Now, it is back to work - DEMAND AND SUPPLY

Before everything else, someone should send Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile an itak or a bolo. He must be so mad with the turn of events he will need one to start a one-man revolution.

And don’t forget to send Ernie Maceda a fax or e-mail message telling him how absolutely right he was about the businessmen trooping back to Malacañang, eager to work with the President. He only had one major oversight about who the President in Malacañang the businessmen will be working with.

I think someone should mercifully lead these two old tired political warhorses to pasture or to the glue factory. Their bitterness and sarcasm during the past few weeks betray a life long career in politics devoid of any sense of the public interest. The Philippine political scene will be that much brighter without them.

But I digress. The events of the past few days once more showed that God has not yet tired of bestowing His miracles upon us. Frankly, I didn’t think the military and the national police would respond as positively and as quickly to EDSA 2. In hindsight, even the 11 senators who voted to conceal the content of envelope 2 turned out to be the instruments of God to wake up our people who still had given Erap the benefit of the doubt.

And, I must now add, not a moment too soon for our battered economy. Up until Friday afternoon, it looked as if, Erap and his cohorts were not going to be moved by People’s Power. It looked like they considered Erap’s political survival more important than saving our economy that was obviously near-total collapse. Whenever foreign market analysts were asked how much longer the Philippine economy could last, they said two weeks tops.

It seemed to me that only a P60 to $1 exchange rate would convince Erap that it was time to go. But based on how he reacted even after the military and the police withdrew their support, even that may not have been enough for Erap to do the honorable thing to save the economy. He hasn’t done it yet, opening an opportunity for him and his allies to do legal mischief.

But the swift reaction of the forex market, with the peso gaining over P7 the minute the generals walked into EDSA, proves what we have said time and again in this column. Erap’s the problem. Of course that dramatic gain was panic selling on the part of the forex traders. The rate should stabilize in the next few days. But the renewed confidence in having a new president like Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo should mean the difficult process of healing the economy has now started.

Swearing in Gloria was the easy part. Our concerted effort to save the economy should be at the top of everyone’s agenda. If there is any other lesson we should have learned from this Erap episode, it is the need to have a workable program to uplift the economically marginalized sectors of society. We shouldn’t give a future Erap the chance to exploit their destitution as a means to shore up a corrupt regime.

Ronnie Concepcion had a good suggestion to the business sector in the light of the difficult times. Ronnie suggests that businesses should try as much as possible to keep their employees and avoid layoffs in the interim. Let us bet on the strong possibility that the economy will experience a strong rebound in the light of Gloria’s ascendancy to the presidency.

In any case, the large corporations and rich families in control of the economy should do a lot more to alleviate the shameful gap between the rich and the poor. At the very least, we now know that gap is bad for business.

Investing in the education of our people is a good start. Corporations can adopt public schools or even sections of a public school by financing the costs of a good teacher, the teacher’s training, teaching aids, books and even nutrition of students to make sure the brains are ready to absorb new learning.

Today is the first working day of a new era for our country. We got a second chance through EDSA 2. Let us not waste this opportunity for renewal.

Tatad, repent!

I know it is now academic and it is time for healing, but I can’t let Kit Tatad have the last word. The guy is simply unrepentant. He took out an ad, too late as it turned out, as a desperate attempt to rescue his image from the garbage heap of history.

Okay, he did call for Erap to quit but what I thought was galling is the name of the organization Tatad used as sponsor of the ad. The Moral Force. Yeegads. Tatad cannot claim anything remotely related to morality. That’s probably another one of Tatad’s one-man organizations like that political party of his with the misleadingly pompous name of Grand Alliance for Democracy.

Actually, Tatad’s earlier news statement saying that he would do impartial justice even to the devil, was bad enough. Tatad must know the devil well because it is apparent he made a pact with the Evil One that Tuesday night.

He justified himself supposedly because he was acting as a judge on the basis of law, not politics. That’s so much bull, and Kit knows it. Of course, it is politics. Tatad is not a lawyer and he pre-empted the Chief Justice from rendering a ruling on a point of law. It is presumptuous of Tatad to make us believe he knows the law more than the respected Chief Justice. People constantly tell me Tatad is a pompous ass but I always told them that they just didn’t know Kit well enough. It turns out they were right and I was blinded by friendship.

Also, the position of Titong Mendoza that cash is not included because the complaint only said assets and not cash is plainly stupid. How can Kit accept that? Anybody who has taken a course in basic accounting knows cash is always the first item under the heading assets. Anyone who has filed a statement of assets and liabilities, and Kit must have done this too, knows cash is part of assets. The prosecution was not introducing anything new nor was it amending the complaint as Kit theorized.

Come on, Kit. We have been in this business too long. You and I know it was not something as noble as upholding the law that made you lead that shameless conspiracy last Tuesday evening. I can understand your predicament, knowing you can no longer run for re-election this May. But you didn’t have to do the dirty work. Tessie Oreta or John O could have done it with Johnny Ponce Enrile, with no loss of reputation.

Your friends thought you learned your lesson with Marcos. Sayang. You had a good title for your book. ‘Guarding the Public Trust.’ Hay naku, Kit. Bantay Salakay ka lang pala.

Recession and recovery

Remember that joke we had here some months ago on what constitutes recession, depression and recovery? Well, here it is again in the hope that with the condition for recovery in place, recovery happens.

Recession is when your neighbor loses his job. Depression is when you lose your job. Recovery is when Erap loses his job.

(Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected])