LuisTeodoro.com

One word summarizes the Mindanao, and perhaps the country’s, present situation. That word is confusion. The word “chaos” is a close second.

How it all began this time is clear enough. As in the year 2000, it began with the government: on the day last month when the Armed Forces launched its attack on the Moro Islamic Liberation Camp’s Buliok stronghold in Pikit, Cotabato.
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It has become increasingly difficult to find any rational basis for what Gloria Macapagal Arroyo—allegedly President of the Philippines and commander-in-chief of its armed forces—is doing. Unless, however, she is neither, and still has her eyes on 2004.

If, as already suspected, she has surrendered control over the government to the Philippine military in the hope of keeping its support once she announces that she’s changed her mind and would run for the presidency come that critical year, both what she’s been doing and not doing could at least be understood.
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Apparently unable to defend its obvious, blatant, pathetic, dangerous and possibly treasonous support for the imminent U.S. war on Iraq, the Arroyo administration now claims that it’s “really” for peace.

The “really” is important, in that no one in his right mind who has been listening to what they’ve been saying—and noting what they’ve been doing—can ever conclude that Mrs. Arroyo and her leading defense, security and foreign affairs officials are for a peaceful solution to the Iraqi crisis, which is what being “for peace” should mean.
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The U.S. war on Iraq will have at least unforeseen consequences. There are predictions, however, that the world will witness an oil crisis the likes of which it has not seen before should the United States launch its war of aggression against that small, weak and already devastated country.

A period of instability in the entire Middle East has also been predicted, even if the United States succeeds in quickly ousting Saddam Hussein. A wave of terrorist attacks against the United States Britain, and whatever other countries that join the “coalition” that George W. Bush has cobbled together could follow the instant the U.S. starts hostilities.
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To expect the United States not to attack Iraq would be to believe the impossible. It has massed and is continuing to position troops that could number as many as 150,000 in the Gulf region, prepared its military bases to support an attack, enlisted the cooperation of countries like Turkey to allow the use of the latter’s bases by U.S. troops, positioned carrier task forces in the Persian Gulf, and continues to escalate its rhetoric.
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Commemorated on January 20, when Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr. swore then-Vice President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo into the presidency, the second anniversary of People Power 2 this year occurred less than three weeks after Mrs. Arroyo’s December 30 speech.

Ever hopeful, although perhaps clutching at straws, many Filipinos thought that by announcing her withdrawal from the 2004 presidential elections, Mrs. Arroyo would refocus her government’s priorities towards the reforms implicit in People Power 2’s successful campaign to oust then-President Joseph Estrada.
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Deposed president Joseph Estrada performed nearly as expected during a Senate hearing Malacañang had earlier predicted would turn into “a circus.”

Except that the Senate hearing on the controversial contract of the Argentine firm Industrias Metalurgicas Pescarmona S. A. (IMPSA) with the Philippine government to construct the Caliraya-Botocan-Kalayaan (CBK) power plant complex did not exactly turn into a three-ring spectacle, but into an opportunity for Estrada to give vent to his frustrations and resentments.
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