A masterstroke in shaky Taiwan

The President left for the Visayas yesterday where he feels his popularity, unlike among Metro Manilans, is much better than "negative 13." And this may well be so. He went to Leyte and Samar to talk to local folk and their leaders and rally the faithful. Then he was in Cebu City last night, conferring with mayors and congressmen there.

The Chief Executive's floating hotel is the BRP Ang Pangulo, the Presidential yacht now anchored there. According to his schedule, he'll be back in Malacañang on Sunday.

I guess Erap enjoys getting away from his cares and troubles in intrigue-riddled and gossipy Manila where every statement that issues from his lips -- and his phone calls to radio or television -- are treated like a national disaster. In the so-called "provinces," to borrow a phrase from former American President George Bush Sr., he expects to find "a gentler, kinder" Philippines.

And you know, it's true. They may have their bitter political vendettas and acts of violence, but most folk in the countryside are open-hearted. There's a climate of cynicism and malice, somehow, in our great metropolis here that is even more poisonous than the pollution. True, today marks the start of the ban on leaded "premium" gasoline and the mandatory switch at the corner gas pump to less-polluting unleaded. But unless we get rid of the smoke-belching buses and other decrepit vehicles with their filth-spewing exhausts, we'll still have a choking dark cloud hanging over us, forcing people to cough their lungs out. The Clean Air Act may be a good start -- but it's only a start.

In politics, too, it's time our leaders started cleaning up their act.

We read that the Holy Father, Pope John Paul II, back in Rome from his travels in the Holy Land, prayed last Wednesday for an end to the violence in Mindanao. This seems, of course, the equivalent of praying for a miracle. However, it reminds me of what one of the founding fathers of Israel, the late David Ben-Gurion once said: "In Israel, in order to be a realist you have to believe in miracles."

What about in Mindanao? All I can say is that you believe in miracles, you'll be kidnapped by the MILF or the Abu Sayyaf.

Thank you, Holy Father, though, for your prayers. Looking at those television sequences of the Supreme Pontiff's painful steps through Bethlehem, to Jerusalem, to Nazareth, I realize that he has at least realized one miracle already. Two years ago, he asked his one billion- member Roman Catholic flock to pray for a miracle -- that he would be alive to celebrate with them the Jubilee Year, this 2,000th anniversary of the birth of Jesus. That pilgrimage to the Holy Land is clear proof that this wish has been granted.

The Pope, on the other hand, appeared so frail and palsied, barely able to stand up again, unaided, after kneeling or genuflecting, that it would appear even to the casual observer that his next journey may be to Heaven. He may yet fool the pessimists by getting his second wind, but it doesn't seem likely.

Even in Rome, they're speculating about whether the Pope will last -- or, at least, "retire" since he's so old and weary. The Vicar of Christ on earth will turn 80 next May -- but already, although his life seems to be winding down, he has already made history in more ways than one. I've lost count, but I reckon his trip to Palestine and Israel was his 98th or 99th. He is already the most-travelled Pope of all time, after 20 years in the Chair of St. Peter. As the 264th Pope, he was also the first non-Italian Pope in 455 years to occupy the Papacy. Even more fascinating than that: he was a Polish prelate at the time, coming from a Communist-controlled country.

How the years -- and a Turkish would-be assassin's bullet which just missed his heart many years ago -- have taken their toll. When he bounded into the Papacy at an energetic 60, "Papa" Karol Wojtyla was so athletic he still could swim vigorously, ski, canoe, hike and scale mountains, gambol and even go with the younger set, presiding at campfires (minus the marshmallow roasts) at the papal summer residence called Castel Gandolfo. Now, his hands shake with Parkinson's disease, his steps are faltering. His back is bowed.

John Paul II waved away the Peacock Throne and the magnificent litter on which reigning Pontiffs used to be borne in pageantry over the heads of the faithful. When the Sala Nervi and other Vatican audience halls (which barely contain 12,000) became too cramped for the 35,000 who flocked to his Wednesday "audiences", he moved the affair right into St. Peter's Square, around the pilgrims in an open Toyota jeep, dispensing pep talks and benedictions in 32 languages.

That's why the Holy Father was an easy target at past five p.m. in the afternoon of May 13, 1981, as he wheeled around the Egyptian obelisk in the square. Suddenly, a hitman named Mehmet Ali Agca started firing at him with a Browning 9 mm. automatic, standing less than 20 feet from his mark. The Pope was hit in the stomach, the right elbow, and the index finger of his left hand. One of the bullets passed through his body, only a few millimeters from the central aorta. The projectile didn't strike his spine or any other vital part. Afterwards, the Pope attributed the miracle to our Virgin of Fatima on whose feastday, May 13, the attack was conducted.

