It is difficult to take seriously a man who once likened President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III to the Lord of the Rings character Aragorn. Conrado de Quiros has an extensive track record of articulating a taste for seeing nebulous airy-fairy processes trumping the more real black-and-white due processes that lend stability to most democratic states. Back during Noynoy’s campaign for the presidency, de Quiros often gushed about the efficacy of “people power” — how the “spirit” of this “force” somehow presents a more robust mandate to govern and, as such, exists by and of itself. This is a legacy of the sort of thinking that latched on to the idea that the presence of a mob alone lends a person around which said mob rallies a mandate to effect an action (such as govern).
In the case of this moronic “people-power”-as-mandate that de Quiros keeps pontificating about, the flaw in that thinking is that in reality, one needs institutions and processes built around these to channel the people’s “will”. The validity of the authority claimed by a street mob is vastly more debatable than the validity of the authority vested by, say, a systematic accounting and aggregating of individuals’ votes (such as in an election, a plebiscite, or a referendum). This is a notion not too different from the way energy released in an explosion (such as one coming from a bomb) fundamentally differs with that coming from a controlled combustion (such as what comes out of an engine). An explosion is raw and in most cases destructive. A controlled combustion is energy that is harnessed and therefore productive and, as such, sustainable.
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So today, we see the esteemed Conrado de Quiros yet again spouting new moronisms underpinned by this same old thinking. In this most recent of his ululations, de Quiros is now advocating a similar dose of “people power” in the summary passing of judgment on former Secretary and retired General Angelo Reyes.
Indeed, you go by the principle that flight is an admission of guilt, then you must at least suspect, if not find, Reyes guilty as charged. There is no more resolute form of flight than the permanent one he took.
But of course, Mr de Quiros. Everyone with an asshole has an opinion on just about every matter. And Reyes’s obvious guilt is your opinion. But even if your opinion is worth the ink used to print it, just like your Aragorn of 2011 mutineer-turned-“senator” Antonio Trillanes, you fail to grasp the whole point of Congressional “inquiries” such as that Senate “inquiry” in which Trillanes went on a tililing rampage against Reyes. There is no judgement that is meant to be passed in any of the Congressional kibitzing that are making headline news today. The jobs of the law makers who make up these grandstanding exercises is, guess what: to make laws. As such the outcome expected of these law makers is a clearer view of how legislation needs to be improved. Senator Jinggoy Estrada himself made this quite clear:
The instigator of the witch hunt himself, Senator Jose “Jinggoy” Estrada, admitted that the only tangible outcome of the Senate inquiry into AFP corruption is a “committee report” and a bahala na (“hope-for-the-best”) prayer that the Department of Justice would run with their “findings”…
“Ako gusto ko na ring matapos lahat it [I also want everything to be finished]. Come out with a committee report, enact bills to reform budget system of the armed forces. Tapos bahala na yung [Afterwards, it’s up to the] Ombudsman, bahala na ang [It’s up to the] DoJ [Department of Justice] to prosecute,†he said.
And for that end, Angelo Reyes was turned into a maddened and bewildered bull.
A committee report — one intended to “enact bills to reform budget system of the armed forces” (in Estrada’s Tarzaneque English) — Mr de Quiros and NOT the verdict around which the little gray blob in your head seems to have connected the synapses of its handful of neurons.
Perhaps learn a bit, Mr de Quiros, from your colleague Amando Doronilla whose habitual bigger take on the issues you presume to dissect with what seem to be severely stunted faculties, I sample below from his recent work:
What is undeniable is that Reyes’ death highlighted the larger issue that the military establishment, more than his person, is on the spot for alleged corrupt practices involving disbursements of public funds—a practice no less reprehensible than the financial venalities in its civilian counterparts in the legislative and executive departments of government, which are now inquiring with hypocritical zeal into how honest is the military establishment in spending its funds or whether it can be trusted as a custodian of these monies, in protecting this largesse from the predatory raids or looting by greedy generals and colonels.
