Divine Mandate?

Divine Mandate?
EDITORIAL
03/31/2006
http://www.tribune.net.ph/

The plunder trial against ousted President Joseph Estrada is
resurrecting several issues that were used or, more appropriately,
exploited by Gloria to ascend to the presidency in 2001.

That is the likely reason the administration is exerting all efforts to
keep the trial behind curtains by imposing a virtual news blackout on
it. The court even issued a gag order on Estrada's group from
discussing the issues taken up in the Sandiganbayan hearing, while at
the same time Gloria's star witness former Ilocos Sur Gov. Luis
"Chavit" Singson went to town with interviews against the deposed
president.

The duplicity in the implementation of the law is becoming the hallmark
of the Gloria administration, as exemplified by the pressure being
placed on the Estrada camp and evidently the Sandiganbayan over the
trial.

Such is also the case in the treatment of Gloria's opposition, while
Gloria's allies can get away practically with murder as in the case
of Singson, a mere suspicion of engaging in the abstract act of
destabilization as in the case of the many and growing masses seeking
Gloria's resignation is enough to land somebody in jail.

At the top of the mountain of trickery Gloria engaged in to grab power
and stay in the stolen presidency for this long is the issue on
gambling.

Gambling was among the issues raised to oust Estrada.

Erap was accused of being an inveterate gambler, with a supposed video
of him then the Vice President, playing cards in one of the public
casinos still vivid in the mind of people who kept track of the
campaign to oust Estrada before 2001.

Church leaders were then shouting their heads off against the rise of
the vice of gambling and efforts to institutionalize it when Estrada
sought the legalization of jueteng through the Bingo 2-ball game to be
run by the Philippine Amusement and Gaming Corp.

Thus, among the loudest calls then was to remove the evils of the vice
of gambling as a rationale to oust Estrada.

Gloria has been proved to exceed any and all efforts during the time of
Estrada to popularize gambling. Count the number of state-run casinos
and the number of concessions with hotels in Manila and elsewhere. Just
recently, the administration rammed the small town lottery scheme down
the throat of local government officials.

The difference now is that protests against the efforts are prohibited
and are met by force while the church leaders seem to have become more
accommodating toward gambling.

The moral basis for ousting Estrada, however, has practically all
dissipated.

With the imminent defeat of the plunder case against the ousted
president, Gloria would have lost all justification for claiming the
presidency.

The only remaining but still unconvincing claim that she can cite, and
she always does, is that she won the May 2004 elections "fair and
square."

Thus, again, allegations against her having stolen the vote have been
cropping up since those elections and her claim to having won her
mandate fair and square merely proves that serious doubts on her
legitimacy exist.

And she hasn't bothered to erase these doubts as she continues to use
all means to hide the truth, which is the reason she issued Executive
Order 464, to shut up any and all executives from spilling out the
truth in a legitimate forum; the reason she paid off congressmen to
kill the impeachment complaint and even proclaimed a state of emergency
which can hardly be justified.

Yes, she exerted and is exerting all efforts to muddle and even hide
the truth by gagging public officials and conspiring with her allies to
stop impeachment proceedings against her in which the truth about the
May 2004 elections would definitely come to light.

But if she won the presidential polls fair and square, why put up all
the roadblocks on the path leading to the truth? She does say God
placed her in the presidency - twice over.

But, as she has been taught, God is truth and all the nation hears are
lies.

Again it would be fair to ask Gloria: On what authority is she
dispensing the presidency? Divine mandate?

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