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Calibrated repression

It came clear and strong, like blows and thuds from truncheons and gushes from the water cannon. The Arroyo government is cracking down on the opposition and the legitimate people’s protest. Not even a former vice president of the republic nor members of the senate and lower house who joined a peaceful prayer rally were spared from the whip of the besieged president’s ire. Despite Malacañang’s repeated denial that there is still no need to declare an emergency rule, recent events prove otherwise.

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo says there are prerequisites or conditions of a crisis situation for a declaration of such rule. The president’s spin doctors have been orchestrating scenarios of terrorist attacks, warning the public of impending mayhem from Muslim extremists. The same quarters are painting a landscape of chaos and breakdown in peace and order as they brand legitimate people’s actions as destabilizing tactics and worse, they conduct arbitrary zoning operations and arrests of suspected criminals in urban poor communities in Metro Manila. Giving the impression that the escalation of oil prices is inevitable and beyond control, Malacañang says, the latter completes the picture for the justification of an emergency rule.

Long before they came up with this formula, the president had been the cause and target of a nation in crisis. Starting with a question of legitimacy of rule, to her failure to address major economic and political issues, and now to her desperate and arrogant cling to power, she is putting the blame and punishing the people for exercising their right to reclaim public trust. The people know that GMA has caused this nation to careen down the path of instability and uncertainty. But the president, invoking the law and circumventing the constitution, cajoling her minions in the legislative and judiciary branches, is wasting no time in preventing her ultimate downfall.

However, there are signs on the wall. History is knocking on her door. The replica of the First Quarter Storm along Recto St. should disturb GMA. She is proving to be the most effective provocateur to a nation’s collective patience. This will spread like wildfire. One can see anger and grim determination in the people’s eyes and clenched fists as they daily defy state terrorism and calibrated repression. #

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