Compare yours — summary judgment — to Doronilla’s — a landscape of opportunities to improve frameworks. Whilst you busy yourself with the task of hammering a nail, Doronilla lays out the scheme of nails to be hammered. The difference in scope and depth of thinking applied to yours and his work, to me, kind of serves as a good measure for comparing the quality of the minds that produce said thinking.
And in case you hadn’t jumped up high enough to catch the key irony here sailing way above your little pointed head, I’ll spell it out, Mr de Quiros by again quoting Mr Doronilla who does a lot more justice to the concept in a way that even my own brilliant mind can never hope to equal:
When General Reyes and the general staff walked up the stage at EDSA, at 4:30 p.m. on Friday, Jan. 19, 2001, where civilian leaders were assembled amid huge demonstrations against President Estrada, to declare the withdrawal of the military’s support from his government, a new era was born. Reyes declared: “On behalf of the 113,000-strong Armed Forces of the Philippines, we wish to announce that we are withdrawing our support from the incumbent president. We will support his constitutionally mandated successor under Article 2, Section 3, of the Constitution … the AFP must protect the people and the State.†With these words, Reyes transferred the Armed Forces’ allegiance to Vice President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. “We have burned our bridges behind us and there is no turning,†Reyes declared as a thunderous roar welled up from about half a million people, chanting, “Soldiers of the people are taking a stand!â€
There’s your “people power” in all its flawed glory, Mr de Quiros; and the pivotal role played by the very people you selectively demonise today. The reason you are so easily able to apply this selective logic to your moronisms is because, at the end of the day (with apologies to those who hate that cliché) the rulings of street mobs will ALWAYS be subject to debate and (as you demonstrate) flawed interpretation.
benign0 is the Webmaster of GetRealPhilippines.com.
benignoO, iyan ang sinasabi ko lagi na sa nangyayaring imbetigasyon ngayon tungkol sa corrupt practices sa AFP ay huwag nating kalilimutan ang mas malaking corruption sa pondo ng Presidente, senators, at congressmen ang porkbarrels na ginagamit nila sa kanilang pansariling kapakanan, pagpapanatili nila at mga kamag-anak sa kapangyarihan,pagpapayaman at pagpapaganda ng kanilang image sa halip na para sa development ng bansa. Ito ay galing sa bulsa ng taxpayers at wala silang karapatan na gamitin ito sa pansariling kapakanan. Sa ibang bansa katulad ng Canada, ang mga mamayaman ay laging nakatutok sa paggastos ng mga politicians dahil ito ay galing sa bulsa nila.
Wala kang magagawa kay Mr. Quiros dahil malaki ang pakinabang niya administration ngayon. Tiyak na aattend iyan sa celebration ng EDSA 1. Ako, matagal na akong walang paki-alam dyan sa EDSA 1 dahil pagkatapos ng EDSA 1 ay lalong sumama ang ang kalagayan ng Pilipinas.
Trillanes is now the new Aragorn because de Quiros just recently coined PNoy the new Leonidas. Dunno if having two badasses in one person, but Pnoy cannot even be one badass.
Conrado de Quiros is suffering from paranoia….
>but Pnoy cannot even be one badass.
I bound to disagree at this part.
Pnoy is bad.
Pnoy is an ass.
See? Two things in one person! And PNoy being the new Leonidas? This is madness!
THIS.IS.FILIPINAS!!!!!
EVERY NIGHT WE DINE
IN HELL!!!!!!!!
I was expecting more like:
MADNESS? THIS. IS. PORSCHE!!!!
Was “senator” Antonio Trillanes IV ever a soldier?
Read the full article here!
This ultimate political opportunist and ultimate crook, Enrile, is the one who initiated the investigation…he is the Senate President…Old dog, old trick again…
great article! and thanks for the link…that trillanes has been a senator for how many years now would make enrile’s defense that he is a “neophyte” baseless. i mean, what had he been doing all that time in detention? Â he doesn’t even know that a senator’s job is to legislate and not do police or judicial work. Â and he’s one of the biggest spenders in the senate?!…and since he is now a senator, what has he done by means of crafting laws to reform the afp? Â if i am to believe a comment posted here in ap that he is a procurement officer (hm, wasn’t his mother a supplier?) in the navy, i guess that makes him a soldier with a desk job. nonetheless, he should have had sufficient knowledge of the dealings in afp to help him author a law that would help end corruption in that institution.
