GMA can save herself and the ‘Presidency’ only by jettisoning those closest to her

Almost everybody’s saying that Mikey and Iggy must go. Go where? That’s up to GMA.

As we’ve written in this corner, there’s no immediate threat of military mutiny, overthrow by "people power" (the people simply went to the beach or to the movies last weekend), or "impeachment" – the climate simply isn’t peachy for the noisy, fragmented Opposition. But GMA must not think it’s all over.

In fact, Ms. Susan Roces – Swanie herself – played a large role in saving the day for GMA by refusing to whip up anger and agitation, generously calling for calm, saying her candidate FPJ was gone, and asking those who might have taken to the streets not to inflict more misery on the people.

In sum, we can say that President Macapagal-Arroyo is one lucky individual. Despite public indignation at what those broadcast "tapes" reveal, those wiretapped calls are not certified evidence – although the voices sounded genuinely like hers and Commission on Elections Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano.

If you ask me, La Presidenta – if she’s to begin to repair the damage to her Presidency – ought to scrap Garcillano pronto. She should never have appointed Garcillano in the first place. Before last year’s elections, when she surprisingly appointed this guy Garcillano there was an immediate outcry from not merely the Opposition but the media that owing to his "reputation" Garcillano had been inserted into the Comelec to rig the elections in favor of GMA. Instead of responding to this clamor, what did she do? La Gloria hung tough on Garcillano and even reappointed him after he was bypassed by the Commission on Elections. Now that Mr. G has been bypassed again, she must drop him altogether. This is no time for stubbornness or hubris.

The flatterers, if they wish to help her, must not cocoon Madam GMA from reality. She may not be in danger of being toppled, or propelled from Malacañang right now but her credibility is in tatters – and her position is still in peril of being eroded away.

Grandes males, grandes remedios, as the old Spanish saw cautions – and La Emperadora speaks Spanish very well. Let her learn them from the gentle cynicism that characterizes Madre España.

* * *

The great Spanish historian Salvador de Madariaga in a series of lectures on comparative psychology delivered in Geneva tried to analyze the differences between the English, the French and the Spanish. Madariaga zeroed in, for his introduction, on three characteristic impulses which constitute for each race "the standard of its behavior, the key to its emotions and the spring of its pure thoughts."

The three systems he identified were: (a) In the Englishman, "fair play". (b) In the Frenchman: "le droit". And (c) In the Spaniard: "el honor."

Further down in his series of conclusions, Madariaga spoke on varying attitudes towards "leadership". The idea, he noted, is expressed in English as "leaders", in French as "les élites", but in Spanish as "las minorias".

Here again, language faithfully represents facts.

The English, and Anglo-Saxons in general, are "people of action," always on the move, and want, therefore, to be led.

The French "élites" is more static. It suggests "position" and that the persons it designates are the selected few, therefore occupying the highest ranks of the hierarchy of the established order.

Ergo, while English leaders are a team, and French élites are a class, the Spanish minorias are a number of loose units without any connection or solidarity – save (in the historian’s words) "a vague fellow-feeling of isolation."

For GMA, minorias seems to have been translated into the Presidency being a family affair.

On second thought, perhaps she should go back to the English viewpoint on "leadership". Our people want to be led – by somebody strong, straight and with a moral compass as her guide. Does GMA fit the bill? Right now, we’ve bobbing and screwing around like a loose cork in an ocean roiled by a storm without a star in the dark sky to show us the way.

This is the hour of testing. And right now, to be sanguine about it, our leader hasn’t recovered her bearings.

Even the trip to Hong Kong next Monday to "reassure" businessmen there that things are fine in the Philippines doesn’t seem right. It looks more like flight, rather than fight.

* * *

The guessing game is where former National Bureau of Investigation Deputy Director Samuel Ong went after he was asked to leave his temporary "sanctuary" in San Carlos Seminary and was spirited away by Bataan Bishop Socrates Villegas.

We hear – although the solon denies it – he was transferred to the "Altis" Toyota Corolla car of a Senator and whisked off to a new hide-out in Batangas. In Lipa? Anyway, that’s the buzz.

I don’t believe the rumor that Ong was kicked out of the Seminary in Guadalupe because they found out he’s a member of the Masonic order. Gee whiz. The Church surely offers sanctuary to everyone in peril, whether sinners, Masons, and Sus, even those characters from Opus Dei. Of course, Philippine National Police Chief Arturo C. Lomibao is a Mason as are many of our ranking officers in the military and the police, for some reason. Former PNP Director General, now Department of Public Works and Highways Secretary Hermogenes "Jun" Ebdane, Jr., is even the Grand Master of the Masonic Order. (He was elevated to it last April, with GMA’s blessing).

Dr. Jose Rizal, our national hero, was a Mason. When the late Father Horacio de la Costa, S.J., and this writer were researching a book neither of us ever got to finish, on The Filipinos, we discovered that Rizal had never retracted, contrary to the allegations of his Jesuit confessors. Alas, Father "Skeezix" as we used to call him for his unruly forelock, succumbed to cancer before he finished his portion of our mutual undertaking. He had researched exhaustively in the archives of Seville and in the Spanish colonial archives which are falling to mold in our national library and archives, as well as other sources, but his duties as Jesuit Provincial, then assistant to the late Secretary General of the Jesuit Order, "The Black Pope" Father Pedro Arrupe (after whom the bridge in Bilbao is named) prevented him from going beyond Chapter One.

As for me, being the great procrastinator, ten years went by without my doing my segment of the manuscript.

On his deathbed in the hospital, Father de la Costa said he would bequeath me his notes and I promised to write our book and dedicate it to him. That promise will never be fulfilled, forgive me, Father Skeezix! When I asked the Ateneo for his notes, through my nephew, Father Luis S.David, S.J., he brought back to me the reply from the History department: "What notes?"

Oh well. There, too, vanished the "proof" that Rizal never retracted.

As for Ong, what has him being a Mason have anything to do with his being ejected from San Carlos? Without commenting on the validity, or not, of his so-called exposé, he was making a nuisance of himself there – and jamming up the traffic on EDSA.

It was cheeky of Ong to have loudly called on GMA "to resign". Did he really think this would happen?

No mobs rallied to his support, except a pathetic handful of the usual Leftists.

Our people are sick and tired of too much melodrama and in a state of exhaustion – even when new exposés of chicanery are bandied about. We ought to make the best of a bad situation, I submit, and try to make things right.

If GMA thinks that by going to Hong Kong to talk to investors and businessmen will help – she’d better realize that talk is just isn’t enough.