Is it ‘Poor People’ Power, EDSA TRES, or just plain hakot-power? - BY THE WAY by Max V. Soliven

Let’s face it. The pro-Estrada rally at the EDSA Shrine was much bigger yesterday than the day before. On its second day, the crowd’s numbers had swelled to significant proportions.

This writer passed by the scene yesterday and found even the overpass overlooking the Shrine packed with demonstrators, their streamers proclaiming their "difference" from EDSA I and EDSA DOS, by calling themselves "Poor Have Power." One might say it’s early days yet. Many observers are shaking their heads or that the 5,000 or so arriving at the scene belong to the rent-a-crowd category and were brought there by hakot. (Meaning: They were mobilized and trucked into the place.) But let’s not forget. That’s what was said by Estrada’s supporters about EDSA DOS last January, when they scoffed at the gathering, until the angry mob ballooned to rafter-rattling proportions.

A mob in the streets of whatever kind is nothing to be sneezed at. When fury is unleashed, what’s the difference between "righteous anger" (as the idealistic EDSA DOS protesters declared as their motivation) and "resentful anger" (as the masa pro-Erap organizers are shouting when they demand their "champion" be brought back)? Only God who sees into men’s hearts can divine what motivates them.

When ex-President Estrada was arrested last Wednesday, the stock market soared by 18 points. Yesterday, the stock market plummeted by 25 points. The mixed signals transmitted by the "new" EDSA demonstrations sent renewed jitters to investors and the business community. Those who condemn Estrada are already scolding the deposed President for not being "patriotic" and telling his supporters to disperse, and not block off traffic or make Metro Manilans and watching "outsiders" nervous. But if you’ll recall, the Estrada supporters and the Estrada government said the same thing when EDSA DOS was ongoing, just before Erap fell on January 19.

Let’s hope the situation simmers down, the protesters lose steam, and things begin to return to normal. And yet, what did we expect? When you glorify a mob surging into the streets as a glorious revolution of "People Power", what can you call a similar mob whose sentiments are on "the other side"?

As for me, I believe the attempt to arouse an EDSA TRES in favor of the imprisoned ex-President Erap will peter out – but we’ll have to see. One thing is clear: The former Chief Executive is in jail, and he’ll stay there. The Armed Forces and the Philippine National Police, after all, having "switched" once, aren’t ready to switch around again. That’s the long and short of it.

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What bothers me is the possibility (some say probability) of the poor being polarized against the "rich" or even the middle class. Whatever the extravaganzas and excesses of his sybaritic lifestyle, the imprisoned former Chief of State had effectively – by his rhetoric and body language – positioned himself as a pro-masa leader of the poor and kapus-palad.

In dealing with the "educated" and those he termed, in deliberate insult, "the Makati crowd", Estrada was clumsy, unsure of his language, and ill-at-ease. When he spoke in Tagalog, like the accomplished politician that he was (remember he rose from mayor to Senator, then to Vice President and President) he played his old movie role of celluloid "hero" to the hilt. He was a spellbinder.

Reporters who saw him in action, even when abroad working on the sentiments of overseas Filipinos, will testify he touched his audience with self-deprecating humor and played their hearts like a lyre, plucking at them with words that stirred in them sympathetic vibrations. What if he was part-sham, part-bolero, and all ham? They lapped it up.

The former national leader, even if "caged", is far from a spent force. In many areas, he retains residual grassroots backing and affection. The latest Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey still shows, in the Senatorial race for example, five pro-Erap Puwersa ng Masa Senatorial bets still strongly in contention against eight for the GMA administration’s People Power Coalition (PPC) candidates. With the election campaign approaching the proverbial homestretch, that must be unsettling to the ruling party’s strategists. The iffy equation virtually compels President Arroyo to barnstorm the country, donning regional costumes in cutesy-fashion as if politics were a fancy-dress party, doing Igorot or peasant dances, and hugging the Great Unwashed, when she should be concentrating her efforts on the task of being "President" and "Captain of the Ship" as our ship of state careens and threads its erratic way through reefs and shoals.

