Now, talks are rife that Gloria is poised to declare martial rule herself, just to prolong her regime beyond 2010. Malacanang is tight-lipped on its incidious plan, even denied the allegations made by its former defense secretary. Former secretary Avelino Cruz said the People should be vigilant against attempts at imposing a de-facto martial rule, saying that Gloria has the "tendency" to go that route.
However, New Philippine Revolution thinks otherwise. The palace is really not hot on the idea, since this will further erode public trust and could even lead to a massive destabilization. Cruz is right--Gloria has ruled this country for so long, more than enough to effect damage to government institutions. It does'nt take an intensification of the Mindanao conflict to actually justify an emergency rule. Since 2004, the country has been under tremendous seige from big-time operators, unscrupulous government officials and profiteers. Government has been doing a balancing act eversince and it has done a very good job, to the detriment of the People.
What we need is an emergency plan to insulate the country against global financial attacks, in the light of the US sub-prime crisis. The next few months would truly be challenging, especially to Small and Medium sized enterprises, real estate companies and even manufacturing firms. A slowdown in economic performance is expected from all of these, but, it will not lead to a systemic breakdown, no, not yet.
A breakdown will happen after 2010, when housing mortgages mature and the financial sector finds it hard to convert these into financial instruments. That breakdown unfortunately will be quite hard to solve, even by transfusions from the national government.
