it's falling apart...again

picture from reuters.

first, some bad news....

if you thought the may 1, 2001 "edsa iii" was the last mass protest you'd see in the philippines, well...the chances of another one happening soon is pretty great. actually, i'm surprised it hasn't happened yet; i keep checking here to see if there's a mass number of people in the flyover, but no, not yet.

anyway, it all started when a tape surfaced about 2-3 weeks ago that contained many wiretapped phone conversations of the philippine president gloria macapagal-arroyo, comelec commissioner virgilio garciliano (the guy responsible for assuring fair elections in the philippines...haha) and several other men. (you can download the 3-hour tape in tagalog here). these tapes allegedly prove that pres. arroyo (gma from this point) cheated her way to victory over her main opponent, fernando poe jr. (who's now deceased) in the 2004 presidential elections. there's talk about how the action of doing the wiretaps were illegal, not that it really matters right now.

this roused those oppostion militant groups to start calling for gma to resign, and gma was mum on the issue for quite a while, merely dismissing the tapes as doctored and fake.

then in a speech at the end of june, she said "i'm sorry." sorry for cheating? no, she was sorry for calling garciliano, explaining that she was anxious to protect her votes and to know the results of the election (which takes at least a month to tally all the votes--there's no computerized vote tallying there yet).

that move basically roused even more people against her and calling for her resignation. the widow of fernando poe jr., susan roces, was, well, rather pissed, and she showed it in dramatic fashion in her press conference calling on gma to resign.

now yesterday she basically told her cabinet to quit. 10 members of her cabinet did so and then held a press conference calling for her to resign. then all the parties and vips started doing the same thing. former pres. cory aquino wants gma to resign. bro. eddie villanueva, head of the jesus is lord movement (who also ran for pres. in 2004 btw), wants gma to resign. you can be sure her ousted predecessor erap estrada wants her out too.

...and now we wait for the thousands of people being paid to show up at the edsa shrine. okay, maybe i'm exaggerating, but it's been done before.

it sucks that this has to happen all over again. we just can't seem to learn from past mistakes.
oh well, i'll update this when more things go down.

oh, there'll be positive things in this blog too....