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Local executives said Wednesday the formal warning by the so-called Genuine Opposition (GO) on a developing “political crisis” is not the voice of the people but “the voice of the mob.”

The offiicals, belonging to the 1.3 million-strong Union of Local Authorities of the Philippines (ULAP), said the opposition has been clearly repudiated in the local and congressional polls and is now claiming make-believe electoral fraud to rock the government

Eastern Samar Governor Ben Evardone, spokesman of the ULAP-affiliated League of Provinces of the Philippines (LPP), said this threat by GO in a new manifesto, the media hype on non-existent fraud, and its belligerent stand that nothing less than eight GO winners is acceptable, “are the dress rehearsals for its true—and wicked—agenda, which is to unsettle and bring down the Arroyo administration, and scuttle the country’s economic takeoff.

He said GO would not get popular support behind such a destabilization plot because the overwhelming victory of Team Unity in the local and congressional polls make up the electorate’s renewed and resounding vote of confidence in President Arroyo.

“GO and its leftist and ultra-rightist allies are merely using claims of electoral fraud as a convenient cover to destabilize the government and torpedo the economic takeoff in the wake of the positive assessment by the international and local business community of the just-concluded midterm elections,” he said.

“The political opposition is not really for clean elections. All it wants is for mob rule to reign supreme and put in jeopardy the country’s dramatic economic turnaround on the Arroyo watch,” said Evardone.

He pointed out that “the political opposition is now flirting with extra-constitutional options to oust President Arroyo because it already lost the “parliamentary option” of unseating her from office as voters across the nation had rejected the GO–allied congressional candidates.”

Evardone noted that the House of Representatives endorses impeachment complaints to the Senate for deliberation and judgment, but even the leaders of GO and its leftist ally, Bayan Muna, have admitted the futility of mounting a third impeachment bid, given that only some 20 opposition candidates have won in their quest for House seats in the 14th Congress.

“The possible bulwark of support for mass protests had also been denied to the GO and its allies from the right and left-wing forces, as voters also roundly rejected the local candidates identified with GO,” he said.

“This leaves the Senate as the only institution of democracy that can be used to defeat the forces of democracy and replace it with the rule of the mob,” he said. “This is ironic and tragic but this is precisely what GO leaders and their extremist allies are doing right now.”