The Gloria-watchers even noticed she didn’t hold hands with FVR

At the height of the Cold War – which I’m sure the Americans look back to with nostalgia, since the current Muslim Wars are incomprehensible to them – the CIA and other US intelligence agencies used to maintain teams of Kremlin-watchers whose job was to keep the US leadership from the President on down up-to-date about the existing power structure in the Soviet Union.

One of the techniques used by those experts was to study photographs and television newsreels of how Soviet officials were placed on the reviewing platform during Army Day or the May 1 Labor Day parades.

As you may recall, the official grandstand was always on top of Lenin’s Tomb in Red Square. ( I was invited to one such extravaganza in Moscow). As the thousands of Army, Navy, Marines, Spetnaz Special Forces units goosestepped by, the huge missile launchers and tank divisions trundled by, and hundreds of warplanes and helicopters roared overhead, the members of the Politburo, perched atop the Tomb, took the salute, insulated from the chill and a flurry of snow (in May!) by heavy overcoats and fur caps.

Axiomatically, an observer could gauge the importance of a Politburo or Praesidium member by his position on the stage. Those closest to the ruling General Secretary of the Communist Party, or President, who stood in the center, were adjudged the most important. In short, those closest to the former CPSU President Mikhail Gorbachev, or before him Leonid Brezhnev, Konstantin U. Chernenko, or Nikita Khrushchev, were the top Reds that season. An individual could move in the photographs further and further away from the center, and finally disappear altogether from the tableau, signifying his fall from grace.

In the same manner, there seem to be a lot of Gloria-watchers observing her every move – such as the flash of an eye (taray!), the twitch of a nose, or her reactions to different persons and situations. A case in point was the celebratory Mass officiated by Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Rosales on his return from Rome as a Cardinal. Naturally, La Presidenta was in the first pew in the Manila Cathedral, and to her right were former President Fidel V. Ramos and Vice President Noli De Castro. During the singing of the "Our Father" it was noted that while FVR, Kabayan Noli, and the others joined hands in singing the "Ama Namin," La Gloria, her eyes shut in prayer, ignored FVR’s hand and kept hers devoutly clasped together. Aha! The GMA-watchers chorused: "All is not well between GMA and FVR!"

Of course, all is not well. Certainly, La Glorietta is irritated at Mr. Ramos’ injunctions that she ought to step down earlier than the end of her term in 2010. Although, noticing her pique, Tabako stopped making such remarks (anyway he realized she was ignoring them), she obviously has not forgiven him. But what the heck. The Lady’s entitled to her annoyance with the former President.

I personally don’t think that former Chief Executives, out of delicadeza, should lecture serving Presidents on what to do or not to do. They had their chance to do their thing when in Malacañang. The present occupant of the Palace must be given by them the courtesy of doing what she thinks best, unfettered by the unsolicited and unwanted advice of ex-Presidents. Look at Madame Cory C. Aquino. She bluntly announced that La Gloria should resign, now with even more bluntness, Cory is being told she’s losing Hacienda Luisita to Agrarian Reform.

For his part, FVR has nothing much to lose except his unlit cigar and his unique eyeglasses, which have no glass and are composed only of a rim. Maybe the fact that his spectacles had no crystals explain why FVR didn’t seem to have 20/20 vision when he began, out of the blue, suggesting that GMA cut short her term. Of course, she won’t do that, come hell, high water, relentless media attack, snap demonstrations, the Philippine Senate, or any kind of Hinky Dinky parlez vous. Cha-cha or not, she’s determined to stay the course.

La Presidenta, however, being a seasoned political Amazon (bite-size) ought to remember the first rule of politics. Every scholar is taught that Politics is "the art of the possible." You must reserve a sweet smile even for people you consider impossible and a warm handshake (even holding hands while warbling the Pater Noster in church) for your most-detested enemies. In Spain and South America, you’ll notice front page photographs and TVE scenes of feuding politicians clasping each other in a warm abrazo. Naturally, the two sparring foes are feeling each other’s backs for the best place in which to stick in the knife. That’s the common Hispanic joke about that embrace.

