Disturb the balance, reap the whirlwind

LOPSIDED: It was bound to happen. A visiting third world leader regaling his American audience with tales of his country like it were a Camelot across the sea would soon enough be rudely interrupted by, well, hecklers shouting back their version of the real situation back home.

This is the principle of balance — of equity on another plane — at work. Nature abhors even a mere near-vacuum and moves to restore the balance, the equilibrium, when it is disturbed.

For more than 10 days, in Europe and the United States, President Noynoy Aquino went around peddling a lopsided story of a Philippines of peace and plenty where, he claimed, crooked officials have been jailed, the deprived finally given jobs and food, and foreign investors are now jostling to come in.

The hosts were too polite to interrupt the esteemed visitor’s story-telling until….

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HECKLING: Activists who could no longer stand the delusion, interrupted President Aquino the other day while he was speaking at a forum at the Columbia University in New York about extrajudicial killings in the Philippines.

“It’s a slap on the face of the Filipino people for you to stand there and talk about that, a killing is a killing,” a male activist interposed.

A female activist also stood up and shouted: “There are more questions coming from the Filipino people that aren’t being answered. There are so many things that are happening.

“I looked up to your mother. I am a Filipino woman and I saw her as a hero, a modern-day hero. And what do you do? You want a Charter change to extend your presidency? Now I see the realities of what your family has done. I have been to Hacienda Luisita.”

As she was led out, she kept yelling: “Shame on you! No justice! No peace! Stop the killings in the Philippines!”

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SOBRA NA!: It was the same release of pent-up pressure when irate students at the University of the Philippines threw objects and invectives at Budget Secretary Florencio Abad as he went to Diliman to sell his discredited DAPpy theory of “disbursement acceleration.”

That incident, deplored by the usual comfortable crowd floating in the status quo clouds, was another manifestation of the principle of balance moving in when one superior force tries to dominate, even obliterate, another.

Abad’s stubborn rationalization of his Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP), already struck down by the Supreme Court as unconstitutional, is just too much. Sobra na!

If we need another illustration of Nature moving inexorably to restore balance of earthly forces disturbed over time, we can watch majestic Mayon heave and spit fire. As in Albay, we have heard familiar rumblings in Diliman.

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INSIDER THIEVERY: For too long, money manipulator Abad and his yellow fellows in the Liberal Party cabal have tried justifying insider thievery by claiming noble intentions when they hijacked billions in forced savings for conversion into a presidential pork barrel outside the budget law.

And when the Supreme Court intruded as it must to restore balance — to restore equity and respect for the Constitution — they threatened to unleash their yellow hordes in the Congress to make mincemeat of the judiciary’s budget. Such arrogance!

When such misplaced use of power rears its ugly head at Cabinet level, balls of wastepaper, rotten tomatoes, spit and outreached claws may not be forceful enough to restore the balance that has been violated.

Like his boss heckled at Columbia University, Abad had it coming at the University of the Philippines.

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PALAWAN OUT: Amid the rumbling in the MinSuPala area being targeted by the secessionist Moro Islamic Liberation Front for inclusion in its proposed federal region called Bangsamoro, it is good that the people of Palawan stood to oppose their inclusion in the planned state.

Palawan Rep. Frederick Abueg filed yesterday Resolution 1514 directing the House ad hoc committee to exclude Palawan and its capital City of Puerto Princesa from the Bangsamoro.

The resolution also sought the inclusion of Palawan representatives Abueg, Franz Alvarez and Douglas Hagedorn as voting members of the ad hoc committee conducting studies and hearings on the Bangsamoro Basic Law bill.

“History speaks for itself,” Abueg said. “The people of Palawan consistently resist the inclusion of the province to the ARMM in four successive plebiscites held during the time of Presidents Marcos, Aquino and Ramos, wherein the negative votes therefrom cast were more than 85 percent of the total votes.”

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NEW STATE: The creation of a Bangsamoro for the MILF (which cannot claim to represent the Muslim population) could result in a new state being carved out right in the middle of Mindanao!

In its present form, the BBL seeks to give an identified Bangsamoro (1) population a defined (2) territory and a federal (3) government that is asymmetrical to the presidential central government.

With the these basic elements of population, territory and government, the new Bangsamoro could stabilize itself and spin off as a sovereign state the moment enough countries deal with it and give it recognition.

After Malacañang allowed the internationalizing of this domestic issue, several countries got involved in the process of creating the Bangsamoro, paving the way for their taking the next step of recognizing it as a new state.

Once it emerges as a new state the Bangsamoro could fly on its own under the principle of the right to self-determination of peoples, or opt to join the federation of Malaysia which has already annexed the Philippine territory of Sabah.

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