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| ON THE OTHER HAND |
| Gloria Revolucionaria? By Antonio C. Abaya January 15, 2003 In her speech before the diplomatic corps gathered in Malacanang last January 9 for the traditional vin d�honneur, President Arroyo followed up her stunning December 30 abdication (the term is from Columnist Amando Doronila) from the 2004 elections with a preview of what she planned to do during the remaining 17 months of her presidency. �This nation is at a crossroads. It must reform or perish,� she said. �In the vision that guides my administration, I see a country liberated from the grip and greed of the past. I see this happening through a revolution in the way we think and in the way we do politics and economics. �At the center of this revolution must be a commitment to reforms and to putting the people first. In the debate, no topic shall be sacred, no idea or ideology beyond question. We must keep trying something better and new.� As far as I can tell, this was the first time that GMA used the word �revolution� in the context of what reforms she wants to pursue. The key phrase here is �revolution in the way we think and in the way we do politics and economics.� Those who associate �revolution� only with barricades, carnage and bloodletting, and the storming of the Bastille should switch to another channel. It should be clear by now to all that the nation that gave the world the People Power �revolutions� of Edsa 1 and Edsa 2 is using a new, unabridged Superbeing Dictionary completely alien to the rest of the world. (See my article �Filipinos as Superbeings.�) And that is not such a bad thing either. Why bother to wage a real �revolution,� as defined in the Oxford English Dictionary, when all we will get at the end of the day will be Joma Sison and his cumbancheros and their tiresome song-and-dance? ***** Having said that, however, I hasten to add that even in the peculiar nuance of the �R� word in Philippine political culture, President Arroyo may be raising expectations that she may be hard put to live up to, and consequently may be letting down, again, a momentarily expectant public. Let�s hear that phrase again: �revolution in the way we think and in the way we do politics and economics.� It has been only six days since those words were spoken and one should not rush to judgment on their validity or her sincerity in such a short timeframe. But this early it should be pointed out that shuffling Cabinet men and women around in a game of musical chairs does not in any way suggest a �revolution� in the offing, even in the peculiar Filipino sense of that word. If GMA is serious about it, she has to bring into her Cabinet men and women with new faces and new ideas, not (again!) the tired old faces of overstaying trapos and burnt out bureaucrats whom the public, especially the middle-class, have associated with stagnation, decay and blah. It is just not possible to wage revolution with zombies. And she has to do it soon, to give her new lieutenants the time and leeway to move her revolution in the direction she wants. There must be at least five or six Cabinet members who are planning to run for the Senate in 2004. She should accept their resignations now so that their replacements, the ones with fresh new ideas, have ample time to input those ideas into her revolution. Waiting until the senatorial wannabes submit their certificates of candidacy in February 2004, before replacing them, guarantees that no fresh new ideas will germinate and take root in the last 17 months of her government and her revolution will amount to nothing. ***** In my article of January 23, 2002, titled �Gloria Lavandera? O Gloria Revolucionaria?� , I proposed that �if worse comes to worst and the Republic is pushed to the brink of disintegration, the incumbent president be asked by leaders of key sectors of Philippine society to form a government of national renewal or a government of national salvation to address the emergency and to redefine how we want to be governed. �Not because I am a great fan of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo � I am not � but because she is the sitting president, she has a valid constitutional claim to the office, she is genuinely popular with a large segment of the population�.and she has the intelligence, the political acumen, the analytical mind, the authentic leadership qualities needed to steer the leaking ship-of-state through troubled waters, perhaps even the vision to guide it to a more felicitous destination�� �I realize that many do not like her voice, her abrasive style, even her physical appearance, and many more have been disenchanted with her failure to build a New Singapore in 365 days�..But we have to make do with what we have. This country has not produced a Superman since Jose Rizal, and even he would not prosper in the political environment of 2002�.� And in my articles of November 7 and December 11, titled �What is to Be Done?�, and �Chacha � Shall We Dance?�, I repeated my call for a government of national salvation, with members drawn from both the administration, the opposition AND the non-trapo community, that will engineer a shift to the parliamentary system in 2003 and rewrite the rules for holding future elections, with the �condition that the incumbent president (i.e. GMA) disqualifies herself from running for any office in the emerging new order�.