Glo and Tito

Well, she asked for it. After bragging about her IQ, President Arroyo has found her critics – mainly supporters of her predecessor – asking about her EQ, or emotional quotient. There is such a thing, and now that the hecklers have mentioned it, you do wonder what the EQ might be of someone notorious for her vile temper, who isn’t beyond heckling herself.

The person she’s heckling happens to be under detention, and anyone who has a feel for the people’s pulse in this country should know better than to insult someone when he’s down. Especially when he’s Erap para sa mahirap, still the idol of Smokey Mountain residents, someone who has never pretended to have an exceptional IQ in the first place so he has never competed in that department.

When you’re President of the Republic, a bit of noblesse oblige toward detained political opponents won’t hurt. It won’t hurt either if you stay away from a karaoke until 2004. Those cops looked unenthusiastic as they applauded Ate Glo for singing not just one but a couple of songs at Camp Crame last week. Stick to dancing, Mrs. President!

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Most Filipinos will agree that we need IQ more than "it" or charisma,especially in these difficult times. It’s comforting to have someone at the nation’s helm who not only has a good work ethic but also knows what ethic means.

But there’s a diplomatic way of saying it. Too bad that Time magazine cover story seems to have gotten into President GMA’s head. Now she has to live up to the cover story, and get the question mark out of the "Iron Lady" tag.

President GMA does occasionally remind me of Margaret – not Thatcher, Britain’s Iron Lady, but Margaret the overachieving, bespectacled kid in the Dennis the Menace comic strip.

Being Asia’s Iron Lady doesn’t necessarily mean being pugnacious. It simply means having a strong political will to do what’s right for the country. It means showing strong leadership, or at least enough leadership to make the man you personally picked to be your vice president and secretary of foreign affairs talk to you first before he complains to the press about being kept out of the loop on the RP-US military exercises.

What did Teofisto Guingona Jr. expect, anyway? A vice president is simply a spare tire, while the secretary of foreign affairs is an extension of the president. Almost all vice presidents belong to the KSP or kulang sa pansin department, the limbo inhabited by public officials who are hardly seen and rarely heard. Restless veeps are right up there with former presidents who can’t live with the fact that they’re no longer in power.

Of course a vice president can get lucky sometimes, like Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo did in January 2001. The fact that she wasn’t elected into office should make Ate Glo more humble and at least try to work on a bit of charisma, which can go a long way in this country. The late Ferdinand Marcos had so much IQ, yet look where we ended up with him.

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Few people believe all’s well again between the President and her Vice. The hiss from the snake pit is that Ate Glo, royally pissed, was prepared to call Tito’s bluff if he had offered to quit the Department of Foreign Affairs.

The strongest contender for the top foreign affairs post is Roberto Romulo, who once headed the department and who is said to be the one actually running the show at the DFA from his office in Makati. But the buzz is that apart from Romulo, there is a long line of applicants hoping to replace Guingona in the DFA.

If Guingona had quit, the Palace would then leave it to others to suggest that out of delicadeza, the vice presidency should also be given up, since Tito is occupying the post by the grace of Gloria. Then she can appoint a new vice president. And there’s no lack of people angling for the Number Two position in the land, even if it means being a mere spare tire or being kept out of the loop.

Would quitting have been worth it? Guingona himself has acknowledged that the deployment of US troops here has widespread public support, at least for now. Even the Catholic bishops came out for it yesterday.

Would Guingona’s resignation be remembered come 2004, when he could run for national office again? Few people even remember now that he was the one who first publicly accused then President Joseph Estrada of high crimes, which eventually led to the impeachment trial and culminated in people power II.

President Arroyo has bet her bottom dollar on the American deployment. Her Vice President has withdrawn his opposition – for now. Two officials, both with high IQ, both lacking charisma. We haven’t seen the last of this rift.