By Antonio C. Abaya
Written on Dec. 22, 2008
” I do feel so bad as I have known her since she was a young girl, she treats me with affection as she knows my close relationship with her Dad and Mom especially, and her brother Arthur is one of my best friends. I so want her wrong to be rendered right…is that possible? Do you have it in your heart to recommend a desperate solution - to give her one last chance that she may have the wisdom to listen to, to consider to do? Why not help her? I don’t believe in too little, too late..
“Have a better idea?”
Because I respect the letter-writer’s opinions and judgment, I have to make public and seriously consider this plaintive cry for even a “desperate solution” to allow President Arroyo to “exit with grace.” Is there anything she can do to salvage her presidency and her name, and leave behind a positive legacy after June 2010?
I must preface my reply with the information that, like hundreds of thousands of other urban middle-class Filipinos, my late wife and children and I took part in the street protests of January 2001 that led to the downfall of Joseph Estrada and the rise to the presidency of then Vice-President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo
(Even earlier, in February 1986, my children and I also took part in the demos that deposed Ferdinand Marcos and brought to the fore Corazon Aquino, while my wife was stranded in San Francisco.)
This is not to say that we were happy with the subsequent turn of events after 1986 and after 2001. But that’s another story.
In the presidential elections of May 10, 2004, after comparing the pre-election public opinion surveys conducted by Pulse Asia and the Social Weather Stations (SWS) with the results of the exit polls conducted by SWS, I was one of the few who came to the conclusion that President Arroyo had won those elections, but by a narrow margin of about 200,000-300,000 votes. (See my articles GMA by a Hair and Who Won? of May 13 and 19, 2004, both archived in www.tapatt.org .)
Economist Winnie Monsod, using the same reference data, came to a similar conclusion months later in her column in the Philippine Daily Inquirer.
That the Comelec subsequently came out with results that purportedly showed her winning by more than 1.1 million votes is, also, another story. But I do not break bread with the gibbering mob who maintain, without presenting any credible numbers, that she was not duly elected to that position.
However, President Arroyo has been a total disappointment in the months and years after May 2004. Her moral ambivalence, her deliberate evasiveness, her refusal or inability to confront the Evil of corruption in her government, the apparent involvement of members of her own family in sordid transactions, her insidious appointment of questionable individuals to key positions in the judiciary and the bureaucracy …..all contribute to widespread perception that not only is she indeed part of that Evil, but that she is laying the foundation for perpetuating that Evil beyond 2010.
President Arroyo has categorically denied that she is seeking an extension of her presidential term, which expires end of June 2010. But that is not reassuring enough. She has not categorically denied that she is seeking a new term as prime minister in the parliamentary order that her fawning sycophants are pushing charter change for..
I warned about this possible strategy as early as May 17, 2005 in my article titled Prime Minister Gloria? and subsequent articles, all archived in www.tapatt.org.
(As I wrote in an article in late 2007, she may follow the example of Vladimir Putin of Russia who was president for two terms (2000-04, 2004-08) and was constitutionally ineligible for a third term. In December 2007, while he was still president, Putin ran for a seat in parliament and, not unexpectedly, won. When his presidential term ended in March 2008, his hand-picked successor, Dmitri Medvedev, won the presidential elections and, to no one’s surprise, chose Putin to be the prime minister. The Big Difference, of course, is that Putin is genuinely popular in his country; Gloria is genuinely unpopular in hers.)
If she is indeed sincere that she will step down from presidential power in June 2010 (and not return as prime minister later), all she has to do is tell her lackeys in the House and the Senate to cease and desist from further maneuvers to convene themselves into a constituent assembly (ConAss) so as to railroad a shift to parliamentary before her presidential term ends in June 2010, so that she can succeed herself, as prime minister..
It is as simple and categorical as that. It is not even a “desperate solution.” Why is that so difficult to do?
If she does not have the steely resolve to tell Prospero Nograles, Luis Villafuerte, Joey Salceda and Nene Pimentel and their cumbancheros to shut up about ConAss before 2010 – or if she tells them half-heartedly in public but they continue their covert and overt maneuvers - then it can only mean that this is her own “desperate solution” to her impending problem of losing presidential immunity from criminal suits after June 2010.
If that is so, then it may be the turn of the sovereign people to come up with their own “desperate solution” - legal or illegal, constitutional or extra-constitutional – to the recurrent problem of an unwelcome leader overstaying their welcome. *****
HOLIDAY GREETINGS. Unless President Arroyo surprises all of us with an announcement during the holidays that she will definitely not seek or accept the position of prime minister after June 2010 – her graceful exit, my dear friend - I will take a two-week break until January 6.
In that scenario, she could endorse the presidential candidacy of someone who she feels would be “sympathetic” to her situation, such as Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro, nephew of her family’s business partner, Danding Cojuangco. And/or she and her family could fly off to, say, Portugal days or hours before her presidential term ends, where they could safely await the results of the elections. Declaring martial law and canceling the elections would be the least attractive and the most desperate solution and would likely boomerang on her..
A Merry Christmas and a Prosperous New Year to all. Or, as they say in Portuguese, Feliz natal e próspero ano novo.
Olé! *****
Reactions to tonyabaya@gmail.com. Other articles in www.tapatt.com and in acabaya.blogspot.com.
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