In sum, especially when she is embattled, GMA must learn how to disguise her feelings. Somehow she lets her countenance and her mannerisms slip to the delight of her detractors. GMA’s best trait has always been that even on her worst day, when the sky seems to be falling down, she manages a sunny smile as if she didn’t have a care in the world. She must carry this smile even to her most bitter personal relationships. A smile is more deadly than a frown, and she better believe it.

* * *

Do you think GMA has troubles? In France, Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, 52, who dreamed of becoming President in the coming 2007 elections, appears to have lost his bid for the Presidency even before the campaign has began. Two months ago, with the backing of incumbent President Jacques Chirac, it had appeared almost in the bag for him – although he faced a strong challenge from the charismatic Interior Minister, his fellow UMP leader Nicholas Sarkozy. According to John Thornhill in yesterday’s Financial Times of London, de Villepin’s personal approval rating "has collapsed from 47 percent in January to twenty percent in March, seemingly shredding his own hopes of contesting the Presidential elections."

Sarkozy is now riding high, while poor de Villepin is in the dumps. This is because de Villepin and Sarkozy, strangely enough, have switched roles. Sarkozy was supposed to be the reckless and stubbornly hardlining member of the Cabinet, cracking down ruthlessly on street mobs, and calling troublemakers "scum." Now it is de Villepin who is starting to look reckless and stubborn, while Sarkozy is, in his most charming mode, counseling that the mob be appeased by compromising or repealing the new controversial labor law which has incited so much violent protest.

The irony of it all is that de Villepin had hastily introduced that controversial "first job contract" (CPE) which he believed would solve France’s high youth unemployment. As he pointed out, "we have 23 percent unemployment among the young, forty percent among the non-qualified." He piously declared: "we should treat this problem." Therefore, he had proposed a law which he pushed through parliament giving employers the right to fire workers under the age of 26 at any time during a two-year trial period. By this drastic move, de Villepin thought the government could encourage employers to hire more young people, seeing that they had the right to dismiss within two years any youthful employee they found unsuitable or not up to scratch.

Sadly for de Villepin, the idea blew up in his face. Instead of appreciating his move and his motives, the students erupted into angry demonstrations not only in Paris but in most of the 84 colleges and universities throughout the country. The world looked on, in surprise and shock, as almost daily demonstrations were held in the French capital and in other urban centers. Crowds ranging from 200,000 to one million rampaged through the streets, some groups attacking police, overturning and torching vehicles, hurling Molotov cocktails and firebombs, and raising mayhem in general.

True enough many of the student demonstrators while angry were comparatively good humored. However, anarchists, troublemakers, hooligans, robbers, and pickpockets took advantage of the situation to create a mini-revolution, by resorting to specially violent tactics wherever the opportunity arose.

If you ask me, even if I foolishly think know France and the French particularly well, I was aghast at the extent of the reaction against de Villepin’s well meaning but disruptive measure. After less than a week, the French labor unions joined the struggle in the streets against de Villepin’s labor law, swelling the daily demonstrators’ ranks by another million. Strikes paralyzed transportation, general services, and indeed made Paris look more like Baghdad or Kabul at the height of the fighting against the Taliban, or battered Beirut during the Civil War, than the urbane City of Light, with the Eiffel Tower blinking hourly as though encrusted with diamonds.

Sacre bleu! One was moved to exclaim. The Parisians are destroying Paris! Flights were cancelled at Roissy and Orly. Tourists who usually flock to sample Parisian delights by the millions each month called off their tours. France was alarmingly self-destructing! And all for an itty-bitty labor law which could have been fixed by more polite discourse.

De Villepin’s problem, on the other hand, is that he can’t help being de Villepin. While he does not have the stature of the great Le Grande Charles, he suffers from the disease both Roosevelt and Churchill (who mutually detested De Gaulle during the war years) attributed to De Gaulle: La folie de grandeur. De Villepin seems to believe he can face down the protesters, and uphold the power of the government.

He may be sadly mistaken. As his rival Sarkozy so cannily sees it, two million protesters on the street, plus another two million striking workers supporting them, are more powerful an argument than 500 tons of logic. Going back to what Thornhill incisively wrote, de Villepin is being consistent with himself. Thornhill recalled that in 2002, as Foreign Minister, Mr. de Villepin noisily championed the opposition to the Iraq War. Not content with making an emotional appeal for peace at the United Nations in New York, which had irritated US President George W. Bush and then US Ambassador to the UN, John Negroponte, de Villepin went touring Africa to cajole UN Security Council members there to vote against a second resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq.

