The twists of fate

President Aquino and former president Gloria Macapagal Arroyo are both born to parents who were themselves former Philippine presidents. Aquino to Corazon Cojuangco Aquino, and Arroyo to Diosdado Macapagal.

 Given the great legacies they bear, it would have seemed inconceivable for them to lock horns in a horrible shared destiny. But lock horns they did, in a battle that shed all pretenses to principle, regardless of any and all claims to the contrary by either protagonist.

 Yet, on hindsight, it appears the two were really destined to meet, in far less amiable circumstances. For no two presidents could be more different and as far apart than Aquino and Arroyo.

 Aquino, it may be said, was a reluctant and even unqualified candidate. While he was a three-term congressman and was about halfway through his first term as a senator, nothing truly remarkable distinguished these stints in the legislature.

 Nobody in this country of overly- politicized and highly-opinionated people ever saw Aquino holding any position beyond the Senate. He was not what Filipinos loved to describe as a presidential timber.

 Then his mother Cory died. And while her popularity waned in the last years of her life, her death resurrected the old passions that used to surround her. Suddenly the crowds were back in their tens of thousands.

 The political kingmakers promptly realized what they had in their hands — Cory’s son and the momentum of her death. Before other presidential aspirants could gather their wits, the name of Aquino was on everybody’s lips.

 Rewind to 1997. Arroyo, then a senator, started making noises and expressing herself in a body language that can only be interpreted as a desire to follow in the footsteps of her father. Cong. Dadong’s girl wants to be president.

 But she made her pitch too early. She made her move before anybody else committed. The only neck sticking out can never be a target hard to miss. The brickbats came heavy and fast. Eventually, the poor girl had to settle for the vice presidency.

 But if it is your destiny, it is your destiny. Nearly halfway through their terms, Arroyo took over the presidency after the president Joseph Estrada was forced to leave office on charges of plunder and corruption.

 If being president like her father was all that Arroyo was after, she could not have been any luckier. The presidency was served her on a silver platter. Initially at least, this must have been enough for her. On December 30, 2002 she promised not to stand for election.

 But less than a year later she took back her promise by announcing she was running for president in 2004. She must have concluded that taking over the presidency is different from getting elected to it.

 The rest is, of course, history. If Cory died even just a few months later than she did, Aquino would have continued to remain in relative obscurity. And Mar Roxas would still not have won the presidency.

As to Arroyo, had she kept her Rizal Day promise of not standing for election in 2004, she wouldn’t have made the mistakes she did. She still would’ve been like her father, a president of the republic, minus the ugly footnotes that, turning left instead of right, fate had for her.