Mike leaves: Arroyogate? / A takeover by generals?

Somehow you felt, even as GMA masterfully spelled out her economic program in her State of the Nation Address (SONA), that it would sooner or later hit a political brick wall. That is exactly what the Senate opposition has put up. Led by Senate minority leader Aquilino Pimentel, the opposition has declared war on GMA. And this at a time she seeks political and national unity to get the nation out of the biggest hole it has dug itself into in half a century. Since the end of World War II.

And what is more, the scandal surrounding First Gentleman Mike Arroyo has stirred the animals, bloodied the savage breast, awakened all the sleeping dogs and now brings out the worst in Philippine politics.

So three things upended in just one snap of the fingers. Primo, the president’s appeal for a year’s moratorium on political disputes and bickering, an appeal which was irrational and unachievable in the first place. Secundo, the appeal for sobriety melted in the person of Mike Arroyo, physically huge and towering as GMA is petite and diminutive, and worse, a lightning rod for controversy and scandal. Curiously, he reminds me of Erap Estrada before hell broke loose and exploded in Erap’s face. Tertio, after six months of GMA in the palace, we are not only back to Square One, but afloat in a heaving and stormy sea, not knowing if we will ever make it to harbor.

In her SONA, President Arroyo was shooting economic craps aboard a political Titanic. She made the tragic mistake of thinking and deciding the national crisis was largely economic, a matter of immediately seeking to alleviate poverty by setting up social and economic targets, wrapping them in deadlines, and making sure funding and financing were feasible. Now, if only everybody would shut up, if the political opposition would swing into stride for at least one year, the Republic would escape the tempest and reach higher ground. That was naiveté.

Mrs. President, you forgot or you ignored one important matter. Any economic program, now matter how well-crafted and well-intentioned, remains hostage to the tides and turns of politics and political events and movements. Example gratia: If the international economic crisis should worsen, and the mighty men who move politics in the world should lower the boom on Third World countries, our P1,000 bill would shrink to the size of a postage stamp, our exports shrivel., and our budget deficit would easily shoot past P145 billion figure, still considered safe.

And social unrest in the Philippines could very possibly irreparably damage your government. Another bout of terrorist bombings and the political center disintegrates, the left and the right will have a field day, and there you have the makings of the Apocalypse. You have a grenade in your hands, Ma’m, a live grenade.

But a word or two about the political opposition. It is out to explode the "guns of August", in the words of Sen. Blas Ople, a relic of Marcosian politics. It is bereft of any moral armor, and has no business preaching to GMA, to all of us, to the nation. It is an opposition drawn from the rotting intestines of the Erap Estrada regime. And, to many, it is absolutely amazing that the spokesman is Senate minority leader Aquilino (Nene) Pimentel, once a man of high standing and higher repute. How could he? How could Nene Pimentel have turned his back on the political shrine of Ninoy Aquino where he once was an icon revered by the multitudes in the streets? How could this three-time (or is it four-time) prisoner of martial rule now stand as a staunch defender of – shivers! – Senators Panfilo Lacson, Gregorio (Gringo) Honasan and Loi Ejercito? How could he have exchanged the glint of Excalibur in Ninoy’s time for the chicken signature crawl of Jose Velarde?

I had two meetings last weekend, both meaningful and pivotal in my thinking and continuing analysis of events. The first was with a representative of Big Business. The second with old friends and colleagues, if not comrades-in-arms in civil society. In both cases, I felt the focus was missing. First that Big Business or the corporate world had lost touch with social reality despite EDSA Tres. Big Business probably felt EDSA Tres was just a passing shudder, and so it was indifferent to plunging into major social and political reforms that could effectively redistribute wealth. We do not have anything here that enables Big Business in the US to allocate huge amounts to worthy causes like Ted Turner donating $2 billion to the United Nations, like Bill Gates unloading more than $1 billion for welfare projects. No foundations like the Ford and Rockefeler, Carnegie and J.P. Morgan, where the super-rich divest themselves of billions to finance projects benefiting society as a whole, particularly the bottom 10 percent.

My luncheon companion mentioned occasional projects, but I demurred these were charity contributions – a measly drop in the bucket.

As for my circle of friends, I realized theirs was still the heady wine of People Power II. The need of the hour was to establish a network of linkages with vital sectors of so-called civil society. The need of the hour was to sound the alarm that top brass of the military establishment could conclude very soon that GMA did not measure up to the leadership needed by the crisis and thus the brass would be motivated or compelled to seize state power "to protect the state." I recently talked to a top brass and he told me that twice the military had stood aside to accord the presidency to a civilian president, and twice it regretted its decision.

If GMA should falter and fail, I asked, would or could the military seize power? He nodded his head in the affirmative.

The Man on Horseback in the military most mentioned is Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes. If GMA thinks she has a corner on General Reyes, and the brass, she is sadly mistaken. As long as she serves their purposes, she remains on the presidential saddle. Once the social floods rise to endanger her presidency, the military brass, methinks, will take it upon itself to move swiftly and seize power from the politicians. The generals are strongly convinced the politicians have betrayed the nation’s trust through massive graft and corruption and ineffective leadership. The military intelligentsia, if there is any such thing, has long stuck its bayonets into the collective stomach of politicians. "We do all the fighting," one top general told me, "We do all the dying, our families go through all the suffering and after we defeat the nation’s enemies, the politicians take over and enrich and gorge themselves."

The politicians are therefore on notice that this is the state of things, that they can no longer continue to rule with impunity.

But as I have said, a military takeover is no solution. There too is massive graft and corruption in the military, not to mention the fact that the era of military dictatorships is over. The few that remain in Burma, Pakistan, North Korea have brought their countries to ruination. Why?

Because the art and science of modern leadership, the surging currents of Information Technology, the global demands made on rickety economies, the flood of reforms needed, are lost on the military. Foreign investments flee or refuse to come in. And the military will not only muffle the job, but wreck what is left. Then, what could happen if they take over?

Two things. The generals will set Erap Estrada loose and civil society or what is left of it will react strongly and gather again at the EDSA Shrine. There is every evidence that Jaime Cardinal Sin, the Roman Catholic Church will join in, and also Corazon Aquino. And young, idealistic elements of the military. But this time there could be bloodshed. A bloodbath even, maybe. The generals will not give way that easy. But they will have to give way. The greater danger – greater complication may be the better expression – is that all these would enhance the forces of the Left, no longer a communist left but a nationalist left drawing from the hordes of the impoverished – and plunge the country into civil war.

I know I am drawing extreme scenarios. But the times are extreme. When you have 40 percent of the nation impoverished, as GMA herself admits, then you have a raging lion by the tail. When on top of that, the economies of America, Japan and the European Community, our main markets since we are an export-driven economy, start to badly bleed and badly contract – the social baggage will be that of mass desperation. That’s when I told my luncheon companion Saturday the mansions and palatial residences of the rich were no longer safe.

How to evade and avoid all this?

I do not know if we still have time. Just like a five-alarm fire, or a nation under siege, we have to go into an emergency mode or situation. Like Britain did under the threat of a Nazi invasion and all the warring political parties closed ranks. Like Japan under the Meiji Restoration did to escape annihilation by the flotilla of Commodore Matthew Perry. Like Kemal Ataturk did to extricate Turkey overnight from feudalism and deliver his country to modern civilization. We have to man battle stations. Prevent the generals from taking over. If our indolent, slap-happy culture gets in the way, then let’s break out of that strait-jacket, sprint, bear moral arms, and set up the government we need. The destruction was massive but things were easier after WW II. We only had an 18 million population.

The war is different this time. We are waging war on the system.