Even other French diplomats secretly admitted that de Villepin had gone too far. His moves caused incalculable damage to transatlantic relations between Washington D.C. and Paris, transforming America and France, from "former" friends and allies into implacable enemies. In short, Mr. de Villepin’s hubris has caught up with him and may prove his undoing.

Kismet, as some Muslims used to say before the days of Jihad.

President Chirac, apparently, is standing by his protegé and will uphold his labor law, although perhaps in some watered down version. But it seems too late to save de Villepin from his folie.

* * *

But why do the French do such awful things as frequently going on general strikes which paralyze their country?

Last October when my wife and I were in Paris (she was attending the Biennial UNESCO General Assembly there), I picked up a book in Gagliani bookshop on the Tuillieries entitled, "France... Really!!!" the subtitle said: The French Uncorked! It had been written by Dale Gershwin who had been living and working for French multi-nationals in the French capital since 1985.

In a chapter trying to explain what French strikes are about, the author gave several examples. Here’s one of them:

"The Post Office is organized according to Plan X. The government decides to reorganize it according to Plan Y. The postal workers strike. The fact that the new plan is better for them, their wallets, their schedules, and their extended families (including you-know-who (some of you are thinking ‘mistress’ some ‘grandmother;’ we’ll leave it at that) does not matter. What matters is that this represents a change. The strike lasts one month. Old folks (including you-know-who and this time there’s no doubt) do not get their pension checks. Mail-order companies go belly-up. Love letters are not deliverable to anyone (including you-know-who and this time there’s no doubt). The government gives in. Goes back to Plan X. The strike ends. But while on strike the workers are so obsessed about Plan Y that they kind of got used to it. It began to feel comfortable. Like an old pair of slippers. Plan X now represents a change. The workers go on strike."

"It used to be that no self-respecting citizen would ever – in mixed company at least – jest about a strike. Smartassery had no place in the discussion of birthright. But strikes now occur with such relentless regularity, in such a vast array of sectors, for such inhumanly lengthy periods, that you have respectable newsreaders on the most staid radio station in France referring to ‘the strike du jour.’ And no one even says ‘Hey! Good olll’ Pierre the Newsreader! He sure knows how to turn a phrase, don’t he? That’s real droll.’ People just take Pierre’s description as the sober fact it is."

Gershwin’s book was published almost two years ago in 2003. Don’t you think it’s still timely?

The French are still fighting, it appears, the French Revolution, minus the Guillotine, but with equal fervor. During that period of The Terror, raging mobs trashed Notre Dame Cathedral, today one of their most revered tourist icons (they don’t go to Mass, but they enjoy the euros the devout tourists bring). On the altar of that great cathedral, they enthroned a prostitute and called her "The Goddess of Reason." This is the French way. They still respect prostitutes as poor working girls, and romanticize them even in the era of Aids. By the way, to show their contempt for the Brits (who call them Frogs) they call condoms, "the English raincoat."

They adore strikes as an expression of the popular will. They hate Americans (perhaps envying their power and rudeness, so typical of France in the old days). As Chirac once put it, the French are fighting against the McDomination of their country.

In his recent book, "The Arrogance of the French: Why They Can’t Stand Us and Why The Feeling Is Mutual," my old friend former Newsweek editor Richard Z. Chesnoff, who once wrote a book about the Philippines and Imelda and now has been living in France for the past ten years, said that "the French nightmare is a flat, dreadful global monoculture filled with McDonald’s, Starbucks, and other American destroyers of diversity, other American smashers of pure national and folk cultures."

Oh well, nobody seems to like the Americans anywhere nowadays. I guess this is how they used to feel about the Imperial Rome in the centuries in which the Romans called the Mediterranean, Mare Nostrum. As long as there is a McDonald’s, those Golden Arches will represent hamburger imperialism, just as they used to rail against Coca Colonialism.

In any event the French will always be difficult to define.

De Gaulle described his frustration with his own people best: "I have tried to lift France out of the mud. But she will return to her errors and vomitings. I cannot prevent the French from being French."

On another occasion he exclaimed, "How can you govern a country which has 246 varieties of cheese?"

Poor de Villepin. He chose the wrong variety of cheese.