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| ON THE OTHER HAND |
| Thinking the Unthinkable By Antonio C. Abaya September 12, 2002 Unthinkable no. 1: Fernando Poe Jr. will be the next president of this surreal, godforsaken theme park-movie set of a country. The very fact that there are trial balloons being floated and coy denials being leaked to media �for the time being� means that, in due time, FPJ will make his expected announcement that he will run for president in 2004, and the betting is that he will swamp all other candidates as the squealing, giggling masa reassert their pre-eminence in the political arena, as they did in 1998. President Arroyo is doing all she can to be a �good president� and she is, in my view, the best possible president from among the current crop of contenders. But this country just has too many intractable problems, too many forces pushing and pulling in too many directions, too many groups openly trying to humiliate, embarrass, destabilize and overthrow the government, too much anarchy and too many people, period, that no human being can possibly fix it in 39 months, the time given to GMA, so that it will not in 2004 resemble a mega-garbage dump on the verge of a methane-gas explosion from the accumulation of so much repressed farts in its bowels. Not that President Arroyo has not contributed her own share of gaffes and blunders and wrong policy choices. She has. But even if she had governed with a better batting average, 39 months are not enough time for anyone to be able to massage back to normalcy a grotesquely deformed liberal democratic body politic. If she cannot come up with fresh initiatives that will sweep the nation off its feet before the end of her current term in 2004, with so many problems still left unresolved and newer ones piling up by the week, the rush of the squealing, giggling masa towards their savior-idol may become an unstoppable stampede. Unless she is able to co-opt FPJ the way she co-opted Blas Ople, Robert Jaworski and, recently, Miriam Santiago, leaving Edgardo Angara holding a rapidly emptying bag. But how? Try coming up with a magic formula for letting Joseph Estrada and his nouveau rich parvenu family go scot-free into exile in Orange County before May 2004 so that FPJ will not need to rescue them from long jail sentences, supposedly the only reason he feels compelled to run for president. No one should be surprised if this happens. After all, how many Marcos family members, relatives and cronies have gone to jail since 1986? Of course, if GMA were to do something like this, she would be pilloried by the press, civil society, the Church, the middle class and the communists. But so what, she can always rationalize to herself. Collectively, they represent only 30 to 35% of the votes, if that much. The squealing, giggling masa hold the rest and they will keep her in Malacanang, especially if the two over-aged adolescents, Erap and FPJ, were to campaign for her as part of the deal. As the stumblebum hero in �The Gods Must Be Crazy� would say, �Ayayay-yayay!� ***** Unthinkable no. 2: Ping Lacson succeeds FPJ as president. If GMA were to refuse, on principle, to make a deal with Erap and FPJ, FPJ runs for president, with Ping Lacson as his vice-president, and they both win, on the strength of their macho sex appeal to the squealing, giggling masa and not much else. As soon as President Poe�s government finishes the documentation for the pardon of Erap and family, FPJ resigns from the presidency in favor of his vice-president, Ping Lacson. This is not as far-fetched as it may sound. As far as his friends can tell, FPJ does not really care to be president. He is only doing it in order to save his drinking buddy from a long jail sentence. But his putative vice-president wants very badly to be president. Ping Lacson�s ambition has been noticeably oozing out of his persona even while he was still PNP chief. And there is no reason to believe that that ambition has subsided, not even after he was allegedly turned down by the Americans in Washington in December 2000, when he is said to have offered himself as a fast-track alternative to both the discredited President Estrada and the constitutional successor, Vice-President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Can GMA co-opt Lacson by, say, offering to drop the charges pending against him? I doubt it. On the contrary, Lacson will likely interpret any such feelers as a sign of her weakness and his strength and will exploit them to his advantage any way he can. Ayayay-yayay, indeed! ***** Unthinkable no. 3. Islamic fundamentalists make a grab for Mindanao. As of this writing, it is too early to jump to the conclusion that the Bali bombing was the handiwork of Islamic fundamentalists in Indonesia. But long before the Sari Night Club and other joints in Kuta, Bali were demolished by a car-bomb, Islamic fundamentalists have made known their intention to establish a pan-Islamic state that will incorporate the territories of Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei, plus parts of southern Thailand and southern Philippines, where sizeable Muslim communities have lived for centuries. (See my article �Why the Americans are in Basilan and Sulu� in the website www.tapatt.org). It is not clear what the Islamists mean by �southern Philippines.