Farce

The intent here can only be to produce a farce.

According to sources, the orders (and presumably the funding) have been given for mobilizing mass organizations to begin laying siege on the Senate. The orders were given by the usual suspects: the dark lords of “civil society” groups who treat people’s organizations like there were personal fiefdoms used to serve whatever their personal political agenda might be at the moment.

There is nothing imaginative in this effort. It is an attempt to recreate Edsa Dos — notwithstanding the sound warming of an eminent philosopher about history seeming to repeat itself: the first time it is a tragedy, the second time it is a farce.

The basic template of the forces behind Edsa Dos is to harness popular outrage in the streets and eventually displace the Senate as the arena where the impeachment issue is resolved. Those now attempting a counterfeit DVD version of Edsa Dos might do well to pay heed to some fundamental differences between then and now.

At Edsa Dos, the legislature was attempting to impeach the president. When support for the sitting president was withdrawn by a critical mass of officials, the Supreme Court stepped in and declared the president had “constructively” resigned. The Court then officiated the oath of office to the constitutional successor in order to avert a dangerous power vacuum.

The present plan to lay siege on the Senate from the streets cannot hope to bring things to a dynamic stalemate where the Court might step in to favor the mob. The Senate was once rendered impotent by Edsa Dos. It is not in the mood to let this happen again.

Any serious effort to displace the Senate as the proper venue for settling the present impeachment controversy will likely force the majority of senators to close ranks and defend their institution. There are a few senators so overcome by partisan passion that they might devalue the institution they serve. But these can only be a minority.

If there is any significant effort to overwhelm the Senate from the streets, the entire matter transforms into a two-pronged coup masterminded from the executive branch: first against the judiciary and then against the upper half of the legislature.

Those who may thinly disguise themselves as representatives of “people power” will easily be unmasked as mere foot soldiers of state overlords. They are pawns of an emperor recklessly playing power games where our political institutions could all equally end up as collateral damage.

Given that this episode is quickly turning into an inter-branch governmental coup, the closer resemblance might be China’s Cultural Revolution more than our Edsa Dos.

In the early sixties, Mao Zedong launched a badly conceived program of rapid industrialization called The Great Leap Forward. That program was a massive failure, causing an estimated 20 million Chinese citizens to die from the famines.

The failure of the Great Leap Forward caused Mao’s authority to be questioned within the ruling party and the bureaucracy. To bolster his political position (and cover up the economic fiasco), Mao called out radical thugs to the streets. The Red Guards went into a rampage, murdering intellectuals and forcing out party leaders who dared question Mao. It took many years for China to restore order and many more years to recover from the devastation wrought by this political orgy. An entire generation was lost to this frenzy.

Are our people’s organizations now be ready to be used as rampaging Red Guards, the mindless troops of a section of the state warring on another?

The answer to that question will determine whether the projected massing in the streets to overwhelm the Senate and render the trial court irrelevant will be viable or not. Whatever the answer to that question is, this political project betrays utter political desperation.

I would not call this directive for street action as Plan C. It is nothing more than the more desperate variant of Plan A.

Plan A involved a political blitz against the Chief Justice, deploying massive propaganda to manufacture public opinion, dragging the man and his family to the mud, breaking his will to resist impeachment and forcing a resignation. The blitz obviously failed.

Plan B is going to a tedious trial with a badly crafted impeachment complaint and a weak prosecution brief. After two weeks of trial, this venue does not seem sufficiently reassuring for the administration-led campaign. With all the resources of the state behind them, including Palace spokesmen taking daily pot shots at the Chief Justice, the prosecution panel always seems to crumble on matters of law and the rules of evidence.

The prosecution panel, reading what seems to be a different political script, now threatens to drag in 100 reluctant (and protesting) witnesses to the trial. That will only ensure that this thing will drag on to eternity. The public will be so sick of it they will regret this thing ever commenced in the first place. The prosecution’s opportunities for displaying incompetence will only multiply.

And so back to Plan A, it is. Lay siege on the Senate — and get results quickly.

The 1986 Edsa Revolution happened in February. Edsa Dos happened in January. By March, the streets will be too hot to attract people to sit on the pavement. Schools would have closed by then and people will have run off to the beaches.

The dark lords attempting to mastermind a “people power” resolution of this episode have a short horizon to work with, and probably little rage to harness. But they are not likely to be dissuaded by a President who, while still a candidate, threatened “people power” should he lose the count. Too many old scripts are being recycled.