There are all sorts of speculation on the scheduled million march for Monday, August 26. This is to be expected. If a million or whatever the figure of Filipinos who will attend the protest march, it will necessarily be a gathering of different political beliefs. The organizers have asked that there should be no political banners or placards. It is a gathering of Filipinos en masse against the pork barrel corruption. Period.
Still Filipinos should work towards a minimum consensus of what the protest is about.
We can do this by writing a broad political tract that can unite the different interests. The worst thing is for the march to be used by the establishment to divide and rule. This political tract would be prelude to a new Constitution that will embody what we want the Philippines to be.
We can do this through a political tract that will adopt a spirit as broad as the “I have a dream†speech made by Martin Luther King when he led the million march in Alabama.
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At the heart of the grievance is how sovereignty has been snatched from the people.
And after having snatched that sovereignty in the 2010 and 2013 fake elections, it has been discovered that the fake elected officials, senators and congressmen then proceeded to help themselves with pork barrel. These are moneys of the people. They snatched pork barrel in billions of pesos meant for good governance and the well being of citizens.
That is where we are.
This is not government. This is perfidy of the highest order. Although there has been corruption in previous governments, this time the government is being used to destroy everything on its path to consolidate power. There is a difference. Today we have a revolutionary government without a revolution, and a dictatorship through fake elections.
It is now the government vs. the people.
The misuse of pork barrel is so blatant that if we allow this to continue it will destroy the Philippine state. We will cease to have a democratic country to speak of.
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So we announce who we are.
“We are gathered here as the sovereign people of the Philippines to demand the following:
As sovereign we will not allow a few brigands masked as officials from the fake elections of 2010 and 2013 to abuse their positions.
As sovereign we demand to immediately stop the pork barrel system.
As sovereign we demand that the billions of people’s money as pork barrel be returned to the national treasury.
These demands are addressed to both the President and Congress.
From this day we unite to begin to forge a new Constitution for a new system of government dedicated to good governance and the people’s well being.â€
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Our presidential system of government has become our enemy. This is not an exaggeration or a literary expression. The presidential system we have developed in the Philippines creates and bestows impunity to government officials whatever wrong and abuse they do. It does not follow a rule of law but whoever is in power makes the law. It boasts that it is for the good of the people. Who will be the judge?
The million march is only a first step. Unless it is accompanied by a vision of what Filipinos want our country to be and enact substantial changes in our system of government, we will be back to square one in no time. That was what happened in Edsa 1 and 2.
Since the 2013 elections Comelec under the Aquino government has not answered questions on the fake elections that was conducted through a disreputable automatic electoral system sold by Smartmatic-PCOS to the government.
It is my opinion that the two issues of fake elections and pork barrel are related. We need to tackle both and this we can only do by constitutional reform.
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It is good that the CIA has finally admitted that it masterminded Iran’s 1953 coup. Although this was well known, it is only now on the 60th anniversary of the 1953 military coup against the government of Mohammad Mossadegh that documents on the operation have been declassified.
“American and British involvement in Mossadegh’s ouster has long been public knowledge, but today’s posting includes what is believed to be the CIA’s first formal acknowledgement that the agency helped to plan and execute the coup,†the US National Security Archive said.
It was thought that there were no longer records of CIA involvement. The materials and records of the involvement were said to have been destroyed because “the agency’s safes were too full.â€
Documents being released in compliance of US Freedom of Information Act reveal how CIA operates in targeted countries. The name of the operation against Iran’s Mossadegh was TRAJAX.
Among the methods used were “bribery of Iranian politicians, security and army high-ranking officials, and massive anti-Mossadegh propaganda that helped to instigate public revolt in 1953.â€
Iranians democratically elected the head of the National Front party, Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh, as prime minister in April 1951. His troubles began when he nationalized the assets of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company in Iran. This later became British Petroleum and remains so to this day.
Stephen Kinzer in his article for The Guardian some years back wrote that “centuries of intervention, humiliation and subjugation at the hands of foreign powers have decisively shaped Iran’s collective psyche. The most famous victim of this intervention — and also the most vivid symbol of Iran’s long struggle for democracy — is Mossadeqh. Whenever Iranians assert their desire to shape their own fate, his image appears.†Fazlollah Zahedi, an Iranian general, was handpicked by M16 and the CIA to replace Mossadeqh.
The declassified documents came from a report called “The Battle for Iranâ€. It was prepared by a CIA in-house historian in the mid-1970s. More important is his conclusion “the military coup that overthrew Mossadegh and his National Front cabinet was carried out under CIA direction as an act of US foreign policy.â€
The report gives the reason. The US ‘establishment’ feared that Iran could be “open to Soviet aggression,†if it did not act boldly. That was the justification for Operation TPAJAX that eventually became the American part of the joint US-British ‘Operation Ajax’ that brought the Shah to power.