New Palace power bloc / Ping Lacson in contention

A new Palace communications team? That’s the latest report from the grapevine. Dante Ang, the bespectacled photo-op specialist, is out. Hernani Braganza, quondam agriculture wunderkind, is in. According to presidential spokesman Ignacio Bunye, the new group is out to ignite public support for President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s "reform agenda" just so in 2004 she departs Malacañang in a blaze of popular approval. So? Or, it might just generate a swelling public clamor for GMA to go back on her pledge she won’t run in 2004. Back to glory, glory hallelujah?

The whole thing strikes this columnist as communications sleight-of-hand signifying nothing at all. An empty drum.

This communications revamp is based on the fallacy that GMA’s popularity plunge is due to the failure of her past media group to project her as a performer, a leader, a reformer of the first water, a patriot, and a visionary. As this column has repeated ad nauseam, GMA just did not possess the presidential character and leadership qualities to effectively lead the nation mired in deep crisis. We also expressed the doubt anybody else could. The crisis, we argued, was systemic, arising from half-a-century of misgovernment and political neglect. And perhaps the solution was to change or revamp the system. And not just change leaders.

The system is largely dominated by an elite or an oligarchy divorced from the global currents of information technology. We just do not have mass and quality education for the poor. We do not have that evolving culture harnessed to a work ethic and love of country. We Filipinos have failed to mount that ascent to a huge and prosperous middle class where the only thing that booms is a booming economy.

What can the new Palace communications team really do?

Dante Ang, of course, was a failure because he never graduated from the Nora Aunor syndrome.

La Gloria soared to the positions of senator and vice president because she successfully imitated La Nora, she with the cutely bent head, pressed palms under her chin and come-hither smile. GMA herself told me this was the dominant factor for her electoral success and gave full credit to Dante Ang.

It was true. Tens of thousands flocked to GMA’s electoral rallies shrieking and screaming like the bobby-soxers of old. Yokels were tickled pink to witness political celebrity a la Nora. This one was standing just 4-10 in her stockinged feet, wowing them with a husky female voice that sounded like Nora’s, a political panday with an economist’s hammer before some nasty, ill-mannered people started calling her pandak.

GMA was the goods.

So she and Dante Ang stuck to this formula. She was Ate Gloria, Gloria Lavandera, Gloria Ina ng Bayan, Gloria the Iron Lady, Gloria the Woman in Black, Gloria the Nemesis of Criminals. Of course, the formula bombed. The nation had drastically changed since the martial law years when Nora Aunor was even more popular than Imelda Marcos. When with Tirso Cruz III, Guy and Pip, they ruled the movie roost, a phenomenon that entranced the whole country. A phenomenon never since repeated.

After President Joseph Estrada was toppled from power, 14 years after EDSA I, the people – particularly the middle class and civil society – clamored for a new, rejuvenated, and dynamic leadership. It was both her advantage and misfortune that GMA, being vice president, was catapulted by People Power II to Malacañang. She just wasn’t prepared. She just wasn’t ready. She didn’t have the influential tools for leadership, nor the moral compass, nor the instincts, nor the character, nor the emotional preparation to wield power at the very top.

GMA was a top economist in her own right. But the nation didn’t need this kind of economist. What it needed was the gallop of a thundering cavalry. What it needed was a Man on Horseback, who knew what the nation wanted — a settling of scores. GMA could not give this to them. She was convent-educated, elite-cloistered, married to a husband who was not any better. And so it came to pass that despite trying her very best — in her own rights and limitations — GMA soon realized she was up against a political lightning storm that crackled around her with unrelenting ferocity.

How do you fight poverty that has spread to about 70 percent of the population? How do you fight crime that now scares every household in the country? How do you fight corruption of epidemic proportions?

And so my dear sir, Press Secretary Hernani Braganza, tell me how do you propose to rescue GMA from her predicament and, by inference, convince the nation she can eventually tame the political lightning storm? I am not questioning our lack of credentials as press secretary, the fact you never spent a single day as a journalist in all your life. Nor do I question your bona fides. But you better tell us, and soon, what your communications program is. Getting Dane Ang out is no solution. The patient is not just Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. It’s the Philippines.

A front-page item (not in The STAR) is to the effect that Mr. Braganza’s core group comprises the Messrs. Antonio Abaya, Bubot Quicho and Tomas Alcantara. I know Tony Abaya. I don’t know the gentleman Quicho, I know Mr. Alcantara as former trade secretary. I do not have the knowledge that the three are media or communications prodigies, capable of riding three white stallions through the lightning storm.

I wish them well, but I doubt they can do the job. Primo, it’s just too late in the day. Secundo, you don’t assault hell with three buckets of Listerint. Tertio, what the hell, it’s a waste of the people’s money.

* * *

Well, what do you know? About 120 organizations, so-called, have reportedly fired the second salvo for Sen. Panfilo Lacson as a presidential candidate. They call themselves the Citizens’ Movement for Order (CMO). The first salvo was fired by the Partido ng Masang Pilipino (PMP) of Joseph Estrada. Overwhelmed, Lacson nonetheless said he was still waiting for the endorsement of his own party, the Laban ng Demokratikong Pilipino (LDP).

And yet, despite these salvos for Lacson, the fat is not yet in the political fire. The opposition is waiting for Fernando Poe Jr. to make up his mind, to decide once and for all whether he will or will not run. If he doesn’t, Ping Lacson will certainly get the nod. Unless Sen. Juan Flavier streaks to the frontline and beats Lacson to the punch. This is unlikely though, Johnny Flavier is no longer the political heavyweight he used to be, when he courageously defied the Church on the issue of population control and ladled out his condom, particularly the luminous ones which he said were good for aging bishops who could not see very well anymore.

Flavier has aged greatly since then, his eyes now misting, the once luminous face now seamed with political weariness, the bristly hair now silver white. To boot, he is about as short as GMA. In this day and age, when they are looking for giants, physically and figuratively, Johnny Flavier stands very little chance.

But how about Ping Lacson? I doubt very much he, too, will or can take off like a booster rocket. He presumably inherits the true-blue loyalists of Erap Estrada. This would have been okay if presidential elections were held in May 2001 when tens of thousands of Metro Manila’s poor poured into Malacañang. This could have been Edsa III if they had succeeded in capturing the Palace. But they retreated as fast as they advanced, solid proof that Erap’s mahirap didn’t have what it takes to take over power.

Now, the once vivid, bareknuckled memory of Erap is almost gone. Ping Lacson seeks to revive this, but history too will pass him by. The future of the Philippines needs new men, as the poem says, "of iron minds, great hearts, true faith . . . men to match our mountains". The only myth that sustains Senator Lacson today is that he is said to be fearless and, if elected president, will blow criminals out of their socks. This myth is not enough. Mr. Lacson, too, is vulnerable in his respect. His many critics claim he, too, has sinned greatly in the world of crime, and there is blood on his hands. Often, the Kuratong Baleleng massacre is mentioned.

This writer goes much further.

I go with the poem that we need men to match our mountains. And these mountains are not necessarily hewn from stone and hard arroyo topsoil but a spinal column and brilliant brains with a great vision to match. If you don’t have that in 2004, and all you have is a cop’s reflexes and a killer’s gun, you have no business running for president. I will say the same thing or any woman today who aspires to be president next year. The waves will be huge. To ride them, to navigate them to shore, we will need the same kind of intrepid ancient adventurers that — simply with the aid of the moon, the stars, the compass and crosswinds — had the brains, the foresight, the intellect, the instincts and the creative mind to discover new continents, new shores, new horizons, new challenges.

Ping Lacson just doesn’t have that.