Honestly, even though I wanted to go to the Makati rally, I felt quite lazy to make the trip all the way to Ayala from UP Diliman.

I was at Jollibee Katipunan that time with a friend for lunch. And you know what? Something hit me that made me make the trip and rally after all. I couldn’t stomach the thought that part of the 39 pesos I paid for a sulit meal will go to the pockets of the few greedy individuals in the administration with the value added tax that we all pay.

Noong kay Erap nga, jueteng pay-offs lang. If I was at the least only concerned with myself, wala pa akong pakialam d’yan, hindi naman ako naghu-jueteng, wala siyang ninanakaw sa ‘kin. Pero nag-EDSA na ang tao. Etong pinaggagawa nina Gloria and her cohorts, everyone’s going to be paying for them for decades to come.

Ewan ko lang sa iba, kung paano nila nasisikmura na tila nagbabayad tayong lahat ng tributo sa isang royal family na nakatira sa isang palasyo sa Maynila. Sa bawat cheeseburger meal, sa bawat sigarilyo, sa bawat ballpen, imbes na tustusan ang matinding pangangailangan ng mga public hospital, public schools, maging ng UP, napupunta sa mga German bank accounts ng ilang tao. Shet talaga. ‘Di ko masikmura.

We have to realize the long-term social cost of this brazen corruption. I really don’t understand why people keep falling into the trap of government propaganda. It gets pretty tiring. I don’t know what to think of people who have kept following the same “trabaho-hindi-gulo” line all these years. They have condoned the long-term cost of severe corruption with the short-term cost of “political instability.” Ang galing talaga ng spin ng mga propagandists nila. Marami namang nagpapauto at nananahimik na lang.

Hindi rallies and political instability ang nagpapahirap sa Pilipino. Sa mga bilyun-bilyong pisong kinukurakot ng ilan sa adminstration, marami na sanang pinoy ang nagka-bahay, ang nakapag-aral hindi lang sa elementary at high school, pati sa college. Maraming pinoy na sana ang mabubuhay nang maginhawa sa kinabukasan.

Still, “Dissent without action is consent.”

The first photo is of Carmen Deunida, also known as “Nanay Mameng”, the 78 year-old woman whose presence took public limelight with the strong words she spoke on stage and in front of crowds in the many rallies that culminated in the mobilzation that ousted former President Joseph Estrada in 2001. The second photo is of party-list representatives in Congress marching with the delegation from Bagong Alyansang Makabayan (BAYAN).

I got to Ayala a little early. People were only setting up the sound system and the stage at the intersection of Ayala and Paseo de Roxas when I got there. It was past three when delegations came marching from all sides to converge at the designated street intersection.

These were some of the placards the people carried along with their organizations’ flags during the rally. Aside from the statement placards, there were also placards that depicted President Arroyo with a square mustache to liken her to the fascist dictator of Germany. The Desperate Household and the This is Evil placards especially caught my attention.

This was half the crowd in last Friday’s anti-Arroyo protest rally in light of the Senate investigations regarding Jun Lozada’s expose on the National Broadband Network scandal that involves the President, her family, and certain government officials.

Tens of thousands of people converged at the intersection of Paseo de Roxas and Ayala Avenue to express their outrage and disgust at the President and her administration. [Photo above from John Avellana].

I took the rest of the pictures below. The other pictures are in my Flickr site.

Tags: Gloria Arroyo, Makati, Philippine politics, rally

When I got home late last night, I turned on the TV to watch parts of the proceedings in the House of Representatives. As everyone knows, an overwhelming majority of the House voted to oust Rep. Jose de Venecia from his leadership as Speaker. One of his sons may be one of my friends, but I didn’t feel any sort of sympathy for the Speaker as he was betrayed by his fellows in Congress and by the administration he has so fervently supported and defended all these years. For me, the circus in Congress and his consequent ouster was a natural phase of decay in a rotten institution. It is natural for a rotten body to decay and destroy itself.

