“The political mix bag that supported Arroyo in the House power grab was also represented in the Edsa 2 conspiracy.

In an eerily familiar sight, in the dead of night and under questionable circumstances, former President and now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo took her oath as Speaker before her supporters at the House of Representatives last Monday, hours after the State of the Nation Address of President Rodrigo Duterte.

The hostile takeover of the top post at the chamber evokes images of a similar event in which Arroyo’s hand was raised by House members as the supposed winner of the fraud-tainted 2004 elections.

The House then gave Arroyo the presidency with a million vote margin over king of movies and opposition standard bearer Fernando Poe Jr.

FPJ died later on without seeing a resolution of the allegations of his mandate stolen, particularly after the “Hello Garci” scandal revelations in which Arroyo was overheard in a taped conversation asking then Commission on Elections (Comelec) Virgilio Garcillano to secure her one million vote lead.

FPJ’s widow Susan Roces made the famous allegation that Arroyo stole the Presidency “not once, but twice.”

A “heavy blow to democracy” was the term used in the 2004 poll fraud and which captures also what happened last Monday.

Of course, the first time Arroyo launched a power grab was what resulted in Edsa 2 that ousted popularly elected President Joseph Estrada which many leaders and key personalities termed as “outside of the Constitution.”

In an elaborate plot that spanned more than a year, Arroyo, the yellow mob and their elite supporters from rich business groups, Catholic bishops and opportunists in government plotted Estrada’s ouster through a coup d’ etat in 2001 masked as a People Power revolt.

Cecilia Muñoz-Palma, who was a former Supreme Court Justice and chair of the 1987 Constitutional Commission, said Edsa 2 “happened during the impeachment trial of President Joseph Estrada [which] was unceremoniously disrupted and discontinued and the issues on hand were brought to the streets. The rule of law was set aside and the rule of force prevailed.”

Even Singapore Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew opined in a 26 January 2001 issue of The Straits Times that “the change of power in the Philippines was no boost for democracy because it was done outside the Constitution.”

A New York Times article on 6 February 2001 reported Edsa 2 was perceived as “an elitist backlash against a president who had overwhelmingly been elected by the poor. This time, it appears, ‘people power’ was used not to restore democracy but, momentarily, to supplant it.”

“The rule of law was set aside and the rule of force prevailed.

On 21 January 2001, Arroyo took her oath of office before then Supreme Court Chief Justice Hilario Davide Jr.

The political mix bag that supported Arroyo in the House power grab was also represented in the Edsa 2 conspiracy.

Arroyo’s extraconstitutional term in 2001 was the work of rebel military elements influenced by ex-President Fidel Ramos, Catholic bishops led by Jaime Cardinal Sin, leftists such as former communist rebel Satur Ocampo and the yellow mob led by the late President Cory Aquino.

Arroyo was the Vice President in 2001 when Estrada was forced from office.

Estrada was later detained but while in detention since his ouster contended that he remained the rightful President.

Arroyo used to the full what was termed as transactional politics to keep her in power for nine years but throughout that stretch, she failed to obtain a legitimate mandate.

Arroyo hoped to legitimize her presidency through the 2004 polls but allegations of fraud again haunted her and the six-year term that followed was alleged to have been the result of another political sleight of hand.

The political turmoil that followed nearly resulted in her ouster in 2006 which was the same year that she ordered the closure of this paper after she declared a state of national emergency in a ridiculous allegation that Daily Tribune was part of the aborted coup mainly through its adherence to its battlecry of “without fear, without favor.”

Now Gloria is back to her illegal ways of power grabs and transactional politics that does not bode well for President Rodrigo Duterte and the nation.

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