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If you ask me, I think the entire "arrest" drama was a bad case of overkill. Sure, with the help of 2,000 cops and 500 Marines, Estrada was snatched from his home in North Greenhills and safely conveyed to his holding cell in Camp Crame. But why did they have to go, once again, through the rigmarole of taking his mug shots and fingerprinting him? Didn’t they already do that when he earlier surrendered himself and posted bail on two earlier but less serious charges? Did they expect that in the intervening week, Erap’s fingerprints would change, or his face be transformed by plastic surgery? Or were they afraid that some double or look-alike had been "substituted" for the ex-President to do jail time for him?

It wasn’t even "good" politics. The more a defeated and deposed President is seen to be humiliated and spat upon, the more public sympathy may be aroused for him. I’m not speaking of the segment of society who truly hate and despise him. Nothing will change their vitriolic attitude towards him nor influence them to look more kindly on his plight. I’m concerned about the "neutrals", who are more numerous than the self-righteous suspect. Pity could sometimes turn the tide more silently, but just as certainly, as conviction.

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Defense Secretary Angelo T. Reyes rang me up Wednesday to give me the good news that two suspects in the kidnapping and murder of the young ROTC cadet, Mark Welson Chua, had just been arrested.

This was confirmed by Director Reynaldo "Wyck" Wycoco, the former PNP general who heads the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI). Wycoco told this writer that it was the anguished appeal of the murdered youth’s father, Welson Co Chua, at last week’s Greenhill’s Walking Corporation Forum that had spurred Reyes and himself to personally take over the murder inquiry and hasten the solution of the case. While I’m gratified, of course, that media can at times play a useful role in prodding our police and investigative forces into action (after weeks of obfuscation, delay, and the possibility of whitewash), it’s also sad that too often our law enforces have to be prodded or "inspired" to do their job.

In any event: Kudos to Secretary Reyes and Director Wycoco – and to the NBI’s Edmundo Arugay, chief of the Special Action Unit, whose group tracked down and arrested the prime suspects, retired TSgt. Genesis Binagatan, Philippine Army, and his brother Jeffrey Binagatan. The two were nabbed in their home at the junction of Cavite and Elias streets, Sta. Cruz, Manila, after eyewitnesses pointed to them as among a group of four men who had been spotted dumping the victim’s corpse into the Pasig River in the dark and early hours of March 16. Since the boy had disappeared in the evening of March 15, the previous night, it’s apparent his killers had murdered him shortly after his abduction, and the boy was already dead in the day and a half his heartless abductors had tried to browbeat his distraught father and family into paying a P3 million "ransom" for his "release." How ghoulish and depraved can such vermin get?

It’s apparent that young Mark, 19, had provoked the suspect’s hunger for revenge when he exposed a scandalous extortion racket (P1,500 to P2,000 paid by each University of Sto. Tomas student for "exemption" and a passing grade in military science without attending the drills or lectures) plus other scams involving overpricing and extra "fees". The idealistic Chua’s revelations and that of a fellow cadet, Romulo Yumul, set off a full-dress inquiry by the Army Reserve Command of the scandals, which resulted in the firing of the two brothers, the demotion of other personnel, and the further investigation of an Army major, a former intelligence officer, who was alleged to be one of the ranking officers in the racket.

It’s good that eyewitnesss have identified the two suspects. But since they also testified that four men had thrown the body of the boy into the river at about 2:30 a.m. that early Friday morning, it’s obvious that at least two are still at large. And what about the mastermind?

The NBI and AFP sleuths, as well as the police, should not rest until the culprits have all been rounded up. For weeks, Mark’s father Welson Chua reiterated yesterday, malicious efforts were made by a number of people to muddle the case. "Rumor-mongers" were fielded to spread the rumor that the slain Mark used to flash "a lot of money" and "hinted he mighty have been a drug pusher." Smearing the dead is a repulsive tactic!

It was further "spread", Welson Chua told me, that he (the father) might have killed his own son so as to collect a large "insurance" payment on him! Indignantly, Welson assured me: "I had no insurance at all for Mark!" What kind of vampire murders a man’s only son, then attempts to destroy his reputation as well! The suspicion persists that even policemen were enlisted to muddy the trial and throw the investigation off course.

The other killers and the mastermind of this foul deed and its even more outrageous aftermath must be pursued relentlessly, caught, and punished for their terrible crime. There can be no slacking off, now that our lawmen have picked up the spoor of their evil quarry.