The Holy Father, recovering painfully (I guess he never fully recovered), sometime later visited his assailant in prison and forgave him.

The Pope has still set for himself a punishing schedule, including beatification ceremonies scheduled in April and September, then Easter and Christmas celebrations. He shows no sign of wanting to step down. Only God, I surmise, can make that decision for him.

While his last triumphal visit to the Philippines took place in 1995, five years ago (where millions of us Filipinos gathered to hail him), I recall distinctly the date of his first visit to Manila -- February 17, 1981, after that departing for Guam and Anchorage, Alaska. Can you imagine that? We were honored by the 9th visit of his Papacy.

He wasn't the first Pope in a century to leave the Vatican. In October 1965, the late Pope Paul VI caused a worldwide furor by flying to New York City on a 24-hour visit to the United Nations, and then to American President Lyndon B. Johnson, the first Pope to set foot outside Italy since the Emperor Napoleon Bonaparte of France had dragged Pope Pius VII off to Paris in 1812.

Pope Paul VI afterwards visited Manila (Nov. 27-29, 1970). That was almost a tragedy. No sooner had the Holy Father descended the ramp of his airplane at the Manila International Airport (not yet NAIA), and begun the ritual of the kissing of the ring and the shaking of hands than a demented Bolivian painter named Benjamin Mendoza broke through the crowd and hurled himself at the Pope, brandishing a knife and shouting: "Death to superstition!"

Somebody's timely karate-chop save the Holy Father from harm and our nation from infinite embarrassment. The late Apo Ferdinand Marcos' sycophants claimed that it had been Macoy who had struck with that "saving" karate chop, but photographs showed that the President had been standing some meters away and couldn't by any stretch of hyperbole have reached the mad painter.

At least there was no lady CNN reporter in a miniskirt to distract Macoy then, and so he didn't pursue the claim. (Too bad about his medals).

God moves in mysterious ways. Just before John Paul II, His Holiness Pope John Paul I was elected by the College of Cardinals and the blessings of the Holy Spirit. He was Cardinal Albino Luciani of Venice. But this holy man lasted only 34 days before succumbing to a heart attack -- or something more sinister. He came to be known as "The September Pope." The Romans, however, have an old saying: Morto un papa, se ne fa un altro. (If a Pope dies, we make another one).

May God grant that Papa Karol Wojtyla doesn't have to be replaced yet. Yet, man proposes -- God disposes.

Taiwan's newly-elected President, who takes over on May 20, outfoxed his political foes and detractors by doing the unexpected -- and the unorthodox. The former Opposition leader, Mr. Chen Shui-bian, having overthrown the half-a-century rule of that once all-powerful Kuomintang (Chiang Kai-shek's old Nationalist Party) and taken his Democratic Progressive Party (DPP) to power with 39 percent of the vote in a three-way race, consolidated his somewhat shaky rule by appointing a Kuomintang stalwart, Defense Minister Tang Fei, as his Premier in the incoming Cabinet.

He thus stole a march on his detractors and won the sympathy of the powerful military, since Tang was once Taiwan's top general. Secondly, since Chen is 49, an age deemed much too young for a President in a country which venerates "maturity" (meaning old age), he assured the nation of stability by designating Tung, who is 68 years old, as his Cabinet leader.

Moreover, the Taiwan-born Chen and his DPP have long been known for their platform of "independence" for Taiwan, and not a "reunion" with mainland China. By tapping Tang -- whose family belongs to the original one million men who "came over" from the mainland when Generalissimo Chiang was chased out by the Communist People's Liberation Army in 1949 -- Chen has indicated that he may not pursue his original policy of a complete divorce from "Mother China."

Tang Fei, of course, still has to ask permission from his own Kuomintang party (which still controls 52 percent of the parliament or Legislative Yuan), but even if the Kuomintang says "no" and refuses to permit Tang to join Mr. Chen, the incoming President has already proved an important point: That he wants his new government to succeed in securing the safety and unity of the Taiwanese people -- no matter what sacrifice he may be called upon to make.

It took imagination, courage and verve to do what Mr. Chen Shui-bian did. Even within his own DPP, he surely faces much opposition to his daring move. But he's shown everybody who's "boss." And that he's open-minded. I wish our own leadership would take a leaf from this fledgling President, who already has shown signs of truly becoming presidential.