{UAH} 'PHILIPPINES: IMPEACH THE VP
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1:23 PM |
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Robert Atuahirew,
-- The Philippinnes drama escalates to even greater heights of absurdity. Duterete is fighting soo many battles, it seesm he has spent his fist year in office just fire-fighting- apart from fighting his war on drugs. Just last week, he decided to put on hold the more dangerous war with the communists, but it seems he was just buying time, because th sniping between him and his Vice President has now broken out into open warfare. He now wants her to be impeached- he decided to strike the first blow before a motion for his own impeachment can be filed because he has locked up Senator Leila de Lima, who was to lead the impeachment motion in parliament.
Just a brief background info: Vice president Leni Robredo comes from one of the ruling landlord political dynasties that have ruled the Philippines for the last 200 years. Her party supported Duterete in the presidential elections on condition she would be his running mate.
Philippines politics is broadly divided between "left" and "right" and this is always how it has been. The Communist Party is the acknowledged leader of the left, although there are a number of other left-leaning parties. The right parties are almost all political dynasties belonging to the landlord families who dominate every aspect of Philippines life. About 3 in number, they have taken turns sharing power for the last 200 years. They maintain their tight control by inter-marrying within themselves.
The first person to break the land-lord stranglehold on power was dictator Ferdinand Marcos, but he did it by using the military and instituting a one man fascist dictatorship. The second was the movie star Joseph Estrada in the 1990s, but he was quickly impeached for corruption The third is Rodrigo Duterete himsself. So in over 200 years of independence, the Philippines has been continously ruled by landlord families with only brief interruptions by Marcos, Estrada and now Duterete.
It is only the Communist Party, of all the political parties, which has its own army, called the New Peoples Army. The NPA variously controls between 10-40% of the Philippines countryside where it runs a parallel administration. The aim of the Communist Party and its army the NPA is to overthrow the Philippines state and establish a socialist republic in the Philippines.
Please note that Marcos, Estrada and Duterete have all come to power on the basis of widespread popular discontent with landlord rule. But none of them have any significant political organisations. It is only the landlords and the Communist Party who have actual MUSCLE, interms of organisation, resources, personnel, ideology and programmes. The Marcoses, Estradas and Dutertes have all been populists riding on popular anger, but without having any strong organisational muscle on the ground to withstand a concerted political attack by either the landlords on the right or the communists on the left.
So this is the dilemma that Duterte has. He has to play a balancing game. he can not afford to upset the landlords by impeaching Roberdo. He also can not afford to upset the communists because behind the communists stand a formidable army steeped in battle- an army that has been fighting since 1945.
How Dueteret plays the balancing game remains to be see. But it is a very tight rope he is walking as he does not specifically seem to have an imperilaist master in the mammner that Feridnand Marcos had in the Americans who regarded him as their lap dog in South East Asia.
Bobby
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