How not to wage a revolution

By Veronica Uy
INQUIRER.net

Editor’s note: INQUIRER.net reporter Veronica Uy was one of the journalists who covered the Makati Standoff at The Peninsula Manila on Nov. 29. This blog entry was written tongue-in-cheek and is meant to share what she experienced on the field and her thoughts on the events that unfolded.

1. Don’t stage it from a five-star hotel. It has been done before and it failed miserably. Do it from where it will create a lot more impact. A television station, a military camp, and of course Malacañang are the best bets. Communist rebels still wage their revolution from among their professed constituents of the poor in the countryside. Does Senator Antonio Trillanes IV know who his are? The 11 million voters who voted for him? Come on!

2. Don’t do it before a long weekend. People have already made plans. They don’t need another diversion when they are busy living their own lives or simply eking out a living. And certainly don’t do it close to the holidays. Filipinos live for temporary escapes from life’s hardships. Don’t be a Grinch and rob us of these momentary illusions. Even the most sensational coup attempts waged during this time of year were simply that — attempts.

3. Don’t just wing it. This is not a stand-up comedy act. Manila Pen was a battle zone and lines were drawn and people could’ve gotten killed. You can’t just escape your armed escorts and proceed with the attitude, “Let’s see who’ll join me and we’ll take it from there.” Have a plan, man.

4. Don’t use spokesmen who would not — or could not — explain what the entire exercise is about. Speak plainly. For instance, say, “This is a revolution. We don’t recognize Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as president of the republic. Join us and we’ll kick her out together.” None of the let-the-media-call-it-what-they-want crap. Heck, I wanted to call it a courtroom hearing escape that turned into a hotel takeover. And please, no wishy-washy we-were-in-the-area-by-chance excuse.

5. Do your homework. Erap getting kicked out of office does not count as an actual overthrow. It did not happen because of strong, massive protests against him. It happened because he was weak and soft. Remember, he stepped down. Marcos’ expulsion took a long, long, long time. It cost a lot of blood, sweat, and tears. And it took a lot of hard work like organizing, propaganda, alliance-building, and mobilizing.

6. Do know thyself. When the dust settled, Senator Panfilo Lacson gifted Senator Antonio Trillanes IV with Sun Tzu’s “Art of War.” How apt and fitting! Has the once-professional soldier become too much of a politician that he has forgotten this first basic rule of war?

7. Do know thy enemy. Again from the war master; because if the jailed senator and company didn’t know the strengths and weaknesses of their enemy, would they have started what they did in the first place? And then let it hang over their head like a wet rag dripping with mockery? What would have been better? A Faeldon-style escape for Trillanes and Brigadier General Danilo Lim should embarrass the government no end.

8. Do have balls. Be prepared to die. No one spoke it. The devil you dared was small fry. “We’re prepared for the long haul,” was what one of the spokesmen said. “I even brought clothes.” He got ready for a sleepover. Did you expect a tea party? Even the hotel kitchen closed down because the hotel staff also had to leave the hotel.

9. Do study history. The wages of revolution are death and destruction. The wages of the revolution against Marcos are still being paid now — a full generation hence — in death and destruction, in ways both subtle and not. Please address that. Because we won’t have an Erap or even a Gloria if we had done that.

10. Do not be crybabies. This is for all the protagonists in that Pen play — the mutinous soldiers, their leaders, and their supporters; the media; the government forces, their leaders, and their factotums. Notwithstanding the tear gas, to all of us, it was just, “Trabaho lang ito (All in a day’s work).” The only ones that had the right to cry were the hotel guests, who were unceremoniously evacuated from what should have been a restful holiday, and The Peninsula Manila, which pulled out of it four days later with what seemed like nary a scratch.

Epilogue:

Pen officials were in Tagaytay for a planning session when they were called back to handle the tragi-comedy that was unfolding in their hotel. At one point, the general manager, who was negotiating for the evacuation of the hotel guests with both Trillanes and Trillanes’ enemies, could only put up his hands in frustration at what was happening to his hotel.

At one time, the gorgeous hotel PR guy was “with all due respecting” a Magdalo official, gently arguing with him about the possibility that there and then Trillanes and company may be the villains. He could be right. A seventy-something woman whose hair was still in curlers was trying to keep her own panic in check, looking for a granddaughter who wanted to get back their deposit. A man on a wheelchair had to wait longer to get himself out of the hotel.

In the middle of all the chaos, the hotel’s general manager scolded a photographer who was standing on top of a chair in the lobby to get a better shot of Trillanes, who has come down from the mezzanine with a mob — a real bruising mob — of photographers, reporters, and cameramen with their soundmen and lightmen. “Get down from my chair. Get down from my chair. I am the general manager of this hotel.” At another, he was picking up a cigarette butt near the entrance to lobby, shaking his head with possibly this cartoon balloon over his head, “How can this be happening to me?”

Which is what I was feeling. I was pulled out of a rare one-day leave to cover the sorry episode. I successfully got into the hotel by pretending to be a hotel guest. When I saw that two of the assigned reporters were already there, I was caught between two emotions — the learned desire to nail a story and my instinctive aversion to pain. At almost four p.m., or an hour after the deadline had lapsed. I finally decided to leave. I tried to get out as a hotel guest and failed. When the Magdalo guards who were blocking the front door with only a thick rope finally gave the go signal, I got out, luckily with minutes to spare before government troops stormed the hotel with tear gas.

I saw and took videos of the SWAT boys and their big playthings and swore not to wear wedges as I ran away from the warning shots I realized were being fired my way.

I did not suffer the humiliation of being dragged out, handcuffed, or “processed.” I am now known — among friends who were worried after seeing me on TV thumbing my Blackberry inside the hotel — as “palos,” which I take to mean a slippery eel.

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