By Communist Party of the Philippines
Gloria Arroyo's supposed last State of the Nation Address (SONA) yesterday was full of lies, fantasies and evasions. As expected by practically everyone — the opposition, the entire Filipino people and even her own allies and underlings — it was no different from her past SONA.
Not even the ghost writer believed what he wrote for her. No one, except the most naïve, believed what they heard. Not content with the orchestrated 126 "applauses" by her sycophants in the hall and hakot crowd at the gallery, her props even included canned computer-generated applause that sometimes missed the timing and became obvious.
Her pompous show yesterday was not in any way a state of the nation address. It was nothing but a "state of lies."
From her already corrupted government economic data, she selected only those that would show achievements. She blamed everyone else for all the failures and claimed all credit for what she purported to be achievements, even if she had nothing to do with these at all. Even the triumphs in the ring of world boxing champion Manny Pacquiao she claimed as her own.
She evades the fact that it is her economic failures, the resulting joblessness in the country and her own policy to export labor that are pushing workers and professionals to look for work abroad. She hides the fact that it is only the dollar remittances of millions of Filipino workers overseas that have been buttressing the collapsing rotten economy.
She swamped with dishonest data all the real data showing the deterioration of the economy: the decline in manufacturing, agricultural production and exports; the record increase in unemployment, including disguised unemployment and underemployment; the rising deficits; the decreasing purchasing value of the peso; and the widening gap between rising mininum living standards and real wages. Her speech did not show at all how social inequity, poverty, hunger and deprivation of social services have only grown worse in the last nine years of her rule because of the horrid way she messed up the economy, kept it neocolonial and backward and stole billions from the nation's coffers and the people. She tried to make the people believe that because of her economic feats, the country has been singularly spared from the economic crisis that is presently drowning the rest of the world.
She continued to indulge in the fantasy that because of her, the country is on the road to joining the First World in a decade or so. Claiming to have solved the misgovernance left her by her predecessors, she completely ignores not only local criticisms but even the failed grades (among the worst if not the worst in the whole world) in the reports of various international agencies on governance, economic progress, social equity, poverty, hunger, education and other social services, corruption, internal displacement, human rights violations, human trafficking, illegal drugs trafficking, and other crimes.
Her rotten rule has been exceptionally bad in terms of human rights violations committed with utter impunity. This is now even worse than that suffered by the people under the outrightly fascist Marcos dictatorship. She has done nothing about her regime's facist crimes but try to pass the blame on to the victims themselves. Her SONA mentioned nothing about it.
Without really expecting it from her, some quarters challenged her to be categorical about her post-June 2010 plans. She has refused to do so, proving without a doubt that Cha-cha, Con-ass and the accompanying fascist plans to perpetuate her rule continue to be in the works.
Quibbling with words, she denied as actual declaration of martial law her admitted issuance of "emergency rule proclamations" and even cosmetized them as "strong government" and "determination." Her closest allies and deputies then, like former Defense Secretary Avelino Cruz Jr. and former Speaker Jose de Venecia, have attested that Arroyo had indeed gone to the extent of making actual moves towards martial rule and even lobbying her US imperialist master for permission a couple of times in the past. In the face of strong resistance, she has been unable to implement to the full her martial law plans. But she keeps the option open contingent to her main plan of perpetuating her hold on power via Cha-cha and Con-ass. Recent bomb scares and actually bombings are part of her continuous scenario-building to set the stage in case outright "emergency rule" or outright martial rule becomes necessary for her.
In a few days, Arroyo will seek to work out with her imperialist master further arrangements that would redound to their mutual interest.
Arroyo's latest SONA clearly demonstrates that she will not step down from power on her own volition. It shows all the more the need for firm resolve and persistence on the part of the revolutionary forces and the people to fight and bring down her rotten, bogus, deceptive and vicious regime.