� Do they mean the ARMM provinces of Mindanao, where Muslims predominate or are a large minority? Or do they mean the entire island of Mindanao plus the Sulu archipelago and the whole of Palawan, the Minsupala of earlier debates, on the grounds that Muslims used to be the dominant population there? Whatever they mean by �southern Philippines�, it can be assumed that the Islamists intend to grab these parts by force of arms since there is absolutely no chance that any government in Manila, even one headed by FPJ, will agree to voluntarily give up such a substantial and strategic territorial slice of the republic. So the critical question to ask is: are the AFP and the PNP strong enough, and will they ever be strong enough in the foreseeable future, to deter any such explicit landgrab, backed as it is and will be by the jihad warriors and suicide bombers of Jemaat al-Islamiya, the Laskar Jihad, the Darul Islam and only Allah knows what other Islamic groups lurking in the shadows? The answer, of course, is NO. That is why the Arroyo government is correct in accepting US help in Basilan and Sulu. Diplomacy, especially Philippine diplomacy, is not capable of thwarting an Islamist grab of southern Philippines. Only overwhelming force can. The AFP and the PNP stumblebums just do not have that overwhelming force. The communists and their pro-communist allies in media and the clergy, who are allergic to the presence of even one US soldier on Philippine soil, should tell us how they would confront this problem, keeping in mind that to Islamic fundamentalists, communists are just as satanic and evil as capitalists. ***** The bulk of this article appears in the September 30, 2002 issue of the Philippine Weekly Graphic. |
| OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Reactions to �Thinking the Unthinkable� THIS COLUMN deserves to be read by every thinking Filipino. And your observations on Mindanao are especially worthy of close scrutiny by those of us who come from there. I hope you don�t mind my forwarding your column to our email list Butuanchronicles. With warmest thanks and best regards. Vic de Jesus. No email address given October 18, 2002 .......................................................... IF FPJ EVER gets elected president of our country, we will then have a kakistocracy, which Webster�s International Unabridged Dictionary defines as �a government by the worst men.� Yours truly, James Litton, Mandaluyong City. [email protected]. October 17, 2002 MY REPLY. Thank you for your contribution. First, we had a kikistocracy under Erap, then we will have a kakistocracy under FPJ. What next? A cuckoostocracy under Imelda? Maybe Nandy Pacheco was right, after all. He said what the Philippines needs is an Intensity XV earthquake. ............................................................. THE PHILIPPINE statehood movement is not that crazy after all. Ross Tipon, Baguio City. [email protected]. October 17, 2002 MY REPLY. Still crazy, Ross. That assumes that the Americans want 80 million dark-skinned and quarrelsome Filipinos in their union. No way, Jose. ............................................................ THE PHILIPPINES should never have become independent. It should have been made a State of the US. But that is spilled milk over which many Filipinos cry. Those who can�t go out and can�t do anything to solve the overwhelming problems of the country can just go on being miserable. And their misery can only grow worse. Filipinos, it would seem, are unfit to govern themselves. Otherwise, the problems and prospect of more problems would not exist. The Fernando Poe and Ping Lacson presidency, Islamic thrusts, communism, poverty, crime, etc. All this simply demonstrates the Filipinos� inability to govern themselves well. Gras Reyes. [email protected]. October 17, 2002 MY REPLY. So what is the solution? Nandy�s Intensity XV earthquake? ............................................................. IT BLEEDS my heart to see the decaying standards of the motherland. Jimmy Madrid. [email protected]. October 17, 2002 ............................................................. YOU WROTE: �But this country just has too many intractable problems, too many forces pushing and pulling in too many directions, too many groups openly trying to humiliate, embarrass, destabilize and overthrow the government, too much anarchy and too many people, period, that no human being can possibly fix it in 39 months�..� The fault for all this lies directly with (expletive deleted) Cory Aquino and (expletive deleted) Cardinal Sin who prevented the re-election of Ramos. He had partly drawn the country out of the morass and was on the way to get many other things under control too. Not that he was perfect, but there was absolutely no one better around, by far. We could almost be on the same path like Thailand and Malaysia today, if the above two idiots had not had their way. I blame them directly and personally for damage to the country that will soon approach that of Marcos. Peter Ritter. [email protected]. October 16, 2002 ........................................................... I have noticed recently that there are many professional-type decent people enquiring about immigration to (name of country deleted). The ones who speak to me are all concerned about someone named FPJ. (A foreign diplomat based in Manila, name and country withheld). October 16, 2002 ........................................................... YOU WROTE: �President Arroyo is doing all she can to be a �good� president and she is, in my view, the best possible president from among the current crop of contenders�. Sa tingin ko, mayroon pang (mas) �the best possible president.� Conrado de Quiros described him in his July 29, 2002 column in the Inquirer: (two paragraphs quoted from said column, endorsing Tito Guingona) Ederic Penaflor Eder. [email protected]. October 16, 2002 MY REPLY. In my opinion, Tito Guingona has only slightly better chances of becoming President than Osama bin Laden of becoming Pope. ........................................................... YOU LEFT out Edsa IV, V, VI and possibly VII. The writ of the central government will extend only to the borders of Metro Manila, and the rest of the country will be governed by satraps named Marcos, Osmena, Barbers, Lobregat, etc. There will also be 90% poverty in the population of 100 million. Bob Hanan, Queensland Australia. [email protected]. October 17, 2002 MY REPLY. You did not say when all these merry things will happen. But a population of 80 million, growing at the present rate of 2.36% per annum, will reach 100 million in��Jesus Christ! the year 2012, or only ten years from now. Nandy, when is that Intensity XV earthquake coming? OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO |