The sorest thumb of all - Why and Why not

Vice President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo sticks out like the sorest of sore thumbs in the nation as the Estrada presidency sinks ever deeper into the mire. Gone are the days when she could play footsie with President Estrada, keep her Lakas-NUCD handlers at bay and glibly mumble that mantra about 2004 being too far into the future to worry about. She could have her political cake and eat it, too, avoiding every tricky shoal or unpleasant experience on her pre-ordained royal march to Malacanang. Not anymore.

With the imminent release of poll survey results supposedly showing Estrada's popularity crumbling to sub-zero levels, the heat is on for Little Gloria to bare her true colors, provide an alternative leadership and assume her rightful place as the declared Lakas-NUCD standard bearer for 2004.

In other words, the time to end her faithless political cohabitation with Estrada has come. Little Gloria's brutal choice, as one commentator puts it, is to grab leadership of the ascendant anti-Estrada forces or become irrelevant and, worse, be overtaken by events.

For a brief while last week, it looked as if Little Gloria had finally decided to play hard ball. Speaking before a church-sponsored group in Lucena City, she made an unflattering comment about the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office scandal that sounded like a thinly-veiled declaration of war against the administration.

But the screaming headlines that came out of Lucena trumpeting Little Gloria's apostasy were to be followed by even bigger headlines saying she had been "misquoted" and, yes, that she remained on friendly terms with the much-offended Estrada.

Coincidence or not, Little Gloria is flying off today on a long trip to China and the Holy Land. This while she's being raked over the coals more intensely than ever by media critics and disappointed supporters alike.

"It's out of sight, out of mind as far as her difficult situation is concerned," says one sympathetic analyst of the vice president's timely absence from the political scene. "She'll have time to sort out options for herself. At the same time, he'll be stealing the thunder from Estrada's own state visit to Beijing in May and she can score points for being in the Holy Land right after the Pope's visit and on a Holy Year at that."

Still, Little Gloria's troubles have just begun and they're bound to become even more complicated while she's away and as soon as she returns.

Bluntly put, Little Gloria happens to be vice president of a country that has always been supremely unkind to its vice presidents.

Vice Presidents are not called "spare tires" for nothing. They're only suffered because they're literally one heartbeat away from the presidency. But barring accidents, they're at the total mercy of presidents who tend to keep them on very tight leashes and expect abject subservience.

Of the nation's nine vice presidents from Sergio Osmena to Joseph Estrada, three got to Malacanang (Sergio Osmena, Elpidio Quirino and Carlos Garcia) upon the untimely deaths of their respective presidents. Only two got elected to the highest office in the land on their own steam (Diosdado Macapagal and Joseph Estrada).

The rest just fell by the wayside. There was the genial Fernando Lopez who counts as two vice presidents (for Quirino and to Ferdinand Marcos) but who was never a serious presidential contender. Emmanuel Pelaez's apotheosis came and went when Macapagal "borrowed my honor" for the Stonehill case. As for Doy Laurel, he was pureed by the Cory machine.

Looking at this bleak landscape, Little Gloria only has her beloved father's and Estrada's survival accounts to help guide her through the fatal traps faced by vice presidents wanting to succeed their unfriendly bosses.

Unlike Dadong Macapagal who operated under the old two-party system and could count on a party machine to make up for the Cabinet post Garcia refused to give him, Little Gloria faces the same bleak prospects that haunted and turned Estrada into an obedient puppy under Ramos.

Little Gloria has no machine to count on under the present multi-party system. Malacanang controls all the faucets and, in effect, makes all the rules. And what passes for the opposition Lakas-NUCD owes primary loyalty to Ramos and his cohorts, not to Little Gloria, a recent ally of convenience.

What's clear is that Little Gloria is bright enough not to put herself under the tender mercies of the Ramosian Lakas-NUCD. She badly needs her own organization which, ironically, cannot take shape while she co-habits with Estrada. Part of the price of survival under Erap is a kind of political opportunism that can only cast her in increasingly unflattering light and provide a tempting opening for a maverick or dark horse like Raul Roco.

Torn between Estrada's wrath and Ramos' machinations, Little Gloria is quite literally caught between a rock and a hard place. The first promises a painless way to the top that may never come to pass. The other promises the heroic excitement of a crusade that could well benefit somebody else.