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A Restive July
By Germelina A. Lacorte
davaotoday.com
Published: Jan. 28, 2006
DAVAO CITY -- As protests rocked the Arroyo administration in Manila, mayors and governors in the provinces were plotting moves to keep her in power. On July 1, as militant and opposition groups launched a series of protest actions calling for Arroyo to resign and as rumors of defection among the ranks of young military officers grew, the top brass of the police and the armed forces were sighted in a meeting with Mayor Rodrigo Duterte at the Harana restaurant in Davao.
Police director general Arturo Lomibao, outgoing AFP Chief of Staff General Efren Abu and incoming chief of staff General Generoso Senga said it was nothing but a "social call" on the mayor. Duterte denied the visit had something to do with a “loyalty check” in the armed forces.
A week after Abu's visit, Duterte warned groups agitating for another Edsa revolt in Manila that the police and the military will be forced to step in if the President was forced to resign. Three days later, over 350 Mindanao leaders -- mostly governors and mayors -- held what they called the Mindanao political summit at the Marco Polo hotel. The group was supposed to map out options for the political crisis rocking the Arroyo administration but the following day, they came up with a united show of support for Arroyo, raising the specter of a separate Mindanao Republic if Arroyo was booted out of power in another Edsa revolt. Duterte made his stand clear on July 28: he would only support an independent Mindanao if Arroyo was ousted from power. He did not say he's going to support it if Arroyo stayed.
Even Pantaleon Alvarez, Arroyo's former transportation and communications secretary, who was later caught peddling the idea of a One-People-Mindanao (OPM) -- complete with a flag and national anthem -- at the height of mounting calls for Arroyo to resign refused to make public the list of officers and the people behind the independent Mindanao movement. Which led many to suspect the call for a separate Mindanao Republic was only used by incumbent governors and mayors as a rallying cry to keep Arroyo in power.
Meanwhile, tension mounted as the Davao visit of Susan Roces, the widow of the late Fernando Poe Jr., approached. She was here July 21 for the launching of the oust-GMA movement, the Gloria Step Down Movement (GSM), in preparation for the four-day nationwide protest action that's supposed to culminate July 25. On the very day that Arroyo will deliver her State of the Nation Address (SONA), protesters would "declare" the creation of the so-called transition council.
Duterte warned he would arrest anti-SONA troublemakers but acceded the following day that the Davao anti-Gloria rally had been peaceful. Protests against Arroyo dragged on down to August, but with protest groups unable to muster the numbers, it eventually petered off. The call for a Mindanao republic, which was but a rallying cry of local politicians to support the Arroyo administration, culminated in Duterte's September 16 address before the 14th Mindanao Business Conference (Minbizcon) here where he warned agitators in Manila to "leave Mindanao alone," citing the oft-repeated lamentations about Mindanao contributing a large percentage of the country's agriculture production and yet receiving only a measly share of the government's resources.
Other stories that made it to the headlines here include armed offensives launched by the Communist New People's Army (NPA) in Agusan, the court order for the arrest of NPA leader Kumander Parago, and a councilor killed in New Corella, allegedly by the NPA rebels. Accusations of corruption among different blocs at the City Council came up on July 19, on the eve of the release of the Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey of traders, showing widespread corruption at City Hall. (Germelina A. Lacorte/davaotoday.com)
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