People power mocked
CREATOR and sustainer – politically – of Gov. Eddie T. Panlilio, the country’s number one newspaper has naturally taken as its prime duty his preservation in power, at whatever cost.
So it came to pass that Wednesday last week, the Comelec en banc denied Panlilio’s motion for reconsideration to junk the second division’s August 1, 2007 resolution on the electoral protest of former Board Member Lilia Pineda, and allowed the inventory and transmittal of the contested ballot boxes from Pampanga to Manila.
“Unseating of Panlilio as gov starts.” So cried the headline in Sunday’s nation section: the simple, factual “recount” subsumed in the malice-tinged “unseating” there.
“People power to keep Panlilio urged.” Blared yet another headline of the same section on Monday.
“Two Catholic priests and a Christian pastor on Sunday have called on the Kapampangan to mount another “people power” against the move by losing gubernatorial candidate Lilia Pineda to unseat Gov. Eddie Panlilio through a recount of votes.” So went the lead paragraph.
I don’t know if these people recognize the ramifications of their call. As a good Christian though, I could only look at the Christ on His cross, and reflect on the first of his seven last words – what a timely coincidence, this being the season of Lent: “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”
So, what are they afraid of in a recount? To find Pineda as the duly elected governor of Pampanga? If that be the truth, then they should even rejoice. They supposedly being the ordained advocates of the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
“Losing bet” Pineda is within her constitutional right to lodge an electoral protest. Pineda subscribed to the rule of law in filing that protest. Pineda invested her respect in the integrity of the Comelec when she – and her supporters – did not call for “people power” to question the proclamation of Panlilio as elected governor.
A recount of votes is a legal recourse. It is a moral exercise. To thwart it with “people power” is illegal. It negates whatever moral ascendancy, pretensions would be more like it, those callers have arrogated unto themselves. It corrupts the very essence of “people power” and reduces, nay, dishonors it to the gutter level of the mob.
And I can only agree with that wit who said of the mob as “many heads with no brains.”
“People power” is enshrined in our democratic praxis as a revolutionary means. Its nobility of purpose akin to the opening premise of the Declaration of Independence , to wit: “When in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another…” Let us leave it at that. Stop making a mockery of it.
Thus, if – as Marx said – history repeats itself, the first time as a tragedy and the second as a farce, how will it be in its third, fourth, fifth, nth outing? Comedy, inanity, idiocy?
Come to think of it, this is not the first time that Panlilio’s rabid fanatics called on “people power.”
After the sangguniang panlalawigan approved Ordinance 176, Panlilio’s (un)civil society of a hundred composed of Kapampangan Marangal, Inc., Abak na Balen, and some such other two insipid monikers, threatened to unleash “people power” on the SP with a signature campaign.
It would take only a thousand signers to initiate a recall of Ordinance 176, so they bannered in, where else, the nation section of Panlilio’s creator.
That was in October last year yet. It is now February and apparently, they have not yet gotten to the thousandth signer. And this is “people power”?
Then there is that priest who mixed his local papers and called on his parishioners to boycott the paper critical of Panlilio, only to realize he uttered the name of the friendly paper. Shame.
It is all too easy to call on “people power.” The question: Will the people listen?
The Bard of Avon’s Henry IV has this interesting exchange.
The Welsh seer, Owen Glendower, proudly claims: “I can call spirits from the vasty deep.”
To which Hotspur nonchalantly answered: “Why, so can I, or so can anyone. But will they come when you do call them?”
It is not the noblest call that gets answered, but the answerable call. So we quote, verbatim, the Pulitzer-Prize winner Gary Wills in his treatise Certain Trumpets: The Nature of Leadership.
Call “people power” then at your peril, to your utter shame. Pathetic.
So it came to pass that Wednesday last week, the Comelec en banc denied Panlilio’s motion for reconsideration to junk the second division’s August 1, 2007 resolution on the electoral protest of former Board Member Lilia Pineda, and allowed the inventory and transmittal of the contested ballot boxes from Pampanga to Manila.
“Unseating of Panlilio as gov starts.” So cried the headline in Sunday’s nation section: the simple, factual “recount” subsumed in the malice-tinged “unseating” there.
“People power to keep Panlilio urged.” Blared yet another headline of the same section on Monday.
“Two Catholic priests and a Christian pastor on Sunday have called on the Kapampangan to mount another “people power” against the move by losing gubernatorial candidate Lilia Pineda to unseat Gov. Eddie Panlilio through a recount of votes.” So went the lead paragraph.
I don’t know if these people recognize the ramifications of their call. As a good Christian though, I could only look at the Christ on His cross, and reflect on the first of his seven last words – what a timely coincidence, this being the season of Lent: “Father, forgive them for they do not know what they are doing.”
So, what are they afraid of in a recount? To find Pineda as the duly elected governor of Pampanga? If that be the truth, then they should even rejoice. They supposedly being the ordained advocates of the Way, the Truth, and the Life.
“Losing bet” Pineda is within her constitutional right to lodge an electoral protest. Pineda subscribed to the rule of law in filing that protest. Pineda invested her respect in the integrity of the Comelec when she – and her supporters – did not call for “people power” to question the proclamation of Panlilio as elected governor.
A recount of votes is a legal recourse. It is a moral exercise. To thwart it with “people power” is illegal. It negates whatever moral ascendancy, pretensions would be more like it, those callers have arrogated unto themselves. It corrupts the very essence of “people power” and reduces, nay, dishonors it to the gutter level of the mob.
And I can only agree with that wit who said of the mob as “many heads with no brains.”
“People power” is enshrined in our democratic praxis as a revolutionary means. Its nobility of purpose akin to the opening premise of the Declaration of Independence , to wit: “When in the Course of human Events, it becomes necessary for one People to dissolve the Political Bands which have connected them with another…” Let us leave it at that. Stop making a mockery of it.
Thus, if – as Marx said – history repeats itself, the first time as a tragedy and the second as a farce, how will it be in its third, fourth, fifth, nth outing? Comedy, inanity, idiocy?
Come to think of it, this is not the first time that Panlilio’s rabid fanatics called on “people power.”
After the sangguniang panlalawigan approved Ordinance 176, Panlilio’s (un)civil society of a hundred composed of Kapampangan Marangal, Inc., Abak na Balen, and some such other two insipid monikers, threatened to unleash “people power” on the SP with a signature campaign.
It would take only a thousand signers to initiate a recall of Ordinance 176, so they bannered in, where else, the nation section of Panlilio’s creator.
That was in October last year yet. It is now February and apparently, they have not yet gotten to the thousandth signer. And this is “people power”?
Then there is that priest who mixed his local papers and called on his parishioners to boycott the paper critical of Panlilio, only to realize he uttered the name of the friendly paper. Shame.
It is all too easy to call on “people power.” The question: Will the people listen?
The Bard of Avon’s Henry IV has this interesting exchange.
The Welsh seer, Owen Glendower, proudly claims: “I can call spirits from the vasty deep.”
To which Hotspur nonchalantly answered: “Why, so can I, or so can anyone. But will they come when you do call them?”
It is not the noblest call that gets answered, but the answerable call. So we quote, verbatim, the Pulitzer-Prize winner Gary Wills in his treatise Certain Trumpets: The Nature of Leadership.
Call “people power” then at your peril, to your utter shame. Pathetic.
posted by A.Caesar Z. Lacson at 4:28 PM
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