And now comes the hard part

Aside from the usual cynics and skeptics, who grouse that if her ratings go up (or two million signatures are miraculously "accumulated") she’ll pull a switcheroo, everybody is praising President Macapagal-Arroyo for biting the bullet – and declaring that she will definitely not run for reelection in 2004.

Did I hear wrong? I think she really means definitely NOT.

There was an earthquake in Mindanao yesterday, 4.3 on the Richter scale, but the earthquake which really shook the nation occurred in Baguio in the morning when the Chief Executive, in her Rizal Day speech, made the categorical announcement that she was not running for reelection. Period. That really shook everything and everybody up.

Since then, GMA has been interviewed by everybody, including Korina Sanchez on ABS-CBN’s "TV Patrol". Whatever explanations are given, the bottom line is what she will now do as a non-political President and Commander-in-Chief. It’s instructive to search for motive, such as what really motivated this major decision, but when all is said and done, what La Gloria sets out to accomplish is what counts – among them undoing the stupid concessions she made to everybody, such as the squatters in that awful Executive Order 152 (which foolishly ruled only the other day that no squatter shanty demolition can take place without permission from the Presidential Commission for the Urban Poor).

In sum, if GMA intends to be a real President from today onwards instead of a desperate reelectionist politician, resorting to gimmickry and sipsip galore, she’s got her work cut out for her.

There, too, is the possibility that she may become a "lameduck President", ignored by those who believe she’ll be out by 2004. This is where all the qualities of leadership she possesses will be put to the test. A tough President, who really cracks down on friend and foe alike (and husband and children), will rule and triumph by the support and consent of the governed. If GMA lays about her with a resolute hand, the people will cheer her on. This is the magic of leadership which she forfeited when she decided, from Day One, to court re-election and the applause of every Tomas, Ricardo and Kulasa who grandiosely claimed to have borne her to Malacañang on the imagined wave of their alleged exertions.

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Will we now see a new Gloria? I believe so. I’d rather risk being dubbed naïve or too trusting than join the chorus of naysayers and the dakdak club. Madam President: Lift high your banner, and the nation will follow you. To the gates of hell, if necessary, but to the promise of Paradise, if that’s where you can bring us – all together heaving at the wheel.

We’re a fine and enduring people, full of patience and fortitude. But we can also be the world’s worst fault-finders and scoffers, prone to self-flagellation and chronic complaint. I hope the former traits are what assert themselves today.

What’s so typical of our politics-obsessed culture is that when she was interviewed, GMA was immediately asked whom she would anoint as her successor. She wisely declined to answer that stupid – but, I guess, inevitable – query by pointing out that the usual practice by previous Presidents was for them to reveal their choice only in the December previous to the next election – i.e., in her case, December 2003. Let’s forgo politics and speculation for now, as she suggested. Let GMA have her run.

She was asked if she had "consulted" anybody in trying to reach her final decision. She told "TV Patrol" that she had thought about it, prayed over it, and, "since I didn’t want to change my decision, I consulted no one." She did say she had "consulted" God, of course.

In earlier, private conversations, GMA had told friends she had been contemplating and mulling over the move for the past "ten months," and had talked things over with her brother Buboy (Diosdado Macapagal Jr.), her daughter Luli – and her husband Mike Arroyo. Some are saying she hadn’t asked Mike – she had informed him.

So, there you are. Now comes the hard part. Being President – at last.