Phase of Darkness

Last week was not my kind of week. Good intentions indeed pave the way to hell, as I have learned to my utter consternation in the last two working days of the past week. Here’s to hoping (and praying) that hell is indeed comprised of several levels, and that last week’s version is the only one I’ll ever touch, and that it ends then and there.

But my headaches pale in comparison to what the nation is facing. I’m not one for rallies, and sometimes it’s a case for bully to the opposition. Friday’s and Saturday’s events, however, do not make for a convincing case for the current administration.

I can do my darned best to believe the reasons offered by the Arroyo administration for cutting down on dissent and criticism, but it has gone too far down the road of curtailment in the past few days.

Sure, it’s easy to understand why businessmen from all over would hesitate to make significant investments in a scandal and uncertainty-ridden economy, but political drama aside, our economy has been showing some signs of recovery. In the weeks preceding this last, I had begun to think that perhaps Arroyo and her people have been doing something right. Not so now.

The President seems hell bent on undoing everything that has appeared to work for her. PD 1017 is a self-serving piece of executive legislation with no other intent but to shush up anything that shows the President in a bad light. Too bad Her Excellency never stopped to consider that PD 1017 tars her feathers several shades darker than anything ever thrown at her by the opposition.

What state of emergency is she so strung up about? The coup that Malacañang says it has stopped hours before the release of PD 1017 unto the unsuspecting country? If there is no coup, what danger does she have to guard against? The masses who wanted to gather at EDSA, wave their flags, sing songs, make speeches, and generally litter the streets with what the administration considers to be the unwelcome debris of democratic dissent?

The EDSA celebration has been caricaturized beyond recognition by the President and all the President’s men. Imagine the cheek, saying that the EDSA shrine is a place of prayer and that there is no place for rallies around it! Memory is a convenient tool, but even more so the imagination. Did not Her Excellency dance attendance to and benefit from the rallies held around the same Shrine in 2001?

What gall. The sheer nerve. Or is it pure paranoia? After all, what goes around comes around.

The true state of emergency is the fact that PD 1017 exists. The true cause for alarm is that information and expression are both being controlled. Balls and chains are not feared because of their names, but because of their existence. The unnamed fear does not become less valid just because it has no definite nomenclature.