Hospital arrest - SKETCHES by Ana Marie Pamintuan

In yet another fascinating turn in our uniquely Pinoy hybrid of demo-cracy, President Arroyo is pushing for what has been described as hospital arrest for her jailed predecessor, Joseph Estrada.

Since house arrest is not provided under our laws (neither is it disallowed, defense lawyers argue), and prosecutors and the Ombudsman said yesterday they were opposing house arrest for Erap, I don’t know how the administration is going to swing the hospital arrest. But the government is moving quickly to make this possible. Contractors have already been sounded out for the construction of a house for Erap and son on the grounds of the Veterans Memorial Medical Center. Yesterday, doctors at the VMMC told the Sandiganbayan that Erap needed two more weeks of treatment for chronic bronchitis, emphysema and acute arthritis while his son Jinggoy needed treatment for abdominal disturbance. In layman’s terms, Erap has hika and rayuma while Jinggoy has a tummyache.

Last week, President GMA visited Erap reportedly after learning that he was suffering from a "bout of depression." She probably felt depressed herself that she even had to make the side trip, but President GMA is on a tightrope these days, trying to balance calls for justice with Philippine realpolitik. So while prosecutors pursue corruption charges against Erap and his cohorts – a move that’s needed to restore investor confidence in this land of cronies and kickbacks – the government will make sure Erap and Jinggoy will get the dignity and respect befitting a former president and his son.

At the same time, President GMA is reaching out to Erap’s constituency, the poor, by showering them with government attention and giving them – why not? – another action star in the person of Pampanga’s re-elected Gov. Lito Lapid, soon to be named consultant on concerns of the masa. Is she poaching on Erap’s constituency? Of course she is, and she must, if she wants to become President of all Filipinos. It’s not against the law, and it’s also realpolitik.

As long as she’s courting the masses, the hospital arrest is just one of many compromises she will be making.

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Will she need such innovative compromises with the Senate? An 8-5 victory for the People Power Coalition is good enough for her. Erap has just lost Ramon Revilla and son-in-law Robert Jaworski in the Senate with the trouncing of Revilla’s son Bong and daughter-in-law Lani Mercado in Cavite.

Even that opposition threat to make life miserable for Cabinet members before the Commission on Appointments shouldn’t make anyone quake, unless the appointees are truly undeserving of their post. Obstructionism does not play well in this country. Maybe Ed Angara, whose re-election to the Senate seems certain, should give his allies lessons in constructive, non-violent opposition.

I don’t count Noli de Castro with the opposition – he was backed by ABS-CBN and I expect him to follow the lead of Loren Legarda. Some have even observed that Loren’s performance as a senator boosted Noli’s bid, and made voters have a good opinion of newscasters as public officials. They’re popular but not actually showbiz, and they seem to know what they’re doing. See how our democracy has mutated: the likes of Jovito Salonga used to be the consistent topnotcher in the Senate race. Now it’s a former news anchor.

That 8-5 win, by the way, has been the PPC’s consistent vote margin in every survey since the start of the campaign. Erap’s arrest and EDSA Tres didn’t change the equation, except for the tailenders, with former First Lady Loi Ejercito the main beneficiary of sympathy votes for her husband.

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President GMA can woo the masses and the opposition, but I don’t know how far she can go with her treatment of Erap before she starts losing some of her EDSA Dos allies. She’s under pressure to prove to the world that the Philippines is finally dealing decisively with corruption. But she has to do this without giving Erap an excuse to cry persecution and without triggering an upheaval.

She won’t admit it, but the President must worry not only about losing her allies, another siege of Malacañang by Erap’s fans or a military takeover, but also about her prospects for 2004. The presidency is a matter of fate, she has said often enough, but the next three years will show if by 2004, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo deserves another six years as President. She has to become a good chief executive in the next three years, and she can’t do it if the nation remains deeply divided.

Can she heal the nation’s wounds? Expect more creative proposals such as hospital arrest in the coming months.