Divide and rule,a SONA objective

Some astute political observers decried the SONA of Her Excellency, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo as a non-SONA. Amen. The president veered away from traditions. Instead of telling us our national condition and rallying us to some defined goals, her SONA was meant more to divide and rule which tactic, with apologies to Mao Tse Tung's Red Book, we, student dissenters of the pre-martial law regime of the late President Ferdinand Marcos, were made aware of.

As we understood it then, the Marcos administration would attempt to penetrate our ranks. Where they succeeded, their agents, in the disguise of advancing our cause, would argue for certain populist ideas. They would, at times, be able to influence some insiders to support their viewpoint and, without our noticing it, plant the seeds of disagreement amongst us. From the disunity of some of our groups, our cause suffered and Marcos would continue to rule

For political survival, it became necessary for Pres. Arroyo to resort to this tactic. The president must have seen something in the crowd who joined the mid-July march against her in Makati City that prodded her to take this course of action. The police, as contemporary events unraveled, appeared burdened with the task to make sure that the crowd would not swell before the public. Responding creatively to their assignment, they thought that by placing the crowd at between a low of 25,000 and a high of 40,000 people, they would, somehow assuage the president's anxiety. What better rebuff to a call for "people power" than a weak involvement of the masses? Indeed, they highlighted the fact that there were but very few political leaders in the midst of the marchers. But, what the policemen failed to observe came very clearly to the president. And what her excellency saw alarmed her. If 40,000 persons assembled, on their own accord, and without the prodding of known political leaders, how many thousands more would have come if politicians were involved?

The SONA was designed to achieve two objectives, one expressed and the other concealed, by keeping our congressmen and other political leaders divided. It was so crafted as a speech to make it clear to some legislators that, via the process of amending the constitution, they would have their cake and eat it too. To drive that point, President Arroyo, unexpectedly (because she treated the subject coldly in earlier times), expressed her preference for a constituent assembly. She asked that our congressmen, in addition to their regular duty of lawmaking, would also be the body to tinker with the constitution.

Let us take a look at the expressed objective. There is this perception that many of our political leaders are driven by greed for political power. Surely their vested interests can be advanced by their monopolistic control of government positions. If it be true, it can be subsumed that given the powers to overhaul the constitution, their job would be focused in insuring their political grip. Those of our leaders who possess this mental frame welcomed the SONA.

Of course, we have our share of honest, sincere and nationalistic congressmen who may believe in the timeliness of the task of restructuring of our constitution but prefer a constitutional convention to do it. The president's SONA isolated them.

If the SONA's call for a change in the constitution by way of constituent assembly divided our legislators, the same division resulted in our people. Many of our citizens would rather entrust the task of amending our constitution to their chosen delegates than to the present Congress acting as a constituent assembly. Understandably, they are divided from those of different persuasions.

The hidden objective of the SONA is to divert the nation's attention from digging deeper into the "Hello Garci" tapes and the "Juetengate". By stirring our minds into the need to implement fundamental changes in our charter, we either forego with the call for Pres. Arroyo to resign or set aside the impeachment of the president. The fact that some of our people are talking about charter change rather than the electoral cheating or jueteng is proof that SONA has somehow succeeded.