Antonio Trillanes, failed mutineer turned Senator of the Republic, has decided to play for all the marbles. After holing up in the Manila Peninsula with about 30 soldiers, he has asked the public to choose between him and the President.
I get the sense that this pseudo-mutiny or quasi-coup will not end peacefully.
December 27th, 2007 at 9:40 pm
I would like to emphasize that I am a bias moderator, so another bias second moderator will be most welcome.
December 27th, 2007 at 9:32 pm
Quotes above taken from the discussions between two wise men in this entry, one condemning a perceive corrupt and morally bankrupt administration, the other defending it. The topic of their discussions are the fine points of morality in our government and people.
December 27th, 2007 at 9:12 pm
‘I will agree that declining the money is probably the most prudent thing to do. It is probably what I’d do.’, said the wise man.
‘The truth is the best and most moral thing to do is to take the money,….’, said the same wise man.
‘People think they are being moral but in truth they are not. That’s why they are hypocrites.’, said the wise man again.
A very wise lesson in hypocrisy, indeed.
December 26th, 2007 at 11:55 pm
‘…most moral thing to do is to get the money, vote for someone else, report the vote-buyer….blah, blah…’.
MOTTO OF THE YEAR! Exactly what Gov. Panlilio of Pampanga did. Now the president is snubbing him because of that…and then all town mayors in his province are ganging up on him. Poor gov.
December 26th, 2007 at 4:52 am
“So you think the best and most moral way to handle it is to decline accepting the money? Tell me how does that stop that same vote buyer from offering the money to someone else more amenable? The fact is it doesn’t. The vote buyer is inconvenienced slightly but ultimately gets what he wants.”
Under the Omnibus Election Code, the vote buyer gets prosecuted and if found guilty jailed. Jail is not an inconvenience if crimes are properly prosecuted. The problem is the people who are supposed to enforce the law are the violators of it. The Comelec is supposed to be an independent constitutional body. It is supposed to be independent from the President. But since Marcos bastardized the entire electoral system which GMA and her cohorts learned from, the system has ceased to work. So the best think is to fix the system Constitutionally by amendment and clip the powers of the President by taking away her appointment powers of independent bodies especially investigatory ones. We lack the necessary laws because your congressmen would rather go on a junket with the President than enact laws. Here to curb the powers of the President, the democratic Congress passed the Counsel Reauthorization Act of 1994 whose office is responsible for prosecuting the President of the U.S. The independent counsel (last one was Judge Kenneth Star) is appointed by the Attorney General (Secretary of Justice in the Philippines). But because there GMA controlls the Secretary of Justice it will not work. Congress should pass a law creating an office of the independent counsel and insulating the Office of the Ombudsman (prosecutor of public officials). But the sad fact remains that Merceditas Guttierez, your present Ombudsman, is a close associate of Mike Arroyo. So, we are sure that she won’t lift a finger to prosecute Mike Arroyo and his cronies.
Doing an act which is moral does not require congratulations. A person who has a conscience will inform himself that what he has done is right in the eyes of the God, the law and the people. His congratulations is possessing a good character which is beyond reproach. (God will surely reward you in the end if you did and punish you if you did not).
Anyone who expects to be congratulated for doing what is right and requires payment needs to think more. You are doing what is moral not only for yourself but also for other people, your country, your children and their future. The public officials you place in power today will affect the national economy, our way of life and our children’s future. We are only in this world temporarily, we are not owners of this world. In whatever we do, we have to think beyond our times because decisions that we make now will affect future generations. Case in point is the environment. If we dump our garbage in our waters, the only ones we will be hurting is ourselves and our children. Another is population. If we do not encourge people to control their unabated procreation, there will come a time that there won’t be any resources left for everyone because its either destroyed by pollution or consumed by overpopulation. It doesn’t take a genius to understand this, however, it will require a little vision and consideration of other people.
“The truth is the best and most moral thing to do is to take the money, vote for someone else, report the vote buyer, then donate the money.”
In taking the money, you become a co conspirator in the crime. Because you have profited in the crime you are equally guilty of it. You won’t even qualify as a credible witness on the witness stand against the vote buyer because he can always claim that you asked him for the money to vote for his candidate. He has evidence to back that up because you are in possession of the money. Even if you donate the money, the law does not distinguish. “Ubi lex non distinguit, nec nos distinguere debemus,” (what the law does not distinguish we cannot distinguish). I understand where your coming from…ala Robin Hood. But if you rob a bank and give it to the poor, you’ll still get prosecuted and jailed because you violated the law. The law will not care about your motives. At most it will mitigate your sentence but it will not exempt you from being prosecuted and jailed. The politican-crooks will be in a better position than you becasue they won’t serve time even if they committed a graver crime than you did.
You have a penchant for branding people “hypocrites.” A hypocrite is a person who puts on a false appearance of virtue or religion or a person who acts in contradiction to his or her stated beliefs or feelings. I have been accused of a lot of things but hypocrisy is not one of them. Especially coming from a person who doesn’t even know me personally. You are engaging in personal atacks on people you don’t even know. That’s reckless, irresponsible and hateful. It shows that you have a maturity level of a 12-year-old who cannot even engage in a civilized exchange of ideas without resorting to name-calling.
I don’t only believe in my religious and moral beliefs but I ACT ON THEM. A hypocrite is a person who says one thing and acts contrary to his beliefs.
“They are fed a bunch of lies and deluded by easy answers.”
It’s each person’s look out to determine if what he or she is fed is true. The only easy propaganda I have heard is from GMA’s government. People are being fed with false economic data, cover-ups and white washes of graft and corruption. Even the World Bank suspended lending to the government for certain projects becasue they know that the money is being stolen. Whatever economic data you put out there, and even if most Filipinos believe in it, the world knows otherwise. That is why we have become the laughing stock of the entire world. An example of this when GMA pulled out Philippine troops out of Iraq because one Filipino got kidnapped. That just shows she values her PR to pinoys more than her word or commitments to other countries. That does not only show she is weak but that she lacks character to honor her commitments.
“People think they are being moral but in truth they are not.”
You do not seem to know how to read. As I said and quoted from the Bible NO ONE IS GOOD. ALL HAVE SINNED. THEREFORE ALL ARE IMMORAL. But having a good government doesn’t even have to touch on morality. Even if you just require PROFESSIONALISM and ETHICS (which is not necessarily based on what is moral), the GMA government has failed and it has failed big time! A trully professional public servant does NOT steal or lie to the people. Example if you work for a stock brokerage firm and you start churning your client’s accounts without authorization you are being UNPROFESSIONAL and UNETHICAL.
“That’s why problems remain and don’t go away. Filipinos aren’t willing to face reality.”
The problems are present because people who steal money and work for themselves instead of the people on whose behalf they SWORE to work for are doing what they are not supposed to be doing. You can’t commit crimes and blame another person for your crime! You can’t blame a powerless Juan de La Cruz for Malacanang’s fault. That’s dumb. The solution is to indentify the criminals and take them out. Example, if you are a doctor and your patient has a brain tumor, you don’t cut off the leg and hope your patient will get better. You go after the source of the illness and take out the tumor through surgery.