Sunday, July 8, 2007

Erap Aftermath?


Whether Estrada be acquitted or convicted, the cards are stacked in the administration’s favor.

If he is convicted, there’s the appeal to the Supreme Court. Unless the administration makes the blunder of transferring him to Bilibid and making a martyr out of Erap, it would just be status quo until the high court makes a final ruling.

If he’s convicted of a lesser charge, pardon can only be given if he does not appeal and he has always maintained that he won’t accept clemency from Mrs. Arroyo.

If ever he is acquitted, I don’t think he’d ask for the presidency back. He has made peace with the fact, i think, that it is lost. He’d probably content himself with making sure that he’d be a thorn in the side of Mrs Arroyo and be the opposition’s capo.

More importantly, there’d be little chance of people massing in the streets.

First, you have the weather. And I wouldn’t put it past the Arroyo government to do “cloud-seeding” just in case there’d be an attempt to gather people.

Second, by the end of the rainy season, at the very least by mid-October, there’s the general sense of well-being due to the Christmas season.

By January, when people are more hot-headed and now predisposed to mass-actions and protest rallies probably because they are again neck-deep in debt due to the holiday festivities, the issue would have blown-over.

1 comment:

MBW said...

Very pragmatic view, Jaxius.

Filipinos have a tendency to be extreme in their thoughts and action - a cultural trait really - and have the tendency to either be very, extremely complicated or very, extremely simplistic. Oftentimes, there's no in-between or when that happens, they are lost.

(In a way, very civil servant kind of attitude in the societal scheme of things - the civil servant is supposed to be the eternal state "dependent!")

Quite extraordinarily really this sense of instant self gratification (which is what this "extreme" culture is all about) over anything and everything Pinoys do with hardly a real forethought or after thought - just bang, bang or if ever, the process of analysis is followed by a slow motion kind of decision making, a process that could last ad vitam eternam!
Wonder where that comes from.