they squawking about? Have they forgotten that those killings, as that lawyer himself knew as a defender of human rights victims in his time, were in violation of the Universal Convention for the Protection of Human Rights, and the Philippines is bound to adhere to its commitments as a member of the United Nations?

Lest the people forget, the Opposition candidates ought to remind them that Gloria and her government have been stained by their dismal record of defrauding and cheating them in the 2004 elections, of violating human rights, of political assassinations, of unparalleled corruption in high places, and other innumerable cases of irregularities and anomalies in the last six years.

No amount of shoo-shooing by her mealy-mouthpieces will make the public scandals go away nor will the stench of corruption vanish into thin air nor muffle the cries of the 833 persons killed for their political beliefs, for exercising their freedom of expression, and of the church people for opting to live by their Christian mission. These will remain embedded in the people’s minds and linger in their memories when they cast their votes during the May polls.