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| ON THE OTHER HAND |
| Reconciliation for Survival By Antonio C. Abaya Written August 23, 2005 For the Standard Today, August 25 issue The original title of this piece was Reconciliation in Aid of Survival. But it would have been too long to fit in the headline space of this newspaper, and too unwieldy for the subject space in the email transmittal form. Nevertheless, President Arroyo and her lieutenants must realize that their frantic efforts to �reconcile� with the opposition � principally, Joseph Estrada and his dynasty � are pathetic and ill-advised, though true-to-form for Gloria Arroyo, the quintessential unprincipled politician. By their desperate search for �reconciliation,� President Arroyo and her lieutenants are tacitly admitting that her position is one of relative weakness. One should �reconcile� only from a position of strength. She is clutching at straws, which just makes her enemies bolder, as they circle her limping, wounded presidency, waiting for the right moment to lunge for the final kill. No wonder Joseph Estrada was disdainful and arrogant towards her overtures, as he kept her waiting at the El Shaddai bash last Saturday and pointedly avoided arriving in time to share the same stage with her. He knows he holds the upper hand and she is just waiting for crumbs from him. President Arroyo has no one to blame but herself for her humiliation. Even as early as the heady weeks after EDSA 2 in January 2001, President Arroyo was already in a �reconciliation� mode, sending her Justice Secretary Nani Perez, not once but several times, to the detained Erap to try to convince him to accept free passage to exile abroad in lieu of a court trial for the non-bailable offense of plunder. To his credit, Erap spurned her early efforts at �reconciliation.� In November 2003, President Arroyo and her lieutenants again went into high gear with their �reconciliation� offers, and again she was turned down. (See my articles �Reconciliation or Revolution� and �Reconciliation or Surrender� of Nov. 26 and 19, 2003 respectively.) In January-February 2001 and November 2003, President Arroyo was offering reconciliation from a position of strength, and yet she was rebuffed. That should have been sufficient reason for her to abandon that tack and instead hint to the Sandigambayan to accelerate the plunder hearings. In August 2005, she is offering reconciliation from a position of weakness. This is now Reconciliation in Aid of Survival. No wonder Erap gave the cheeky response, expressed to journalist Raissa Robles in an interview that first saw print in the South China Morning Post of Hong Kong, that Ferdinand Marcos left Malacanang in a (US military) helicopter. He, Erap, in a motor launch. She, the junior-sized President Arroyo, will do so in a stroller. Or other snide words to that effect. According to the August 24 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, days prior to the El Shaddai bash at the Luneta, wherein Joseph Estrada pointedly kept President Arroyo waiting for him � in vain, as it turned out � GMA had met with the El Shaddai Holy Father, Mike Velarde, not once but thrice. Once in Tagaytay, twice in Velarde�s basilica in Makati. One can only conclude that GMA was desperately enlisting the aid of Velarde to get Erap�s agreement on �reconciliation,� an agreement that would have been sealed with a handshake at the Luneta in front of Velarde�s gibbering thousands. But it came to naught when Erap deliberately postponed his arrival until after the expectant GMA had left. It must have been in these three meetings with President Arroyo that the idea of a coalition government, with the opposition being given 60% of all Cabinet positions, was cooked up, almost certainly with the knowledge and consent, perhaps even on the initiative, of GMA. This is the most hare-brained political idea yet proposed in this crisis. And if it is true, as Velarde claims, that GMA was �receptive� to the idea, then it is symptomatic of the desperation that seems to have infested Malacanang. Velarde�s self-important attempt at power-brokering between quarrelling feudal dynastic trapos has been laughed at, even by administration allies. As my friend Tony B would say, how can you take seriously someone whose suits and shirts were cut from sofa upholstery material? Survival of the Fittest. It�s a moral jungle out there, and President Arroyo should start thinking out of her trapo box. If it is true, as her premier apologist Mike Defensor has intimated, that she is prepared to cut short her term, as earlier suggested by Fidel Ramos, then she should strategize her exit, not by reconciling with Erap and his dynasty or any other trapo, but by leaving a legacy that she can truly be proud of, in spite of everything that has transpired in the past four or five months. She should call for 90-day continuous trials for high-profile corruption cases languishing in the Sandigambayan. This means continuous trial for Joseph Estrada who has been detained since 2001, continuous trials for members of the Marcos family whose more than 100 cases have been pending in the courts since 1987, and continuous trials for Gen. Carlos F. Garcia, Gen. Jacinto Ligot and Col. George Rabusa., who have been charged with plunder by Lawyer Frank Chavez in 2005. The idea of continuous trials for high-profile corruption cases was originally proposed by then US Ambassador Francis Ricciardone in, I believe, March this year, in a public speech before the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines. It was blatant interference in the internal affairs of this country, and I was surprised that none of the usually super-sensitive nationalist defenders of our sovereignty raised any hackles over it. Referring to the Garcia case in particular, the US Ambassador even offered the help of his government since US official agencies were directly involved in exposing and investigating the incident and held many of the incriminating documents related to it. But Malacanang pointedly ignored the Ricciardone suggestion, not even commenting on the obvious interference aspect in it. President Arroyo was/is apparently afraid that if the Garcia case were exposed wide open in a continuous trial, some of her allies in the military, then and now, who were instrumental in her rise to power in 2001 and whose help she feels she needs now for her continued political survival, would be dragged into the sunlight and implicated in the corruption web of Gen. Garcia. But if she is indeed prepared to step down in 2006, as revealed by Defensor and suggested earlier by Fidel Ramos, then that fear should not now cripple her. She should be fighting to leave as honorable a legacy as possible under the circumstances, and continuous trials for high-profile corruption cases would be one of the most dramatic ways to do it. In this way, she could even hope to win back the leaderless middle class (who are now running around in circles like headless chickens, with white ribbons tied to their claws), the business and professional communities, the militant Churches and the idealist elements of the military (who are now plotting her overthrow). This is an endgame that she can win. It is the battle for the survival of the fittest, the fittest being those who adapt to new conditions and use their skills and brains to outfox or overcome their predators, not those who offer the effete hand of reconciliation while they are being eaten alive. She should adopt the aggressive stance of that French general who, after assessing his tactical situation, concluded that �I am surrounded and outnumbered on all sides. What a glorious occasion to attack!� Reactions to [email protected] or fax 824-7642. Other articles in www.tapatt.org. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO |
