What we need is to do our best, and help her do what’s best

There’s been so much pontificating, prognosticating, and self-righteous nitpicking over President GMA’s declaration that she won’t seek re-election in 2004, that everybody’s beginning to sound shrill. Let’s give it a rest – and just see what happens.

How can we tell the future? All those "learned" analyses are pure and simple bull manure. Nobody’s got a crystal ball which can see the future except, as the famous line goes, "through a glass darkly". Instead of saying this and that, I think it’s time to do the obvious: Just give it our own best shot in this New Year 2003, and have faith that our now "non-political" President will do her best, as she sees it.

What’s evident is that, now that GMA has taken herself out of the race, everybody – even the unlikeliest potential contenders – is beginning to lust for the highest office in the land. They are all positioning themselves, so everything that’s uttered has to be taken with a grain of salt. (It’s old hat to invoke the bromide, "proverbial grain of salt", but I admit I was tempted to use it – being an oldie myself.)

At the end of the day, a candidate who’s viable will emerge. But why bother about that yet? Is it impossible to ask that we devote one non-political year in which to combine with a suddenly unpolitical Chief Executive in tackling our mountain of problems?

What bothers me, of course, even now, is not that we don’t have a deep bench, or "second team" as they say in basketball. Sus, we don’t even have a first team. There’s a vacuum at the top, and a shortage of leadership quality – it’s more enervating to contemplate – even at the mid-levels.

Just take the Mark Jimenez case. A slick, sweet-talking "snake oil" salesman and circus barker was able to mesmerize so many so-called hotshots in high places and take a lot of people to the cleaners – despite the fact that everybody already knew that US lawmen and courts were after his hide. How’s that for reinforcing our "image" of being a nation of suckers?

Abe Lincoln once said that a nation gets only the kind of government that it deserves. Thus far, we’ve got what we deserved.

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It used to be said of the Irish that "the Irish, as a very honest people, they never speak well of each other".

In this light, we Pinoys must be a very honest people, too. One of the endearing traits we seem to possess is that of visiting on the children the sins of their fathers. There are, for example, several know-it-alls who are already speculating that come 2004, GMA will go back on her word and run for President, after all. The basis for their pessimistic "conclusion" is that, like father like daughter, she will do a volte-face, just as kuno her dad, the late President Diosdado Macapagal, broke an alleged "promise" to Ferdinand E. Marcos and ran for re-election as Liberal Party bet himself, compelling Macoy to jump over to the Nacionalista Party to grab the NP nomination.

This is nonsense. In those days, we were very close to Cong Dadong. The late Rufino "Fenny" Hechanova was one of DM’s top campaign managers. In turn, I was publisher of the now-defunct The Evening News, and I was derisively dubbed by the late General Hans Menzi, who was publisher of the Bulletin, as the "boy publisher". Since I had recklessly decided to support Macapagal, a move deemed by my fellow newspaper publishers a suicidal course, I was kidded by them even more mercilessly. But to my surprise, and perhaps Cong Dadong himself, DM won an upset victory over the incumbent President Carlos P. Garcia.

Fenny, who later became Press Secretary, then Finance Secretary and Executive Secretary, was – along with this writer – one of the "Young Turkeys" of the Macapagal camp. And here’s the score: When Ferdinand Marcos (whom we call "Andy" in the family) was convinced to withdraw from his bid to be the Liberal Party’s standard-bearer in the 1961 elections, and throw his support behind Macapagal, he was not promised that DM would support him, in turn, for the Presidency itself in 1965. At a meeting held in the house of DM’s sister, Mrs. Lourdes Macapagal-Bautista, Dadong had assured Marcos that, in the event of an LP triumph, he would be elected president of the ruling party and Senate President as well. As you will recall, both things happened. Indeed, on April 5, 1963, after an admittedly "photo-finish" fight, Marcos was finally elected Senate President.

