Wednesday, July 27, 2005

Sun Tzu Advice No. 16 "Deception does not work in politics."

Sun Tzu says. "All warfare is deception."

Whoever advised the President to take the charter change to the top of the agenda has employed a clever ploy. It's obviously a diversionary tactic, a way to skirt the issue by bringing out a new one in the hope that the second one will be more controversial and bury the old one. It's also a litttle carrot for Speaker Joe De Venecia, an ally of the President, to ensure that he does not move over to the other side and sign the impeachment complaint. And the President chose the State of the Nation Address as her stage to bring out the charter change card to employ the pomp and glamor that goes with this state ritual in highlighting the charter change agenda.

But here is the problem: deception works in war, but not in politics. Again, I attribute this mistake to poor intelligence work. All she has to do is look at the list of people out to get her to resign and she would know that the charter change plan will not work. Did her advisers think that they can divert Cory Aquino's attention away from the real issue of the day? Did they think Senate President Drilon will buy that? And the Makati Business Club -- I can almost hear them say, "Geez, thanks, more instability to ruin business."

What about her allies in the Senate? Senator Joker Arroyo's voice has not been heard lately. Do her advisers think Senator Joker Arroyo will continue to stay silent now that deception is about to be employed. Senator Manny Villar's quest for the Senate Presidency and the Presidency of the Republic is about to be smothered by charter change, do they expect him to be quiet too?

Ma'am, history has been unkind to liars. Deception can get you nowhere. Ditch the plan.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

And here I thought my blog was original. Turns out im 3 years behind! Haha. Great read, this blog of yours. Hope you check mine out as well.

Anonymous said...

do you think its possible that ramos and yo-da venecia themselves are also using a two prong attack against gloria, on one side the charter change and keeping her in check with the other prong of impeachment, thus pinning her and not giving her any moving space,

i would love to hear your comment regards this matter,

and how the next move would be played by gloria to escape this pincer situ.

Marvin Aceron said...

El Che,

Thanks for your comments. You have a promising blog yourself. Carry on.

Sunder,

Thanks for your comments.You gave me an idea for the succeeding Sun Tzu Advice. By the way, Almonte is a great Sun Tzu practitioner, and he is the brains behind Ramos and JDV. My thinking is that they found this moment of weakness of the Presidnet, and grabbed the opportunity to spring ithis idea. But the interesting part really is how GMA plays Ramos and JDV. It reminds me of that scene in Godfather III with Al Pacino and Andy Garcia. Andy Garcia suggests that they eliminate their enemies, and Al Pacino grabs Andy by the collar and tells him, "Never. Never let anyone know what you're thinking!" Now, I bet you JDV and FVR are stil guessing what are GMA's real thoughts on this Cha-Cha. They know its GMA's last card, but they don't know (I bet they're wishful thinking) if she will be true to her word. He he he sila na lang yata yung naniniwala. Kasi clouded yung judgment nila because of self-interest.

rolly said...

I just remembered the smile on JDV's face.. he must've been seeing a very big carrot at the time, huh? Must be using a magnifying glass.

rolly said...
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
Anonymous said...

By the way, I will have to disagree with Stun Tzu Advice No. 16. Deception does work in politics. Deception has brought people in power, and in fact deception me thinks is synonymous to politics here in the Philippines.

Of course, I do get your point, if politics were at its normalcy, deception will starve in the inate checks and balances of politics. But in this crocodile lake we have in the country, deception is like dead chickens feeding our hungry congressmen, este crocodiles:)