� Now that President Arroyo has abdicated from the 2004 elections and has articulated the need for a �revolution in the way we think and in the way we do politics and economics,� we are two steps into a potentially historical transition period, two steps ahead of where we were before December 30. As the Chinese say, a journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step. We now have two. I am glad that GMA has chosen to call her putative transition government a �government of national cooperation,� to differentiate and separate it from the �government of national unity� which Jose de Venecia and his trapos are trying to force down her throat. Forget national unity; it will never happen. National cooperation CAN happen, and from it, national salvation. Besides, a trapo-dominated �revolution� would be a contradiction in terms. The all-important middle class (the shock troops of Edsa 1 and Edsa 2) would reject it, the communists would laugh at it, the cynical media would pan it, the toiling masa would ignore it, and the military would likely not salute it. And rightly so. A trapo-dominated �revolution� would get exactly nowhere, like Edsa 1 and Edsa 2. ***** January 19 update: In a roundtable interview with Japanese journalists last January 17, President Arroyo let on that she was now in favor of charter change. This is another major turnaround. When I had a one-hour conversation with her in Malacanang in September of 2001, she was categorically against amending the Constitution (to shift to the parliamentary system). From this anti-position more than a year ago, she shifted to �neutral� several weeks ago when De Venecia and his trapos started their campaign to push for charter change. Now she is in favor of it. But with the important distinction that she wants the change to occur through a constitutional convention, not, as the trapos want it, through the Senate and the Lower House convening themselves as a constituent assembly. This is a wise decision as it would help prevent the trapos from dictating the changes, to their advantage. So now that President Arroyo supports charter change towards the parliamentary system and wants that change to be immune from domination by the trapos, we have, not two, but four, steps into a �revolution in the way we think and in the way we do politics and economics.� She and others should not be dismayed by public opinion surveys that claim that only 13 or 20% of respondents favor the parliamentary system or are aware that anything in the Constitution needs to be changed. This is par for the course since most people do not know enough about the subject to make an intelligent response. What should be kept in mind instead is that in the 1970s the Marcos constitution (which set up a French-style parliamentary system) was ratified in a referendum by more than 80% of the voters, and that in 1987 the Cory constitution (which restored a six-year single term presidential system) was ratified in another referendum by also more than 80% of the voters, the overwhelming majority of whom in both cases, it can safely be assumed, never bothered to read or understand the two documents they were ratifying. The point is that in most societies most of the voters will follow the promptings of their national leaders in matters political and constitutional as long as those leaders are credible to, and reasonably well liked by, them, which Marcos and Cory were at the time their constitutions were submitted for ratification. The same principle would apply to President Arroyo. If she is able to maintain the moral momentum from December 30 and is able to translate into tangible everyday reality the �revolution in the way we think and in the way we do politics and economics,� then whatever charter changes she espouses in 2003 or 2004 would be carried and ratified by solid majorities, even by those who currently say they do not favor any changes. That is why it is of utmost importance that her governance from now on resonates with the explicit and implicit promises of that �revolution� and that resonance can only come from the �new faces with fresh new ideas� that she will bring into her Cabinet, the old faces with old ideas having outlived their usefulness. ***** I was invited to the first general meeting of the 12:30 Movement last January 11and sat in one of the four workshops meant to flesh out the programs of GMA�s �revolution.� My impressions in a future column. ***** The bulk of this article appears in the February 3, 2003 issue of the Philippine Weekly Graphic magazine. |
| OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Reactions to �Gloria Revolucionaia� (Through CebuPolitics egroup) GLORIA IS one well evolved traditional politician nothing more and nothing less. V Canoy. [email protected] January 22, 2003 �������������������������� DEAR TONY, I would suggest you go through the newly-instituted judicial reform system, the new governmental accounting system, and the newly-signed Republic Act on the government procurement system with a fine-toothed comb. I suspect the answer lies in these three major reforms, among quite a few others. Mila D. Aguilar. [email protected]. January 21, 2003 �������������������������� GOOD LUCK on the revolution of the way "we" (who's we?) think? Gloria's? Who are the leaders and who are the followers? The "masang tanga" as you always say do not think but vote nonetheless for their leaders or perceived leaders. Fernando Poe, Jr. may yet become president. Gras Reyes. [email protected] January 21, 2003 OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO. |