What might have given rise to the rumor about a pledge to hand the "succession" over to Marcos in 1965, was the following incident during the 1961 campaign. The LP candidates and party leaders had motored north of Laoag City, Ilocos Norte, where as LP general campaign manager, Macoy was scheduled to proclaim Macapagal and the rest of the party ticket in the town plaza. Marcos craftily suggested to Macapagal that, to clinch the Ilocano vote, he ought to declare in his speech that he would support Marcos for President in 1965. The late Senator Estanislao "Taning" Fernandez, who was in the group, whispered urgently to DM that to anoint Marcos in this manner would be highly improper, and would boomerang on him, since it would make the party’s choice for the 1965 polls look like a "private deal" between only two men, himself and Marcos. And, besides, it was pointed out, it would alienate other would-be aspirants, who had their own political "bases" elsewhere in the archipelago.

Thus, when he ascended the podium, Macapagal simply declared that "when we win in 1961, Senator Marcos will become Senate President, and, after that, it shall be my turn to support him when in God’s own appointed time he shall run for President so that Ilocos Norte will join the provinces who give a President to the nation."

In short, DM didn’t say 1965. He left the date to God. And gaddamit, Macoy did become President – no thanks to Dadong, but courtesy of the Laurels (who sneaked him into the Nacionalista Party.) As for God, I guess we ought to leave Him out of it, in the light of the many unholy things that occurred during the Marcos martial law regime that extended Macoy’s second term almost indefinitely.

Indeed, when you peek into the Senate archives, as my trusted Alikabok did yesterday, it was a case of Macoy going back on his words, and not vice-versa. On January 30, 1963, on the floor of the Senate, Marcos had gone on record as stating: "I place on record now that I stand squarely behind President Macapagal, and if he runs for re-election, I hope he will run for re-election, I shall stand behind him and support him!"

How specific can you get? I won’t say that Cong Dadong – unlike Macoy – wasn’t duplicitous. DM, while scrupulously honest in material matters, such as graft and the accumulation of wealth could be sneaky, indeed, in politics. He was hardworking, well-meaning, but also onion-skinned, into the bargain. This writer was virtually banned from the Palace – ignored might be a better word – during 95 percent of his term, despite his earlier bid to appoint me to his Cabinet and my support when he was battling uphill for the Presidency. My unforgivable sin? I had become, as earlier agreed, a relentless critic of his Presidential actions. But such is politics. Yesterday’s friends can be today’s foes, and pariahs. Yesterday’s enemies can be tomorrow’s allies and even pals. Remember the phrase, "strange bedfellows."

As for GMA: What the heck. She's said she will not run – and she’s pledged to be a resolute President. Let's help her succeed. In a fractious, perpetually belly-aching nation, it's time we closed ranks and pursued a common cause.

Do I believe her? Call me näive, call me names: But I do.

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THE ROVING EYE... A friend of mine from Paris spent a few days in Davao, and returned to Manila yesterday full of praises for Mayor Rod Duterte – whom he had interviewed extensively. My friend, a businessman and writer, commented on the state of law and order in Davao City. "It’s amazing," the Parisian gentleman asserted, "how a population of one million could be so well-behaved – why, the city government can even enforce ‘No Smoking’ almost everywhere!" (Coming from France, a nation subscribing in true Gallic fanaticism to liberté, egalité, fraternité, and the puffing of Gauloise cigarettes, if not Marlboro, Henri was suitably impressed by the draconian enforcement of the No Smoking rule). What impressed him most of all, he reported, was that there were no fireworks on New Year’s Eve! The mayor had decreed: Fireworks are dangerous, so no fireworks. He had, Henri narrated, even posted six eagle-eyed policemen on the roof of the Marco Polo Hotel to spot any areas from that height where anybody would foolishly try to set off fireworks. The result, said my Frenchman: a safe and sane New Year’s Eve. Too bad about Tacurong, Sultan Kudarat. That tragedy saddens us all. But that was in another town, another province.