It’s sickening how the words change and reform were raped by the congressmen last night. What change and reform are they talking about? They are largely the very institution that sustains the status quo. Their political maneuverings only seek to preserve the prevailing order of an Arroyo-controlled government and all its crimes. My god, I’ve rarely heard that much bullshit in one night. It can only come from Congress! If we should be certain about one thing, it is that congressmen are some of the last people who will be real agents of change in this country, for they are those who thrive in our present and tragic condition and social order.

There are some who fear that the events of the past days only reinforce the theory that the President and her family are preparing to maneuver its way into post-2010 control of the government. Scary thought, but all too probable.

After picketing outside the gates of Senate, we returned to campus and updated our fellow students of the progress of the UP Charter bicameral conference approval. I went org hopping with some colleagues in AS, Engineering and Vinzons. Late that afternoon, we held a program at AS steps then proceeded to march towards Vinzons Hall where we continued the information campaign.

It’s quite telling, that the passage of the new UP Charter was set right at the beginning of the year of the university’s centennial, because it is indeed part of a larger plan of the UP administration to push for its distorted policies guised with the celebration of UP’s centennial as a very convenient and palatable excuse. It is, indeed, part of a larger government scheme, as ascribed in the Long-Term Higher Education Development Plan 2001-2010 (LTHEDP 2001-2010), of furthering the decrease in state subsidies and transforming all its state universities into self-sustaining semi-private institutions by selling its assets and raising tuition. All to the detriment of the Filipino youth, most of whom can barely afford the present cost of tertiary education in UP and other state universities; and to the disadvantage of the Filipino people such institutions claim to serve.

[Actually, hindi ako kasama noong People Power 2]. I am honestly ashamed to remember what I was doing during People Power 2, because I was exactly the type of person back then that I detest today–a prude conservative who refused to join the urban middle-class disruption that was brewing, even in our sheltered Ateneo High School. I honestly can’t stomach the things I’ve written in my “online journal” back then, hence they’re not available in my blog’s present archives.

Back then, it became quite fashionable among Ateneans to be joining all those walk-outs and indoor rallies. I refused to believe that my classmates, and most other rich kids in my high school for that matter, knew what they were doing, and I thought it was all just a fashionable lynch mob at the covered courts endorsed even by the entire faculty at that time. I was confident that all along, my schoolmates simply thought it was so cool that we had faculty-endorsed free cuts.

Back then, I (already) really disliked Vice-President Gloria Arroyo so much, I would rather that President Estrada stayed in Malacanang than have him replaced with that woman and everyone else who surrounded her. (Boy, what an ominous gut feel).

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The fourteen hours of sleep I just had is an indicator of how many sleepless nights I’ve had the past weeks. I can finally say, nakabawi rin ako sa tulog. Thank God it’s almost over. I barely realized, pasko na pala.

This is the first time I felt that being invited to too many Christmas gatherings can be a little stressful. It feels quite sinful, how I’ve been overeating and drinking night after night after night, knowing well how millions of other people in this country have barely anything to eat. If Christmas is a time for joy and merry-making, it is indeed and ironically also a time that awfully reminds us of how tragically disproportionate the concentration of wealth and opportunities are in our society.

It is simply disgusting how the President and the rest of the San Miguel Corporation (SMC)-lead oligarchy have dealt with the public backlash on the issue of the Sumilao farmers, who have marched all they way from Bukidnon in Mindanao to demand that their land be given back to them. What a load of crap. It’s all typical and hypocritical media blitz about social justice, economic and financial prospects of corporate-owned cattle ranches, pineapple plantations and piggeries etc. and how the government cares for the underprivileged and exploited. I hope people don’t keep buying it.

The plight of the farmers in Sumilao is not an isolated case. It’s a classic example of how lopsided in favor of this nation’s landlords and oligarchs our ‘democratic’ government’s land reform program truly is. It’s a classic example of how the wealthy landlords have circumvented land redistribution through the use of land conversions and reclassification schemes and worse, used various forms of aggression against peasant beneficiaries; and how our government, controlled largely by the people of the same wealthy class, have connived to maintain the status quo.

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