'Opposition bankrupt, leaderless'

Not only silent but also bankrupt and leaderless.

This was how President Estrada described last Friday night before American businessmen the "Silent Protest Movement" seeking his ouster.

Speaking before the First Millennium Meeting of the Asia-Pacific Council of the American Chambers of Commerce at the Shangri-La Hotel in Makati City, the President said his detractors wanted him to step down despite the country's good performance under his administration.

"It is a demand that I will ignore. It is part of the hollow acoustics of a bankrupt and leaderless opposition. It has no political, legal or moral basis behind it," Mr. Estrada said.

"No wonder their exclamation point is reclining diagonally. It is too embarrassed to stand up for a cause that substitutes fantasies for facts and lunacy for logic," Mr. Estrada added.

The Chief Executive accused earlier the opposition Lakas-NUCD of orchestrating the protest movement using stickers bearing the slanted white exclamation point with a black background as its trademark.

Mr. Estrada has also said former President Fidel Ramos of Lakas who strongly criticized his administration "must be getting senile."

The President said his predecessor had left the government with empty coffers, and P102 billion worth of unpaid government projects.

"We are in a season of political exaggerations. The fashionable punctuation mark of the opposition is the exclamation point, and yet, what they say is to put a period to my presidency," Mr. Estrada said.

"But I am afraid they will have to bend their exclamation point into a question mark when they ask why their movement ended, as the poet would say, not with a bang but with a whimper," he added.

He blamed the opposition's "misplaced political agenda" and headline-grabbing activities as the ones driving away investors and derailing the government's anti-poverty program.

"If the situation appears muddled and puzzling to the visitor, and even to the residents, I have a simple prescription--separate the fundamentals from the opticals, the basics from the acoustics, the reality from the distorted reflections," Mr. Estrada said.

He added that the country's economic fundamentals were strong.

He said the growth took place amid debt workout and industrial restructuring that the business community went through last year.

He said unemployment rate went down from 10.1 percent in 1998 to 9.7 percent last year, with one million jobs created during the period.

He brushed aside talks of a military takeover of duly constituted authorities, saying the rumors were being sown by the opposition.

He reiterated that the government was addressing criminality and the communist and separatist insurgencies, while at the same time, conducting peace efforts with the rebel groups.

Meanwhile, pro-administration Sen. Francisco Tatad said they were not asking Vice President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to give up her Cabinet post as secretary of social welfare and development.

"All that we are asking of the Vice President is to say whether she supports the call of the opposition for the President to resign. If her answer entails her resignation from the Cabinet, then that is all up to her," Tatad said.

He pointed out that Arroyo would be the beneficiary of a presidential resignation.

He explained that if Mr. Estrada steps down, there would be no snap election and Arroyo would just take over as provided for by the law on succession.

"There cannot be a snap election like that called by President Marcos in 1986. The President is not subject to recall," Tatad said.

Rep. Grace Singson (Lakas, Ilocos Sur) called on her partymates to wait for the return of Arroyo from abroad before making any statements on whether she should resign from the Cabinet or not.

Cavite Rep. Ayong Maliksi scored Ramos for criticizing the Estrada administration.

In a statement, Maliksi also said Mr. Estrada's negative ratings in two surveys of the Social Weather Stations were not reason enough for him to step down.

Maliksi recalled that Ramos "also registered negative ratings six times on six different occasions," yet nobody asked him to quit.

Mr. Ramos should prove himself to be a good leader, not by helping to destabilize this administration, but by supporting the gains of President Estrada, like the successful implementation of fiscal policy which prevented the peso from plunging further."

The Cavite lawmaker charged that Ramos was talking about good governance, but cannot rein in his own team, referring to Minority Leader Teofisto Guingona's call for Mr. Estrada to resign.

"Senator Guingona is a loose cannon in the Lakas ranks, and his party does not know what to do with him," Maliksi noted.

Quezon City Rep. Michael Defensor urged Mr. Estrada to improve on his vocabulary and stop using "undignified and unpresidential" words to describe his critics.

Defensor said the President should erase from his vocabulary unsavory words like "sira ulo (crazy) and senile" which Mr. Estrada used to describe Ramos.

Defensor said Mr. Estrada's comment about his predecessor was "unflattering and unfair."

He also said it was uncalled for since Ramos was merely "conveying tips on how to promote national unity and good government in a pleasant manner."

He pointed out that the President's penchant for resorting to undignified language in replying to constructive criticisms was one of the causes of the sharp decline of his popularity from a high of 70 to below zero.

"It definitely contributed to his alienation from the people. The Filipinos do not only expect their president to look and act presidential, but to speak presidential, too," Defensor said.

He said whatever gains Mr. Estrada achieved in his popularity were soon erased by a "wayward remark or a careless quote."

He urged the President's aides to reinvent their boss and program him "not to utter unpresidential language again."

Defensor said Mr. Estrada, a former movie actor, appeared to be thinking all the time that he remains the character he used to play in his movies--a neighborhood toughie.

"If he wants to be seen as a kinder and gentler president, then he must no longer engage in verbal brawls ala Asiong Salonga," Defensor said.

He vowed that the opposition would never resort to name-calling and would continue to conduct its debates on a higher plane. - With Liberty Dones, Efren Danao