Let’s move on

From my usual sources in the KNP, I know that a large demonstration was planned for yesterday’s afternoon, the start of the joint plenary session to proclaim the winners for president and vice president in the last elections. The front-page of today’s paper should be reporting what became of that effort.

Today, lightning rallies are planned in about a dozen locations around the metropolis, including Plaza Roma, the Welcome Rotonda and Mendiola. A noise barrage is set for this evening.

The planned agitation activities make one thing clear: FPJ is not ready to exercise statesmanship during a moment when this will be most appreciated by a people already heavily penalized by the drop investor confidence in our economy due to political uncertainties.

The only two gentlemen in the last contest were Raul Roco and Panfilo Lacson. FPJ and Villanueva make themselves smaller each passing day as they connive with opportunists seeking to throw the nation into chaos. The latter two have succumbed to their vanities and drowned in their bitterness.

By some strange arithmetic, FPJ loyalists are claiming that their idol won by half a million votes over President Gloria. That is an outcome that defies the surveys, the exit polls, the Namfrel count and the actual canvass results.

That bogus count is now being used by the opposition to bring people to the streets and, some of them hope to mount an insurrection.

A new pole of extremism is now being formed composed of the remaining followers of Eddie Villanueva, the more radical sections of the FPJ camp and the leftist militant groups.

The agitation of the Villanueva camp is inexplicable, considering their candidate placed last in the last elections – as surveys said he would – despite the charlatan’s promise of a miracle of sorts happening.

The radical sections of the FPJ camp are working on a scenario similar to the 1986 Edsa Revolution. They are trying to convince the public that the last elections were stolen. They intend to bring large numbers to the streets and recreate "people power".

The public response to their wild claims has been tepid at best. Last week’s efforts to occupy the Edsa Shrine and march hundreds of thousands from San Juan to Makati all fizzled out because of sheer public disinterest and lousy organizational efforts.

The leftist groups, for their part, are working hard to recreate the period of massive dissent and political turbulence that followed Marcos’ re-election in 1969. They are betting that the anticipated economic challenges will rouse the masses and produce renewed popular interest in a people’s revolution.

This is the reason they have been busy the last few days agitating students in the various campuses. They have organized various forums and concerts in a number of schools trying to produce rage among the young, priming them for street marches and all the other disruptive activities associated with the First Quarter Storm of 1970. All these efforts, however, have been scarcely attended.

It is a puzzle that both the FPJ camp and the leftist groups are obsessed with recreating previous period of political upheaval. This can only betray a failure of the imagination by both camps. History never repeats itself.

My bet is that the massive street protests planned to start yesterday will fizzle out. The public is simply not interested in political agendas that are premised on fiction and motivated by ill will. The organizers of these protests are proven incompetents.

Although everybody recognizes that the proclamation of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Noli de Castro as winners in the last election is inevitable, both the opposition and the leftist groups are determined to make governance difficult. They want to deny the incoming administration a honeymoon period where the national leadership could consolidate, think through the nation’s problems and begin approaching these problems decisively.

By attempting to prevent decisive leadership from evolving into place, and by dividing public opinion so deeply that no consensus on anything could be formed, these troublemakers are out to ultimately injure the nation.

They tried to prevent an early closure of the electoral period by filibustering the last three weeks. The next three weeks, they will try to further delay closure of this period of divisiveness by sowing more division on the basis of systematic disinformation.

The FPJ camp is simply running amuck. Failing to win the elections, they now want to punish the whole nation by degrading our institutions and forcing trouble in the streets.

Over the longer term, the strategy of the leftist groups is more insidious. They are now laying the predicate for keeping government on the defensive, mounting continuous demonstrations animated by populist prescriptions to the urgent issues of the day and gathering public support by vilifying the leaders of government.

Most of us, however, simply want to move forward.

There are great problems that need to be sorted out. There are urgent things we need to do quickly if our nation must progress.

We want a clear plan of action on the vulnerable elements of our nationhood, the rising costs of fuel, the infrastructure backlog, the fiscal stresses and the deficient investment climate. Behind that clear plan of action, most of us are ready to carry our share of the burden, put our shoulders to the wheel and cooperating to ensure a brighter future for our children.

Most of us know that a delayed response to the urgent crises of this day will set us back even further. We want our children and our grandchildren to live and work in this country in a climate of stability, safety and prosperity.

Most of us want government to start working, focused on what is important and unbridled by contrived issues from the last elections.

There is an irreconcilable tension here between those, on one hand, who want to work and look forward to a productive society and those, on the other hand, who want yet another prolonged period of political turbulence, general disorder and rising insurgencies.

In the last analysis, this is a tension between two possible futures: one of growth and prosperity for all, the other of stagnation and confusion.

Choose an option. Then act accordingly.

This tension between two futures must be resolved decisively. Soon.