Tell it to the Marines!

If you believe the harassed spinmeisters of the ruling Lakas-Christian Muslim Democrats party, everything is fine and dandy between GMA and FVR. There will be no konfrontasi between the two in today’s "high-level" meeting of party leaders.

This posture, however, simply cannot withstand objective assessment. One of the two principal players will have to give in. The only question is whether the surrender will be graceful or acrimonious. If it is the latter, then today’s meeting will not mark the final chapter in this epic saga. Rather, it will be the opening episode of a long docu-drama whose conclusion is far from certain.

The show-stopper is not unicameral vs. bicameral, or a parliamentary vs. a presidential system. Both GMA and FVR are on record as supporting these changes in the charter. At the end of the day, it won’t even be No-El, since many in the majority coalition do not favor a scrapping of the 2007 elections.

Sure, local officials have been predicting an overwhelming vote in the people’s initiative in favor of charter change. They’re saying they’ll hit way over the 12 percent Constitutional threshold, maybe even achieve a majority of all registered voters. They swear that No-El is a mere "bonus," although skeptics are convinced that the main motive driving these officials is the freebie of three more years in office.

The majority party, however, is divided on No-El. Speaker Joe de Venecia has already signaled that the party may "concede" the point to FVR, who called the proposal to scrap the 2007 elections a "monumental blunder." But will this morsel be enough to persuade FVR to reciprocate by backing down on his principal demand that GMA relinquish her office not later than 2007? Surely you jest.

The stark reality is that FVR’s insistence on a "graceful exit" option for GMA, that she step down by 2007, is the bone of contention in this dispute.

That hush-hush conference at Malacañang the other night supposedly produced an agreement on a "process" to resolve the impasse between the two protagonists.

However, FVR’s demand is fundamentally inconsistent with the President’s conviction that her term of office expires only in 2010 and that she is under no obligation to leave before then. There is no middle ground. To underscore that, FVR vowed that he would nevertheless table that demand at today’s party meeting.

Joe de Venecia, in an earnest effort to prevent a cataclysmic clash between two titans, has proposed a French-type arrangement from 2007 until 2010, when a British

system of parliament will kick in. But no matter how you cut it, this arrangement means victory for GMA and, by the same token, defeat for FVR.

Why? Elementary, my dear Watson. The French model envisions a strong President with a Prime Minister who becomes, in effect, an assistant to the President. GMA would thus remain President until 2010, which is most assuredly NOT what FVR wants. This is hardly a win-win formula, and FVR sees through it.

The two sides are talking past one another. They’re not on the same page. Joe and his minions in the party insist that GMA is a constitutionally-elected President, which is technically correct. Her term of office is until 2010, and that’s indisputable too. But that’s not FVR’s point. He’s said many times he will not support any effort to unseat her by extra-Constitutional means. His staunch support of GMA during her impeachment ordeal is now widely acknowledged to have been vital to her survival then.

But he has also stressed that what he’s asking her to do is to "sacrifice," and to voluntarily relinquish her office in order to allow the country to get out of political crisis and move forward. FVR’s preferred way to Constitutional reform has always been to focus first on changing the form of government to a unicameral parliament, and to leave everything else to another, more propitious time.

That’s not happened, of course, and we are now engaged in a radical overhaul of the charter. While this may not be exactly what FVR had in mind, I have not heard him belabor the point. But he has not retreated from his "graceful exit" demand.

FVR’s plea for "sacrifice" on GMA’s part is actually an acknowledgment that the incumbent has no Constitutional or legal obligation to relinquish her position. Her exit would be "graceful" because if she were to decide to step down, she could claim she was doing so of her own free will, and not because of legal compulsion or any admission of a flaw in her mandate.

Legal arguments are no answer to appeals to patriotism or statesmanship. If GMA is inclined to reject FVR’s demand, because she has her own idea of what statesmanship or patriotism demands at this point in the country’s history, that would be a better definition of the real issue behind the dispute.

The solution cannot be "process." That process, whereby the dispute is decided in accordance with internal party rules, simply means that FVR is dead in the water. He does not have the votes from the party leadership to carry the day. GMA and JDV do.

To entertain the hope that he will emerge victorious from today’s proceedings, and that the party brass will rule that GMA must step down by 2007, is unrealistic in the extreme. That prospect has about a snowball’s chance in hell of prevailing.

That being the case, what will FVR’s recourse be? Will he take defeat quietly and ride off into the sunset like a latter-day John Wayne? You wish! Does anyone seriously think that a micro-managing strategist like him has not thought out all the possible paths this issue might take and developed beforehand his options for those potential routes?

Have we forgotten that when he failed to get the administration party’s presidential nomination in 1992, losing to Ramon Mitra, he ran anyway under the aegis of a then brand-new party called Lakas-CMD, where one of his principal lieutenants was a certain Jose de Venecia? In retrospect, pundits say that was his plan all along.

When you hear him today challenging his 40 and 50-year old critics, who are calling him senile or a has-been, to physical and intellectual jousts, can you say with a straight face that this is a man ready to be put out to pasture?

If you tell me the "process" will decide the issue, I’ll ask you to tell me another story. But if you warn me that after today’s Lakas-CMD meeting, the battle lines will likely be more sharply drawn, then I’ll reply that now you’re talking!