Can 1017 be far behind?

First it was EO 464. The Supreme Court ruled provisions in the executive order which prohibited government and military officials from appearing at congressional hearings without the President’s consent as unconstitutional and restrictive of the people’s right to information.

Then this week, CPR, "calibrated preemptive response," the administration’s policy in quelling rallies and protests without permits, was voided and declared unconstitutional. Could Proclamation 1017, GMA’s declaration of a state of national emergency, be far behind?

How soon the People’s Initiative?

Already, the sabre-rattling from the halls of Congress is deafening, as opposition senators arm themselves for a series of bilious confrontations with the executive branch over probes, fresh or warmed-over and inevitably fruitless, into an entire host of issues. More tellingly, militant labor groups "vow to reclaim the streets" on May 1, alleging that half a million protesters have been mobilized to march to Malacañang on Labor Day, in commemoration of the fifth anniversary of the assault on the Palace by pro-Erap supporters. Not surprisingly, the peso weakened and the Philippine Stock Exchange Index dipped.

Everyone smells blood.

"We can’t be like RP," says the Singapore premier. This was tucked in the ear of another national paper, but it didn’t escape the attention of businessman Fil Bautista who immediately bewailed the comparison and let loose an expletive condemning our country’s fixation on politics. Why aren’t we, a nation of numerous bright people, getting it, he asks. The entire world already knows we are "ungovernable." Ungovernable, and still, our politicians are rehashing the events of the past to remain in the past. Over 30 million Filipinos live below subsistence level, with one out of five eating only one meal a day; Pakistan, Bangladesh, Vietnam, and now Cambodia are coming up from behind and flourishing on various fronts and overtaking us in the competitiveness race (make no mistake, Mr. Hare, it is a race!); the price of oil has gone through the roof, ergo, the price of transport, electricity, essential goods; and high up there on our national agenda is…drumroll, please…the Mayuga Report, the fact-finding paper exonerating four generals from election-related irregularities?

What is wrong with this picture?

So much for the country being the "darling of the global financial market," we are about to morph into the date from hell.

The impending May-day (indeed) mass-movements in the streets, protesting the rise of oil prices, are not about to raise our desirability factor. Pray tell, how can a demonstration – peaceful, or heaven forbid, violent – in this part of the planet roll back world prices of crude? Yes, we know all about people power – how, just this week, it put a king in his place, Gyanendra of Nepal, whose accession to the throne was made possible by the massacre of the immediate royal family in an as-yet unexplained bloodbath in the palace – but oil futures, from tensions rising over Iran’s nuclear ambitions, the choked supplies from Nigeria, the US’s summer driving season, how are we to influence its ups and downs?

By more rallies, where we will demand an increase in wages! threatens the Kilusang Mayo Uno as it organizes its members to gird up for nationwide walkouts, pickets, and work stoppages. How can I afford to stay in business, demands a medium-sized entrepreneur, whose profits are so low and strung-out that migration to the US is beginning to be a definite and most alluring possibility. "I don’t want to leave but I cannot sustain my company in this environment. In the States, I can still make a life there. My daughter is married to an American. My grandchildren are American. Today, my enterprise puts food on the plates of my staff and their families and extended families, but tomorrow? If I go, what happens to my employees?" her voice tapers off, not a little despairingly. "I am not an economist, but I can tell you, stability is the best friend of business. Anything that creates instability is anathema…that was why I welcomed 1017."

How often do we hear it said that we don’t love our country enough? If we would only devote less time to politics, to criticism and cynicism and spend more time bettering our lives and those of others. It is a plaint that, sadly enough, belongs in commencement speeches, the more eloquent of which was made recently by PCIJ’s Sheila Coronel to the graduates of the UP’s School of Economics at their recognition ceremonies: "Our country will only prosper if everyone is looked after. There can be sustained prosperity only if such prosperity is shared by all. Our economy cannot expand if the benefits of growth are enjoyed by only a privileged and powerful few. We will not develop if a big segment of our population is poor, hungry, uneducated and uncared for.

In short, inequity is unsustainable…Ultimately, democracy is sustainable only with stable institutions responsive to the needs of the majority: among them, a truly representative legislature, a competent and accountable executive, and a bureaucracy that delivers essential social services – education, health care, among others – especially to those who need them the most."

"I feel they shouldn’t have lifted 1017," says our businessman Fil. Upon being chided for sounding radically rightist, "Rightist, my foot! I am just being pragmatic. And no one can accuse me of not loving my country. I’m still here!"

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