Another chaotic December

It is two weeks to Christmas, usually a season of joy, peace and homecomings. But it hasn’t always been that way in our country. There are a number of Decembers in recent memory that were far from joyous. Eventful, yes, but hardly the blessed season we expected it to be.

It was late in 1985 when Ferdinand Marcos announced that he was calling for a snap election and the opposition fielded the soft-spoken widow Cory Aquino to run against him. I covered Cory Aquino’s campaign that December. I listened to her tell her story over and over again. She spoke in a monotone, sans emotion, but the audiences invariably ended up in tears. They hung on to her every word, drawn to her goodness, courage, and authenticity. It was awesome watching her challenge the dictator to do his worst as she fought to win the election and dismantle the martial law regime.

The dictator feared Cory. He called her a mere housewife who was good only for the bedroom, “only a woman” who knew nothing (“walang alam”) about leadership and governance. But the people were with her. And when the dictator tried to steal the election from her, the people rose as one to protect the ballot and defend her victory against his evil machinations. By February, the people’s righteous anger had sent him scampering to Hawaii with his tail between his legs, bringing all the loot stolen from the Filipino people that the family could carry.

It was a chaotic December in 1989 when Gringo Honasan’s Reform the Armed Forces Movement and their sponsor, Juan Ponce Enrile, mounted their bloodiest and most destructive coup attempt against the Aquino government, and almost succeeded in stealing Christmas. They failed, of course, as they did seven or more times, but they seriously harmed the economy that was just starting to recover from the plunder by the Marcos dictatorship.

It was another December in 2000 when President Joseph Estrada was at the ropes, his bad governance, corruption and scandalous lifestyle exposed by investigative journalists. By January, he was impeached and was driven away from the Palace by a massive angry crowd.

December 2016 is more chaotic than ever. People are out in the streets protesting the hero’s burial accorded by government to the most corrupt president the country ever had. Congress is bent on passing two offensive pro-death legislations prioritized by Malacañang before the end of the year: a bill restoring the death penalty, and another lowering the minimum age for criminal liability to nine years old. Think about that for a minute and ask yourself if you can remain calm in the face of such cruelty and stupidity.

There is also anxiety about how the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (made up of the Supreme Court sitting en banc) will rule on the electoral protest filed by Bongbong Marcos against Leni Robredo’s victory as vice president of the land. 

And the extrajudicial killings continue without let-up.

In the midst of all this, Vice President Leni Robredo has been unceremoniously removed from the Duterte Cabinet. 

A word I learned from a late activist comes to mind: Ludlumesque. There is evil abroad. 

Like a bad horror movie, the spawn of the dictator is out to claim the vice presidency that he seems to consider his birthright. Besides his illusory birthright, the position was promised to him by the president himself, as if it was for him to bestow.

After securing a hero’s burial for his father from the Supreme Court, he seems to be counting on the same High Court, sitting as the PET, to again rule in his favor. And if he gets that — the president being a sick man in more ways than one — hey, he could be president in no time.

It’s a simplistic scenario, to say the least. It was a gross miscalculation on the part of the president and the Marcos family to insist on that clandestine burial at the Libingan ng mga Bayani. Almost immediately, the students were protesting in the streets, reviving the anti-Marcos chants from decades ago, and creating smart memes and placards rejecting the burial and recalling the corruption and human rights violations of the Marcos martial law years.

It will also be a major blunder to try and grab the vice-presidency, by fair means or foul, from Leni Robredo. Already, after she was sacked from the Cabinet, the hard-working and virtuous Leni, the exact opposite of the crass and undisciplined Duterte, has risen in stature as the voice of the opposition and rallying point for the growing number of disaffected citizens who are disgusted with the Duterte regime.

How will all this play out in the coming weeks and months? Abangan. It is another chaotic December in the land of my birth. But, as the protest song goes, We Shall Overcome.