Worrisome omens

By Ellen Tordesillas

Let’s help Lorelei Fajardo, deputy presidential spokes-person, understand where the fear that Gloria Arroyo will ferociously hold on to power even after June 30, 2010 is coming from.

Fajardo said, “The President intends to vacate her office when her term ends in 2010, and does not know where such fear-mongering is coming from.”Let’s remind Fajardo that on Dec. 30, 2002, Arroyo pledged before the statue of Jose Rizal that she would not run in 2004. Ten months later, on Oct. 5, 2003, she said without blinking an eye, “I will run for President in May 2004.”

As we all know, not only did Arroyo run in 2004; she cheated and stole the presidency.

Would she now give up what she had stolen?

Who would believe that after perverting the electoral system, the bureaucracy and the military for her to stay in power, she will leave Malacañang and expose herself to the high possibility that she would end up in jail? Who would believe that the cabal that helped her execute the greatest election heist and subsequent massive payoffs, will just let her go and expose them to the people’s retribution?

A Malacañang source said that in October 2005, when Arroyo was shaking from what the people heard in the “Hello Garci” tapes, she and her hardline advisers were almost ready to impose martial law. They would call it by some other name but the effect would be the destruction of democracy and in its place an Arroyo dictatorship.

The plan, the source said, was to explode a bomb at the Senate at 5 a.m.. Casualties would be avoided with the early morning timing but the explosion in one of the three branches of government would give Arroyo justification to declare martial law. Exactly like the fake ambush of then Defense Secretary Juan Ponce Enrile which was used by Ferdinand Marcos to declare martial law in 36 years ago.

A businessman in the Arroyo’s circle of “hawks” asked if the defense secretary (Avelino Cruz) and AFP chief of staff (Generoso Senga) were into the plan. They were not.

When Cruz and Senga were told about it, they objected. A visit by John Negroponte, then the US Director of National Intelligence, who conveyed American disapproval of the martial law option, forced Arroyo to abort the plan.

At the presscon the other day by the FSGO (Former Senior Government Officials) at Club Filipino to launch the petition against moves to extend Arroyo’s term beyond 2010 and any step towards declaring martial law, Karina David, former chair of the Civil Service Commission, asked the public to verify if it’s true that the Special Action Force, the rapid deployment unit of the Philippine National Police, has dramatically increased from 400 to 8,000.

It was noted during the presscon that the military is being kept busy in Mindanao in a war that erupted after the fiasco over the Memorandum of Agreement on Ancestral Domain with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front.

It’s also worth noting that it was the PNP’s SAF, instead of the AFP, that led the assault in the Nov. 29, 2007 siege at the Manila Peninsula when Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim, Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV and Magdalo officers walked out of their trial at the Makati City hall.

The PNP is under the jurisdiction of the Department of Interior and Local Government headed by Ronaldo Puno.

Karina raised questions about Executive order 739 reorganizing the Peace and Order Council.

Issued only last August, EO 739 provides that the NPOC “shall have the same composition as the National Security Council except for the chairmanship. The chair of the NSC shall be the President of the Philippines while the chair of the NPOC shall be the Secretary of Interior and Local Government.”

One of the responsibilities of the NPOC is to “contribute to the strategies of the NSC that would effectively respond to the peace and order problems.”

One of the functions of its sub-national councils is to “initiate and/or oversee the convergence and the orchestration of internal security operations efforts of civil authorities and agencies, military and police.”

Karina said the new NPOC makes Ronnie Puno “the little president.”

With Ronnie Puno at the helm, let’s pray for this country.