Tag Archives: charter change

komentaryo

Duterte chooses charter change #CongressPH #NoToChaCha

Duterte, his men, and his children have circled the wagons, and we should all know better than just to watch it happen. At the very least, we learn from it. Because this is the first time that the process is on the surface — we are being shown the action, and we are allowed to infer the unfolding, and we have seen how the crisis was resolved, so they can all move towards the conclusion — that of Charter Change, which is at the heart of this (now resolved) fight for the House Speakership.

The show was interesting enough of course, even as it was a dead-end for nation. The battle was always only among Duterte’s men, with all three, Alan Peter Cayetano, Lord Allan Velasco, and Martin Romualdez pledging loyalty to the President. Of course Romualdez is more of a Gloria Arroyo (and Marcos) ally; Velasco seems to have come out of nowhere but is supported by Duterte propagandists; and Cayetano, well, is only loyal to himself — but all of that doesn’t matter when they’re united for the common Duterte cause.

Unity has been such a part of the plot that Duterte and his men put together, and the audience almost doesn’t matter: we aren’t supposed to care. After all, we all know that Duterte controls Congress, and will give him everything on a silver platter. But this battle for the house speakership was taking too long to get resolved, and in the meantime, we were being given too much information about how corrupt, how greedy, how power-hungry the men who surround Duterte are — his children included.

So what did this battle for House Speakership reveal?

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komentaryo

Winning VS Duterte: Stand against #ChaCha

If there’s anything we might all agree on in relation to how the Duterte government operates, it’s that it has taken spin and distractions, smoke and mirrors, to a whole different level. Sometimes it’s like they’re throwing in the kitchen sink for good measure, often enough there’s some sacrificial lamb.

It is of course the President’s big mouth which does the best job of disengaging us from what matters. Take all those instances when we should be talking about something important like the killing of farmers and peasants, the failed drug war, inflation, the excise tax on oil, China’s takeover of our seas, the entry of an unbelievable number of Chinese migrant workers, the militarization of government, and count the number of times instead that the president decides to drop a misogynistic statement here, or an expletive there directed at (a) the Church, (b) activists, (c) the poor, (d) human rights advocates and organizations, (e) “terrorists” (f) critics (g) all of the above.

Which is to say that at a time like this when we have so much on our plate of things to think about given the aforementioned urgent issues, it is also pretty clear that this government, along with its puppet (or puppeteer) Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, is banking on precisely these overwhelming, exhausting times so they can continue with their ChaCha moves.  (more…)

komentaryo

Giving Duterte his multiple exits #EndGame

It seems obvious enough that there’s a mad scramble to try and control ALL possible outcomes of whatever current situation Duterte is in. So much lying going on, yes? And so much more being kept from us deliberately, i.e., the state of President’s health. This lack of transparency is alarming because it cuts across everything, and as with all corrupt governments, it comes with the requisite bushel of lies.

But that’s stuff for another day. Right now, there’s a need to keep track of where we are, given the fact that it looks and feels like one of those instances when Duterte and his people are working overtime to ensure that they can keep the people under control, as they figure out how to handle what seems like a certainty: that Duterte will be unable to finish his term (just look at his face), or at least will want to get his term over with (just listen to what he says, over and over).

How many exits does Duterte need, or require, and who’s holding the door for him as he bids the Presidency goodbye?

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komentaryo

ChaCha: Duterte’s endgame #SONA2018 #NoToChaCha

The Duterte government is on overdrive, providing us all with requisite distractions from the fact that the Duterte-appointed consultative committee has drafted a federal constitution to the President’s liking, and we’re all back to this discussion, not about whether or not we even want charter change, or if it’s necessary at all, but about how it’s going to happen.

Let that sink in.

Duterte’s propagandists and chacha advocates have been able to bring it to this point when we’re not even discussing whether or not charter change will happen but how it will happen. The President and his people have muscled their way through this charter change push — we’re talking THREE different federal constitutions after all since August 2016 — and it has been able to do this by utilizing what we’ve seen government do consistently and viciously the past two years: chaos-by-design.

We complain that his communications team is terrible, that they are incompetent, but that is part of the grand design. One controversy over one incompetence over one corruption controversy, on loop, layered with the President’s big mouth, and here we are: faced with the threat of charter change so close, sold as a done deal, discussed as if we, the people, have no choice in it.

It is as Duterte and his men have planned. And I realize now that ChaCha was always been Duterte’s endgame, federalism not just a campaign promise he made, but a promise made to him.  (more…)