NEW COUP REVIEW
This Sunday morning, a bunch of junior military officers holed up in the Oakwood apartments and G4 complex. Their grievances: among other concerns like low pay and lack of housing as compared perhaps with then Philippine National Police... an accusation that General Angelo Reyes was behind not only the sale of weapons and ammo to the MILF, but also gave the go ahead for the bombing of the Davao airport by military personnel. Another accusation - the potential declaration of Martial Law in August of this year.

Most of the concerns are about the impact to the economy... and yet, these officers don't appear to be concerned about that. They must be concerned about generals and other government officials growing wealthy over the deaths of the comrades and bloodbrothers... enough so that they are willing to lay down their lives (having already said goodbye to their families already).

As for the involvement of ousted presidents and members of the opposition... it's likely they are using these military groups for their own purposes with promises of support and so on. I'd be shocked if this were the case, though... since these problems were certainly aggravated if not started by that prior administration.

I think that there's obviously more complexity to the situation than is apparent on the news and the spin placed on it by the various political parties. From the statement of the military personnel, it's apparent that the junior officers believe in what they're doing, but were probably convinced or manipulated by others to believe that there's no other option.

And the politicians are having a field day, jockeying for position.

Apparently, though, the Estrada camp released a CD across the country (which I don't have a copy of) that shows how the plight of the common Filipino has worsened in the time of PGMA (including of course the injustices against the former president). So there was SOME planning in the Estrada camp for this.

I hope it doesn't overshadow their grievances about the military. Apparently they DID express their concerns directly to PGMA, but nothing happened in the interim. So they assumed she was part of the problem...