FAILURE OF POLLS: WHO GAINS?

Erle Frayne D. Argonza

Good day to you all!

Manila’s mass media has been filled with news recently about the possibility of a failure of the May elections. The failure scenario is being forecast at a time when Filipinos will have a first taste of computerized elections.

For everyone’s clarification, the failure to computerize previous elections had got nothing to do with absence of expertise locally who could design software and hardware systems customized for poll purposes, since our infotech sector here had reached maturity sometime back in the 1990s yet precisely due to high-level expertise here. Our computerization has failed because dirty politicians (who were accustomed to cheating) and poll officials (COMELEC) have been exhibiting a ‘cultural lag’ in adapting to rapidly emerging technologies, hence their effective barring of poll computerization in the past.

Finally here we are, dangled with the state-of-the-art poll tools and methods, now ready or so it seems to face the polls with the new game. Albeit, in the process of the preparations for the polls, obstacles kept on cropping out from the mouths of poll execs, thus rendering the entire exercise as low in credibility in terms of public trust.

To make matters worst, the post of Chief Justice (CJ) of the Supreme Court has been rendered vacant. So crucial is the CJ as the magistrate is the one mandated to formalize the oath-taking of execs who win in the polls. Capping this rather toxic issue is the controversy in the choice of the next magistrate.

The clear scenario is that, after the polls, the positions of all the top state posts will be vacant, leaving no one to steward the nation during the brief transition to the time when execs will be declared winners and will then begin their respective incumbencies. To add incendiary overtones to the already heated discourses on the matter, which were spiced up with protest rallies of late, a state official (USec Planas) pronounced the possibility of a take-over by the military as a pre-emptive measure to avoid anarchy during the period of vacancies.

Belaboring the obvious, like unto some kindergarten quacks, political stakeholders have already started accusing palace officials as the diabolical plotters and greatest beneficiaries of a poll failure. Supposedly, military’s top chief Gen. Bangit takes over government, and then declares outgoing Gloria Arroyo as president on an extended term, thus perpetuating the governance by the ruling Arroyo family.

What is less obvious, which many would fail to realize, is that the neo-conservatives or ‘neocons’ who are well entrenched in the US Defense establishment is again into another set of synarchic destabilization in the region, and they are using their pawns inside the Philippine military to do their bidding. The country’s military maintains its organic ties to Pentagon and is ever-ready for some destabilization from the top (Washington & Europe).

The neocons and global oligarchic operators have been behind the institution of insurgent groups in the country, to create a situation of perpetual polarization and anarchy. Insurgencies are part of the politico-military games of the global elites (military-industrial complex is another term), and the game goes to the extent of our own military being cajoled to sell arms to the insurgents in order to renew armed confrontations, leading to more arms sales and ballooning the wallets of corrupt military & state officials.

If indeed Arroyo is amenable to being re-instated as chief exec on an extended term, she knows the arrangement as entirely hatched from Washington DC. Whatever role she performs in the latest political fiasco is only peripheral, she being just another pawn in the broader agenda of the neocons and global elites for the southeast.

The possible election of a nationalist regime, led by the noblesse senator Manny Villar, is perceived as a threat to the neocons and global oligarchs. Such a regime would put an end to the insurgencies most likely, an act that would snuff off the polarity games of the elites and hurt the pockets of corrupt military & state officials who would lose their contract payolas and gains from arms procurements.

Another scenario that could happen is that a people power by the Yellow Forces will be launched, bringing us back ala déjà vu to 1986. Seeing that the mass rising is unstoppable, the generals would then opt to support the civil disturbance and the presidency of Noynoy Aquino, even if it turns out that this mediocre candidate tails in survey ratings and poll returns.

Noynoy is the candidate choice of a greater wing of the global oligarchy led by the Anglo-Dutch financiers, with their puppet personages active in the Makati Business Club. The clerico-fascist wing (which has links with the Vatican) is with this conglomerate, with one of their leaders at the helm of the CIA-initiated Namfrel.

A hyper-convergence of the efforts of these unholy puppets of the global financiers/oligarchs and their militaristic subalterns (neocons) isn’t far-fetched a reality, as one ought to recognize. Since the neocons faction has been marginalized with the recent pre-eminence of the liberal-to-left factions of oligarchic subalterns (eg. Democrat victory in the USA), it is most likely that RP’s generals will play the game and ride the wind whichever it will go, and will not attempt to put up a junta that is too autonomous from their Pentagon sponsors’ agenda.

With just around seven (7) weeks before poll day, the plot is unfolding fast and making the polls more colorful though threateningly crisis-filled. Let’s see whether the cry-wolf propaganda about failure & military take-over will spoil the polls at all.

[Philippines, 21 March 2010. See: http://unladtau.wordpress.com, http://erleargonza.blogspot.com]