General Admissions
‘Pirma’
By Al S. Mendoza
MY BROTHER called me up last Sunday and said, “Will I sign my name for the cha-cha, Kuya?”
He lives at General Luna St., Mangatarem, Pangasinan. He said the captain in his barangay came personally to him to solicit his signature.
“Our kapitan is here in the house, accompanied no less by the town vice mayor,” my brother said.
The vice mayor is his barangay-mate.
I said to him, “If you are pro-GMA, sign. If not, don’t.”
He said: “I’m not pro-GMA, Kuya. I never liked her.”
“Then follow your conscience,” I said. “Be true to yourself.”
“There’s a problem, Kuya,” he said. “The vice mayor is the son of your classmate in high school.”
“I won’t and I can’t consider that a problem, utol,” I said.
My brother said, “But your classmate is here in the house.”
“So what?” I said.
“She wants to talk to you,” my brother said.
Uh-oh!
I asked him if my classmate knew we were talking on the phone.
“No,” he said. “I am here in my room.”
“In that case,” I said to him, “go, tell her I am asleep. Tell her the maid said I gave orders that I am not to be disturbed as I’ve just arrived from Bangkok. I’m still tired from the back-to-back trips in Hong Kong and Bangkok.”
He did what was told him.
An hour later, he called again.
“Guess what I did, Kuya?” he said.
What, utol?
“I didn’t sign,” he said. “I’m pro-FPJ.”
I never liked this idea of asking people to sign a petition on behalf of cha-cha (charter change).
In the first place, the spirit of R.A. 6735, the law being cited to advance the so-called people’s initiative to push for cha-cha, does not mandate four million signatures to re-write the Constitution. If there’s anything to it at all, it is that 6735 merely suggests the crafting of a recommendation for a provision in the Constitution to be changed.
The craze to have another shot at cha-cha is old hat. It’s been done before. If failed.
When our kabaleyan Tabako was still president, a group called Pirma went to petition the Supreme Court in 1997 to allow a Charter change on the strength of millions of people’s signatures. The High Court voted that down.
For all intents and purposes, it should end there. Alas, it’s now being resurrected. History, indeed, repeats itself.
Indeed, we don’t learn from history, we are bound to repeat it.
Indeed, we keep dwelling on the past, we will go on retrogressing instead of progressing.
This so-called people’s initiative to gather signatures for cha-cha is evil and a first cousin of the manipulative mind.
Wake up, fellas!
We are again being hoodwinked and, if we don’t watch it, we will be plunged once more into depths of Marcosian misery.
We need to rise and expose the excesses of the two percent of our population of 80 million that comprise the filthy rich of this benighted nation now being haplessly, haphazardly and hopelessly dragged by Ate Glue to the wasteland of turpitude and iniquity.
OK, don’t stop, go cha-cha and sign your own nation’s death sentence.
“Pirma” now, pray later.
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