| Reactions to �Reconciliation for Survival� Dear Mr. Abaya, I exactly share your sentiments about PGMA. Here she is blatantly displaying her weaknesses and desperation to save the presidency. If she does want to save the presidency, she should not hop on the opposite fence and make a front in reconciliation when in fact she is just playing into her own follies and the opposition's plans. She is such a huge disappointment to us all - she has hugely compromised her principles. Good if she has earned anything good from it, but it hasn't. It has brought her down further and people are hating it. She should stop being in-debt to people for placing her where she is right now - it's just pure blackmail and injustice on their part. Plus, she cannot go around and please everybody - it just delays her priorities for her country. What kind of president is she? She just makes frustration all the more prevalent in our country. Can't someone advise her well. Someone who is moral and conscientious. Someone regular and average like us? Nicole Paterno, [email protected] August 26, 2005 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Your early insights much admired....... well writ, and bravo your courage of conviction! Dick Powell, [email protected] August 26, 2005 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Gloria the "quintessential unprincipled politician" changing what she is? Not even in our wildest dreams! Tonton Mapa, [email protected] August 26, 2005 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Aha, Tony, you have been joking all along. Maawa ka naman. Mahar Mangahas, [email protected] Social Weather Stations, August 26, 2005 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Dear Mr. Abaya, Your article made sense. I am part of that silent middle class majority. I don't know why I can't raise my fist against GMA when I did so against other past presidents. Maybe because she is a (petite) woman, a mother, and a lola at that. I think I was impressed with some of the things she started like choosing competent people for her cabinet (like the Hyatt 10), pushing for lifestyle checks and going after tax evaders, and demonstrating hard work and relentlessness. I was also moved by her "I am sorry" gesture. And maybe I thought I would do some of the "unprincipled" things she did if I were in her tiny shoes, considering the kind of scheming and greedy politicians we have in both sides of the fence. Those who see things in black and white might be extolled by the Church and other do-gooders. Such outlook is fitting to their calling as preachers and columnists. And we all need them for us to know where the lines are drawn. But I imagine that it is totally different for practitioners, for those who are out there in the thick of the action, moving about with packs of wolves. They might be too busy to write and preach about their guiding principles but I suppose they move about not solely motivated by selfish ambitions. I agree with what you write that GMA should take the risk to think and move out of her trapo box. This requires real leap of faith. Hope and pray she takes your challenge. Ched Estigoy-Arzadon, [email protected] August 26, 2005 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Hi, Don Tony, Were would you belong? If you were very rich, I don't think you would be in the alleged prostituted media these days. You, I strongly think, would not be poor either. So where would you be in Class A B D E? You have insulted the "headless middle class" and these are those who belong in particular to our Yahoogroups.com. If there is no obvious leader in this middle class, I strongly presume, as you are presumptuous in many issues, that their leader is the Divine Providence. I think they are praying harder than the running priest who is afraid of the rains. I have just lost taste of your writing menus. "Hasta labay labay" as brod Larry would say. Roger L. Mardigal, [email protected] August 26, 2005 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Our country is a Christian country but sad to say that our people don't know how to practice their Christian faith. Our countrymen therefore are HYPOCRITES. Christians would know what my message is to them. LIVE OUT YOUR FAITH. Reconcile with your enemies. LOVE your enemies. Be Humble. Gloria Arroyo is setting a very good example to our countrymen. God loves those who are humiliated and are humbled. Genny Ferrer, [email protected] August 27, 2005 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww You can't believe Gloria even when she swears she's lying. With her, truth is like a woman's girdle - it needs to be stretched. For her also, the path of glory leads to the gravy. Nakakahiya. Kawawang Pilipinas. Narciso Ner, [email protected] August 27, 2005 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Dear Tony: "Reconciliation for Survival" is the hit song for all trapos, led by trapista numera una! It's not only the GMA-Erap version that will come out. The JdV-led lower house will also realize pretty soon that their survival as a species will depend on singing something like it to mollify the Filipinos who are growing more angry everyday. And watch the Senate, all Department Secretaries and even the Judiciary try to get into the act. But the writing's on the wall. Over a dozen colonels have already had tearful goodbyes with their families, especially after the funeral of Capt. Rene Jarque. With next week's impeachment obfuscation, jueteng exposes, rising prices (of oil and other basics) and the spectacle of GMA traveling to the US and other parts of the world shopping for a place of exile, let's skip this talk of Reconciliation. You may want to write "Annihilation for Survival" as it can only be the annihilation of trapos, trapistas and their ilk that can guarantee our survival as a nation. Tito Osias, [email protected] August 28, 2005 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Dear Tony This says it all " the quintessential unprincipled politician. " Do we have any hope? Jayjay Calero, [email protected] August 29, 2005 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Hi Mr. Abaya, I agree with your latest write-up about "Reconciliation for Survival" of President Arroyo which is indicative of her inherent insecurity and weakness as a person. Conrado G. Javier, MD, [email protected] Hunting Valley, Ohio, August 26, 2005 OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO |