The Day After

The surrender of the mutineers who had seized a large section of the premier Philippine business district will intensify, rather than lessen, the crisis gripping the Philippine Government. Among other things, it has forced President Arroyo to rely further upon a set of corrupt military officials for the survival of her administration, generals who now clearly command factions, rather than a disciplined military organization. The Philippines, already divided into political factions, is now witnessing the subdivision of one of the key players, the Armed Forces, into sub-factions, rather like a malignant cancer cell. It is the metastasis of anarchy.

The Republic of the Philippines is now without a single clean cloth. It is absolutely bereft of any reliable instruments of reform. Every institution is now tainted. It is in a cesspool without a pump. Across the nation, the academe, the media and the nongovernment organizations have been perverted into strongholds of the Left. The Philippine Church is being politicized further with each passing day. And the armed forces have become nothing more than a uniformed gang. The Republic of the Philippines has seized to be a working nation; it totters sans wits, sans faith, sans teeth.

The Islamic secessionists in the South will have received final confirmation that the Republic truly has no victory option against them. The sword of the Philippine Republic is broken. It is worse than broken; it has been thrust into its putative owner's belly. That news will be like ringing the dinner bell to the predatory terrorists of the region. 'Come one, come all. Here, surely, is a place where everything is for sale; where no good deed goes unpunished; and no evil goes unrewarded'. Already, the Islamic secessionists are packing their bags for an all-expense-paid vacation in Kuala Lumpur where, at "negotiations", they will demand territorial concessions from the Republic. The Left are likely to say, if they are not saying already that 'here are the fruits of letting Americans train the Army! Let us prohibit any contact between the United States with our pure-hearted soldiers, who after all, wore Red armbands. Nationalize everything!"  In the meantime, it will continue to deal in illicit drugs with the corrupt Armed Forces hierarchy. And the Church and business will continue to hold prayer vigils and sponsor meaningless confabulations, because that is the limit of their scope of action.

One is tempted to say of the Philippines, plus ca change, plus c'est la meme chose, or its more pithy American equivalent, "the same old shit".