'Appalled,' (Former President) Ramos says of Arroyo’s state of emergency

[IndianaGreen]

'Appalled,' Ramos says of Arroyo’s state of emergency

First posted 11:37am (Mla time) Feb 25, 2006
By Stella Gonzales
Inquirer

FORMER president Fidel Ramos hit President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo for declaring a state of national emergency.

“I was surprised, I was appalled and I am dismayed,” Ramos told ANC television on Saturday when asked for his reaction when he learned that Arroyo issued Proclamation 1017 on Friday.

Based on what government officials had been saying since Friday, Ramos said he saw no valid reason behind the declaration. He said Arroyo’s action sends “a very bad signal,” especially to the foreign community.

“Why can’t she be like Cory (former president Corazon) Aquino under fire?” Ramos asked, referring to how Aquino, then president, faced a number of coup attempts.

“Malacañang now looks like a fortress. There is limited access to media and common citizens who have business with Malacañang,” he said.

http://news.inq7.net/breaking/index.php?index=1&story_id=67451

Proclamation 1017, tyrannical act of desperation--Sison

First posted 12:16pm (Mla time) Feb 25, 2006
By Delfin Mallari Jr.
Inquirer

LUCENA CITY -- The self-exiled founder of the Communist Party of the Philippines called as a "tyrannical act of desperation" President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's Proclamation 1017 that declared a state of national emergency.

"It is the prelude to worse tyrannical acts to come if the people and the broad united front of patriotic, progressive, and all other anti-Arroyo forces do not act promptly to stop her," Jose Maria Sison said in a statement furnished the Inquirer.

Sison is based in Utrecht, the Netherlands as a political refugee.

Sison called on all anti-Arroyo forces, including those in the police and the military to do their best in mustering their own respective following to lead the people to "gigantic mass actions" in the vicinity of Malacañang and key points in Metro Manila and in the provinces.

"The people hate the Arroyo regime for its puppetry to foreign interests, electoral fraud, corruption, brutality, and mendacity," he said.

http://news.inq7.net/breaking/index.php?index=1&story_id=67454

Tribune editor remains defiant as gov't seals offices

First posted 11:17am (Mla time) Feb 25, 2006
Agence France-Presse

MANILA-Police sealed the offices of the Manila-based Daily Tribune early Saturday, a day after the government declared a state of emergency.
The move came on the 20th anniversary off the fall of dictator Ferdinand Marcos.

"I was tipped off yesterday that they were out to get me and my name was on a list of people to be arrested. No one said when," the Tribune's editor and publisher, Ninez Cacho-Olivares, said.

"I left the office as I normally do around 9:30 pm and just after midnight police entered our offices and confiscated papers and documents. They sealed the offices and posted police at the front door," she added.

http://news.inq7.net/breaking/index.php?index=1&story_id=67449

Here is yesterday's demonstrations, posted by shugah:

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_topic&forum=102&topic_id=2129397

[ConcernedCanuk]

1. I wouldn't be surprised if BushCo had a hand in this

.
.
.

"Let's see how this works over there - cuz we wanna do it here"

then work out the "wrinkles"

Martial law,

soon to be in a neighborhood near you

[IndianaGreen]

2. Bush is a very close friend of Arroyo

If there is anything to be learned here, is that Bush can do in America the same thing that Arroyo is doing, use the bogeyman of terrorism to jail his critics and suppress all dissent.

I doubt that we will Americans marching against the tyrant as they Filipinos are doing against theirs. Civic docility has become an American trademark since 9-11.

[ConcernedCanuk]

6. "Civic docility has become an American trademark since 9-11."

.
.
.

THAT is the REAL success of the Bush Administration that deserves the claim

"Mission Accomplished"

doncha think???

(sigh)

[Toots]

3. Well we do have a contingent of troops there fighting "terra"

Yes I bet Bush* does have a hand in this...

[IndianaGreen]

4. The Filipino elites are split on Arroyo

Former Presidents Cori Aquino and Fidel Ramos are calling for Arroyo to stepdown. They fear that they won't be able to control events if Arroyo hangs on to power.

Meanwhile:

Let us commemorate the 20th anniversary of the EDSA Uprising and benefit from its lessons in the present fight against the US-Arroyo regime

Communist Party of the Philippines
February 23, 2006

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) and the revolutionary movement join the Filipino people in commemorating the 20th anniversary of the EDSA Uprising that successfully overthrew the Marcos fascist dictatorship and ended 14 years of martial rule.

From February 22 to 25, 1986 millions demonstrated at EDSA and areas surrounding Malacañang Palace, as well as in major cities and towns across the Philippines while government military and police forces withdrew their support to the Marcos regime. These combined with other favorable factors and galvanized into a formidable force that ousted Marcos from Malacañang.

It is most propitious that the Filipino people are celebrating the EDSA Uprising's 20th anniversary as they are locked in battle with the Arroyo regime. The Filipino people see in Gloria Arroyo the face of the Marcos fascist dictatorship--the same duplicity, deceit, plunder and brutality with which her regime perpetuates itself in power and burdens the Filipino people. In certain aspects, such as her unsurpassed record of killings of activists by government's death squads and her brutal militarization of the countryside, Gloria Arroyo is even worse.

As a result of its pro-imperialist, anti-national, antipeople and counter- progressive policies, the Arroyo regime has further worsened the impoverishment, deprivation and sufferings of the Filipino people and exacerbated the ills of the entire rotten socio-economic and political system.

She bought off and connived with corrupt legislators, local officials, justices and generals with billions of pesos from public funds to cover up her crimes and ridicule the reactionary justice system. She has shown overweening arrogance, adamance, manipulativeness and high-handedness as she blocked and frustrated all avenues available under the present system of government for the satisfaction of the people's demand for truth, justice, a decent life and progress.

After manipulating, twisting laws and frustrating one parliamentary and judicial process after another, Malacañang is now dead set at changing the reactionary constitution in order to perpetuate the Arroyo regime despite the widespread clamor for its ouster, win the favor of the US and more Arroyo allies among the reactionary ruling classes, and derail the movement to oust Arroyo. But all these have succeeded only in furthering unrest among an aggrieved people and even among the ranks of the government's forces, including the younger officers and rank-and-file of the military and police. Arroyo has made inevitable another uprising by the mass of the Filipino people. She has stirred up a political storm capable of putting an end to her regime.

PRWC

[lumpy]

5. Has the Philippines ever had decent

leadership?