Top Ten Reasons to Oust A President

Top Ten Reasons to Oust A President

By Ninotchka Rosca
GABRIELA International Network (GAIN)

1) Demanding a Value-Added Tax law when oil prices are reaching a record $60 per barrel, thus ensuring that people of the Philippines will have to contend with triple digit inflation. Why not nationalize the petrochemical industry, including the Malampaya gas reserves, and impose price controls on everything?

2) Allegedly sacrificing husband Mike by “exiling” him to the US where the comfort level is high and hot water runs from the tap 24 hours a day. Perhaps he has his eyes on Las Vegas and Atlantic City. Why not exile him to Baghdad so he can experience the nightly serenade of mortar attacks and bomb explosions experienced by 4,000 Filipinos subcontracted to multinationals corporations in the war arena?

3) Losing her tongue when the Philippine military goes on a rampage and assassinates activists, organizers, unionists, church leaders, politicians, women, the balut (duck egg) vendor and just ordinary people.

4) Promoting Palparan, instead of trading him for Filipinos held hostage in Iraq. The surest way, it seems, to get a military promotion is to kill women, children and the balut-vendor; and if you kill and terrorize enough Filipinos, you may become president of the Philippines. Meanwhile, traffickers of dope, guns, women and children, and young transgender men—the newest export to Japan — roam the country freely; entire islands are occupied by foreigners and multinational corporations grab land and resources in Mindanao with impunity.

5) Proudly proclaiming that her administration had exported a million Filipinos in 2004, 65% of them women, and vowing to export a million more each year; then losing her tongue again as a woman lies brain-dead in a Saudi Arabia hospital after jumping or being pushed from a third floor window of her employer’s house; and turning deafer and muter when a Filipina mail-order bride is drowned by her husband in Atlanta, Georgia.

6) Enabling de Venecia and Ermita to scuttle peace talks with the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, thus encouraging a war-freak mentality when it comes to Filipino dissenters. Why not send them to Afghanistan where perhaps they can better serve the so-called “war on terror?”

7) Consenting to the return of US troops and military bases to the Philippines from Okinawa where 7,000 Filipinas already work in military prostitution, as “entertainment” for American GIs. It took 50 years, one volcanic eruption and the mammoth effort of generations of Filipinos to get the US bases and troops out – a historic, national undertaking which she sought to erase from our collective memory with one nod of her little head. Or maybe, it didn’t even register with her at all, despite the Pampanga origins of her forebears.

8) Failing to declare the US ambassador and other so-called diplomats persona non grata for constant, consistent and caviling interference in Philippine internal affairs, even attempting to define for the Filipino people what constitutional process should consist of – which, based on the US record in the Philippines, seems to include invasion, occupation, terrorism, despoilment of the environment, theft of natural resources including the Malampaya gas reserves, enslavement of women into prostitution, abandonment of children fathered by GIs, slapping the late President Magsaysay because he wanted to deliver a speech written, not by Col. Lansdale, but by a Filipino, and just about everything else humiliating and degrading to the Filipino people – but, and note this, excluding people power, a democratic act invented by Filipinos and over which the US was happy enough when it occurred in Berlin, Poland, Romania, etc. In other words, the democratic exercise of people power is acceptable when used against a US enemy but not when used against a US puppet.

9) Losing her tongue when the Hacienda Luisita massacre occurred and being unable to compute, despite her economics degree, that there’s no way a family can survive on an aggregate paycheck of $9 per month.

10) Finding her tongue just long enough to be taped discussing fixing one million votes. It is a given that cheating occurs in every election, even in the US, but no one has been caught, till now, with his/her hand in the ballot box as it were. As one American who’d lived in the Philippines exclaimed, “why’d she have to do it herself? Why not order her campaign manager, her assistant, her security, her girl-Friday, her maid, her driver, or even the balut-vendor to make the call?” Arrogance, for one, in the absolute certainty that she was entitled, not even conscious that the act was a statement of supreme contempt for the people’s sovereign rights and powers. As for other reasons – tango was the term we used to use for extreme absurdity. Tanga na; gago pa. (not simply stupid but moronic). Or in this case, tang-ga!

Considering how intelligent and valiant Filipinos are, there’s no reason to be ruled and governed by nincompoops. Certainly, no justice.

Please sign our petition: http: //PetitionOnLine.com/nohrv05/petition.html
GABRIELA INTERNATIONAL NETWORK (GAIN)
Equality in Unity