Reports say that PMA Class 1979, the class to which Sen. Sonny Trillanes belongs will be “punishing†him for “humiliating a senior officer,†namely the late Angie Reyes, former Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP) chief of staff, saying there is that rule of respect between upperclassmen and underclassmen in the PMA. Alam ba to ni Trillanes?
Minor correction. Trillanes is a member of class 1997 and not 1979. Might just be a typo. =)
1995 pala..
Real military men have every reason to hate him. He violated the rule of military courtesy. And maybe much more.
This is the trouble when the Military Establishment is used by Politicians for their Political purposes…We have now military adventurists turning into political opportunists. Military officials behaving like our amoral politicians…the military establishment has a hell of work to do; to restore its Honor and Dignity..
EDSA I, is not a revolution…it is a simulated uprising by military and political opportunists, lead by Enrile and Ramos…with the Oligarch/Feudal Lord, Cory Aquino , as their Mascot. The C.I.A. puppeteer was in the background, pulling the strings..
Conrado de Quiros, may be suffering from delusion and paranoia…he has the symptoms. Like Noynoy Aquino….these people need some mental healing to retrun their sanities back…
The way I see it, ganito lang yan eh…at the end of the day (with apologies to those who hate that cliché) CDQ is getting senile…
Hay naku CDQ.
Please don’t misuse metaphorical comparisons indiscriminately. Homer didn’t write Odysseus et al. for nothing. So did Ovid, Virgil, etc. And so do conjurers of stories of elves, dwarves, knights, dragons, etc., etc.
By God. I wish you weren’t taking meth while writing metaphors. Well. For Nick Joaquin – San Miguel Beer is enough for him. For Aldous Huxley – mescaline. For Timothy Leary and Ken Kesey – LSD.
Peace.
That is because Mala pobres Pilipinas wants everyone to read up on existing Pinoy literary classics rather than established works from EVIL western worlds of YUROP. Apparently they think ideas and styles gets recycled but there is a reason why Homer, Ovid, Virgil, Tolkien or even Dickens survives eons and are considered literary masterpieces. Those kind of writers are once in every millenia. Even Hunter S. Thompson is better than CdQ and he tripped out much better than this old man and whatever his drug fixation is that leads him to write these contrived pieces.
A conjurer of cheap tricks cannot possibly compare to the awesomeness that is Aragorn. on a side note Enrile is Saruman and PNoy is Gollum
Someone hurry and mail this rebuttal to Inquirer. If they won’t post it (for sure 😉 ), give it to their rivals! Have Ms. Pedrosa place it on her Philstar column or send it to Manila Bulletin.
My Jesuit Priest educators, in my High School, taught me: “EVIL FLOURISHES IN OUR COUNTRY; BECAUSE GOOD MEN DO NOTHING.” Apathy is the cause why we have these problems; and people who are our leaders…
parepareha lang yan mga yan.. kaya ganyan si trillanes.. bago lang kasi..pasikat pa lang.. at magrerelection yan…eh currupt din yan….kiniquestion nga ni joker arroyo.. sa kung bakit ang laki ng gastos nya sa pork barrel nya..samatalang nakakulong….pareparehas lang sila.lahat..
Was never impressed with Conrado de Quiros. A certain facility in style that he has does not make up for the wretched logic and irrationality of his ravings. I’m begining to doubt Conrado de’s sanity.
Pare-pareho kayong gago. Itong si Benigno ay mukhang bayaran ng mga korap.
Right here is the right blog for anyone who would like to understand this topic.
You realize a whole lot its almost tough to argue with you (not that I actually will need to…HaHa).
You definitely put a new spin on a subject that’s been discussed for a long time.
Great stuff, just great!