GMA’s worst enemy

I used to enjoy playing "Truth or Consequence" when I was still a young child. It is a game where one gets to choose whether to tell the "truth" or perform the "consequence" by doing something as a penalty.

In this game, we use a softdrink bottle as the pointer and whoever the nose of the bottle ends up pointing to, shall be the one to tell the "truth" or if the player refuses to do so, he or she must face the "consequence" which is any task that would be asked of him by his or her co-players.

I was reminded about my childhood’s game by the rate certain personalities invoke their desire to bring out the "truth" – they profess as wanting direly to draw out from President Arroyo and Commission on Elections (Comelec) Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano on their alleged wiretapped telephone conversations about how to rig the May 2004 presidential elections.

But while this game was to me a source of fun during my younger years, I don’t find it amusing now when older people, and senior leaders at that, playing this kind of game with our nation’s survival at stake.

It makes me wonder what kind of "truth" these people want to get and what they would do with it once they get it.

Are they ready and prepared to accept what the accused, in this case, Mrs. Arroyo and Garcillano, would declare also as "the truth and nothing but the truth," if ever made to swear over a Bible?

Let us hear what these self-professed truth-seekers have been telling us Filipinos these past few weeks.

"I am only telling the truth. And I want the truth to come out," Sandra Cam told the Senate hearing after she implicated the President’s son, Pampanga Rep. Mikey Arroyo and presidential brother-in-law, Bacolod Rep. Ignacio "Iggy" Arroyo to the alleged jueteng payola she personally delivered to the two solons right at the halls of Congress in Batasan Pambansa, Quezon City.

"I only wanted the truth to come out. If I have to die trying to do this, then let it be," said Atty. Samuel Ong, former National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) deputy director for intelligence, when he came out last June 10 to claim as the original source of the wiretapped tapes between President Arroyo and Garcillano.

"The people are waiting for the truth to come out and they demand for the truth to come out," ex-defense secretary Renato De Villa, who heads his own Reporma Party, when he pushed for the creation of a civil-society led "Truth Commission" to look into the alleged election fraud charges against Mrs. Arroyo.

De Villa, a former EDSA-2 ally of Mrs. Arroyo came out swinging at the President on this issue in a press conference he called yesterday after his name was dragged into alleged desta-bilization plots against the Arroyo administration in a text message sent by Technical Sgt. Vidal Doble to his wife while allegedly being detained by Ong at San Carlos seminary last June 11.

"I still belong to the majority but I want the truth to come out," pro-administration solon, Cebu Rep. Clavell Martinez said during the House hearing last Wednesday at the Batasan on the GMA-Garci tapes.

"Be not afraid of the truth. The truth shall set you free," Sen. Panfilo Lacson urged at the launching of his "Be Not Afraid Movement" at the Manila Hotel yesterday.

"The truth shall set me free," as repeatedly declared by deposed President Joseph Estrada from his rest house detention in Tanay, Rizal while undergoing plunder trial at the Sandiganbayan.

"Truth is God. The voice of the people is the voice of God," former First Lady Mrs. Imelda Marcos whose late husband and family were driven out of the country during the 1986 EDSA people power revolution over charges he rigged the elections to defeat Mrs. Corazon Aquino.

But to all these election fraud charges against her, President Arroyo had this to say in an interview by the international Time Magazine: "The Lord put me here."

Mrs. Arroyo must face up to the challenge thrown at her by these self-professed truth-seekers, if she is to set herself free or else it would imprison all of us Filipinos, not just her, into continuing plots to grab power from her on account of disputed election into office.

As of this writing, President Arroyo still refuses "to dignify" these taunts on her to speak up now and tell whether it is true or not that she indeed had these conversations with a male voice she merely calls as "Hello, Garcy."

This brings me to suspect that this "truth" being invoked by everyone must be President Arroyo’s worst enemy.

Truth coming into the surface is perceived as being prevented from coming out freely.

Such is the dilemma bedevilling the Presidency at these times because facing a faceless enemy while it stares and glares at her is something that cannot be defeated by mere silence, if not outrightly trying to distort or mislead the truth-seekers.

While Mrs. Arroyo’s enemy is a non-entity, it poses though a real threat to the very moral foundation of her leadership of the country.

Truth hurts and it is more than that on what this nation needs at this time.

But I had a good laugh yesterday while listening to ABS-CBN’S dzMM TV/radio reporter Vic Lima playing the very popular song "Gloria" by the late American pop star Laura Brannigan. The song’s lyrics, he aptly noted, were uncanningly applicable to the present predicaments of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Its lyric goes this way:

Gloria
You’re always on the run now.
Running after somebody.
You gotta get him somehow.
I think you got to slow down
Before you start to blow it
I think you’re headed for a breakdown
So be careful not to show it.
You really don’t remember
Was it something that he said
All the voices in your head
Calling GLO-RI-A.
Gloria.
Don’t you think you’re fallin?
If everybody wants you
Why isn’t anybody calling?
You don’t have to answer
Leave ‘em hanging on the line
Oh-oh-oh calling GLO-RI-A.
Gloria (GLO-RI-A)
I think they got your number (GLO-RI-A)
I think they got the alias (GLO-RI-A)
That you been living under (GLO-RI-A).
But you really don’t remember
Was it something that they said
All the voices in your head
Calling GLO-RI-A.

Co-incidentally, our local pop singer Rachel Ann Go sang the "Gloria" rap version of this song that was used as one of the jingles during the presidential campaign of Mrs. Arroyo last year.