PAUPER

Theres The Rub
by Conrado de Quiros
from Philippine Daily Inquirer

I made a couple of predictions about Erap (Joseph Estrada’s nickname) which turned out to be right for the wrong reasons.

The first was my prediction in 1998 that the best position to run for was vice president. My reason (I did not mean it entirely in jest) was that given Erap’s exceptional fondness for Blue Label and lechon (roast pig), he might not last his term. The vice president would have more than one foot in the door all that time. It turned out to be true for reasons I never expected. Erap truly did not last his term, but not because of Blue Label and lechon, but because of the people and their power. An event whose ninth anniversary took place last week, but which Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who was especially anxious to shove both feet inside the door in 2001, was especially anxious not to make the country remember in 2010.

The second was just half a year ago. That was before Cory Aquino died and Noynoy Aquino ran for president, and everyone was predicting Erap would not be allowed to run. Specifically, people (including several senators I spoke with) thought Malacañang would not allow Erap to run because if he won, he would exact his pound of flesh despite the presidential pardon. Two can play the game of saying one thing and doing another.

I said I couldn’t see why Arroyo would not allow Erap to run. (The courts were nothing, it was—and is—a case of what Lola wants, Lola gets.) My premise then, as now, though that has been greatly modified by the sea change that has taken place since Cory died, was that Arroyo wasn’t going to step down, as suggested not least by her SONA speech which was not the speech of someone saying goodbye.

I said Arroyo had nothing to lose and everything to gain by Erap running. At the very least he stood to divide the opposition, and with it in disarray, Arroyo could always sneak in all sorts of initiatives to stay in power, including Charter change. At the very most, if Erap proved truly resurgent, he could always be cheated, and any attempt by him to stir up public protest could always be met with the same response as “Edsa III,” allowing Arroyo to declare a state of emergency and stay in power.

The landscape has changed completely. Today, Erap has been allowed to run for reasons quite unlike those before. He has been allowed to run in the same way that many of the other presidential candidates have been allowed to run. Because it is not worth the trouble to prevent him from doing so. Because he has fallen in the wayside, or garbage dump, of history. Because he no longer matters.

With the paradigm shift, or the paradise gained, or the paralysis cured that has happened since Aug. 5 last year, Erap has been reduced to irrelevance. You do not bestir yourself to do something about irrelevance.

When history is written, it will not be kind to Erap. It will not be unkind to him in the same way that it will be so to Arroyo, but it will not be kind to him in the sense that it will judge, or dismiss, him as someone who had so many opportunities in life but who never seized them. And who never seized them because he never had the eyes to see them. Neither being exalted nor humbled gave him the eyes to see them.

The being exalted was when he became president. That was a tremendous opportunity to have lived up, if only in part, to the parts he played in movies, the “sanggano” (gangster) with the heart of gold and fists of stone who fought the rich to give to the poor. He kept the part only of the sanggano, one with a heart of stone and a yen for gold who fought the poor as much as the rich to give to himself. He had more votes than any president in this country, a position from which he could have pushed for reform, crushing any resistance to it. Alas, he remained only an acting president to the end.

The being humbled was when he went to prison for corruption, his conviction taking place long before Arroyo’s courts confirmed the fact. It took place during the impeachment trial in a larger court than the one Hilario Davide presided over, the court of public opinion. An experience like that, a fall from epic high to epic low, is enough to make anyone look inward. All it did was make Erap look outward, to the pleasures he once knew and craved for but were now being denied him. That was what made him vulnerable to Arroyo’s demands.

Which is borne out by the surveys. The reason the poor cite for no longer caring about him is that he did not keep faith with them. They would have stayed with him till the end (walang iwanan) if he had fought Gloria, but he just gave in, he just caved in, and far too easily. Not at all Asiong Salonga who would have given no quarter or asked for any.

Why be a kingmaker when you can be king? That was what Erap said when he gleefully accepted the Comelec’s blessings and vowed walang urungan where once he vowed walang iwanan. Alas, he never understood the meaning of kingship any more than he understood the meaning of the presidency. Like most people blinded by wealth and power—though arguably he saw those things as means to an end where his successor sees them only as ends in themselves—he never espied in the dark of confinement the luminous wisdom that says the only kingdom, or realm, one really needs to rule is oneself. He, most of all. He could have come out of his punishment a better man, a humbler man, a contrite man. One determined to make himself a true king by helping to undo the things he did (and his successor does), by aligning himself with the forces of change, by finally giving to a people that had once believed in him the light of hope rather than the chimera of illusion.

He did not. He has not. He might have been powerful once and he might want to be powerful again, but he will never be king. He was, and will always remain:

A pauper.