She should run

The idea that President Arroyo might run for the presidency in 2004 has been refloated by her army of sunshine propagandists as well as some of her more sincere supporters. A relatively successful state visit to the United States last month apparently triggered the renewed interest in her 2004 presidential prospects. Notwithstanding her repeated pledge not to seek the presidency in the coming elections, President Arroyo is being touted by some quarters as this strong republic’s most forceful response to our elusive economic recovery, feckless governance and problematic public safety.

The presidential handlers would make the citizenry believe that President Arroyo is in the best position to master these daunting challenges. Having gained for the country the enviable status of being "a major, non-NATO ally" of the world’s only reigning superpower,President Ar-royo is projected as naturally having preferential access to the American president, the American investors and, last but certainly not least, the American military. With this trinity of American resources to fall back on, how can President Arroyo fail to inject vigor into the national economy, political will into national governance and peace and order into the national territory?

Those who advise her to welsh on her promise and would make her run in 2004 is really flouting an American card — a traditional joker that had probably outplayed every conceivable ace in Philippine presidential elections up to 1998. In the starkest language possible, her political handlers are saying she should run because the nation’s problems are intractable without active foreign — read primarily American — intervention. They are also saying that of all conceivable presidential aspirants, no one can effect a closer and more special relations with the Americans than President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

Her drumbeaters does not stop there. She has to save this much-troubled country. Whatever her earlier, publicly-avowed personal preferences might be, she must sacrifice them to serve the patriotic cause of national salvation.

She, of course, already sacrificed on December 30, 2002 in willfully declaring her non-availability for the presidency in 2004. She must sacrifice yet once more and now just as willfully proclaim her presidential availability.

Presidential handlers have been remarkably consistent in offering President Arroyo as a sacrificial offering to the nation. Have they tested for the extent of public support for their particular fixation? Would most Filipinos consider this prospective presidential sacrifice preferable to the earlier one made in December, 2002?

Actually, whether Filipinos are prone to accept the reconfigured sacrifice or not, it is probably in their national interest that President Arroyo runs for election as president in 2004. One should not be overwhelmed by the sanctity of a Filipino politician’s pledge. After all, there is a superbly long list of politicians who made promises that they could not keep and probably never intended to keep. One can look into ideological, political-party or even simply genetic lines – this kind of politician breeds unerringly true in our clime whether the regime be colonial — Spanish, American or Japanese – or, after 1946, even nominally Filipino.

Breaking a promise is no big deal in Philippine politics. In discarding her solemn pledge, President Arroyo would be in the company of many of the most distinguished Filipino politicians, those that an uncritical public may confuse easily with the nation’s extremely rare species of genuine heroes.

The good thing about her running has little to do with her intrinsic political worth. (She is after all a politician.) It has everything to do with Filipinos making an honest appraisal of their own political maturity. President Arroyo’s bid for the presidency in 2004 will force Filipinos to undertake a crucial reality check, a serious self-examination that has been postponed too long, a grim test that determines whether this purportedly independent and sovereign nation is ready to discharge the full responsibilities of nationhood and will suffer the costs that sovereign existence invariably incurs.

The nation’s vote on an Arroyo candidacy come 2004 will be an effective referendum on whether Filipinos prefer to resurrect their country’s once "close and special relations" with the United States – a relationship formally terminated by an exceptionally courageous (some pragmatists would say a "demented") Philippine Senate in 1991 – or, alternatively, to permanently end what may even be comfortably colonial and pursue a more self-reliant nationalism, one that seeks political and economic competitiveness in international relations and eschews a transactionally-minded Uncle Sam during hard times.

"Much too close for comfort, much too special for self-respect" is how O.D. Corpuz — the country’s most eminent political scientist — once aptly described traditional Philippine-American relations. Should President Arroyo indeed run in 2004 and peddle a bilateral relationship that promotes national comfort at the price of a people’s self-respect, one would hope that enough Filipinos would make the truly intelligent and only right choice at the polls.

Otherwise, she would be president. Hers would then be at best a kept nation. And, at its worst, possibly even a comfort nation in the service not only of a seductive superpower but all its international associates — its truly major and powerful allies — to boot.