EDSA and Estrada: A collision? A benediction?

The 14th anniversary of EDSA is just a drumbeat away. It should be, well, ho-hum like many previous ones, a puff of ritual smoke, rhetoric blown off the EDSA shrine dissolving in mid-air. And the few who are there go home wondering why EDSA has come a cropper. Not anymore. Already the sounds of an approaching EDSA commemoration have alarmed Malacanang. No less than President Joseph Estrada himself called up Cory Aquino to get the assurance February 25 in the year of our Lord 2000 would not explode in his face like a stink bomb.

He got the assurance.

But the fear was there, in the air, the consternation the forthcoming anniversary could get out of hand. If not get out of hand, then verbal cannons fired at the president and the men and women who lead the nation today. And the verbal cannons in the end would light a fuse which would sputter, tickle a powderkeg, and bring the nation to the brink. And there it would teeter for sometime, waiting for more dire events. And voila, the social volcano would erupt. Some scenario for Feb. 25.

I don't think so. This writer has attended all the meetings of the EDSA Peace Commission (created by executive order, by Erap Estrada himself) and at no time did we get to the edge of the water to throw stones. We would stage a 14th anniversary celebration and that was all. We would police our lines, make sure we could get as many veterans of EDSA to attend. One other thing. The Commission had to make sure that this time they would bring their heart, their memory, their passion.

We want to relive EDSA, and it's time. I know that in these times, the President wants to present a picture of the Philippines moving forward, reassuring the business community that crime and political stability are being addressed. Watch me, Erap Estrada said, (and let me transcribe): "I shall be less scarce in my public appearances, much less scarce in my utterances, less scarce in almost everything except in my devotion to work." That's the so-called "scarcity value". The less you appear. The more you are valued.

Begorra, that's a big piece of cake. If the president can pull it off, we do owe him a posy. The president's big problem however is that hardly anybody believes him today. His credibility has gone pfft, like a watermelon bashed in midair. The national surveys, more than anything else, have moved the president's popularity or approval ratings to quicksand. He has said the same things before, promised the same things before, gestured as always before, with the same dramatic fleshliness as before, the tilt of chin, the flair of moustache, the rapier slash of Wrist Band. But instead of the country going up, up, up, it has gone down, down, down.

Now he cannot blame media anymore for all his troubles.

What curtains could render Norberto Manero invisible, as this most vicious, heartless killer in our history, this cannibal, was released on the President's signature? And comes back to Manila, after a brief provincial sojourn, in a Mercedez Benz? What could conceal shameless hanky-panky in the stock market, where the minions of Malacanang, led by Dante Tan, presumably a surrogate of Stanley Ho, moved BW Resources from the mudflats overnight to instant money, money, money? How can the president deny he said on camera, en flagrante delicto, that the "nation was in crisis" and that he only meant to say we were a nation in disnnity?

We can go on and on. But let's move forward to the business community. The most conservative in our society, our businessmen and more -- foreign economic and financial experts -- normally use just chopsticks to nudge the president. This time the leaders and movers of business have taken off the gloves in a bare-fisted array of figures and statistics to show the Philippines is the worst performer in this region of Asia. And what they never said before and they now say -- they do not trust him at all. They do not believe the president's statements in that BW Resources scandal They believe Perfecto Yasay.

The Audit and Surveys Worldwide (ASW) in a poll conducted for Business World pummeled at brass gongs to show their discomfiture. Two-thirds of the business community turned thumbs down on the promises made by Erap Estrada during his Ulat ng Bayan message. The president's promise to "level the playing field?" Eight out of then expressed utter disbelief. The presidential promise to combat graft and corruption? Seven out of ten laughed that away.

Fifty CEOs (Chief Executive Officers) of major companies in Manila in the Asian Institute of Management-W. Sycip Policy Center survey announced the business community was highly worried about rising criminality and the unstable situation of the Estrada presidency. They railed, in the STAR's headline story Wednesday, against "monstrous traffic jams to getting mayors' permits and licenses, dealing with zoning related issues and land conversion processes or even looking for decent public spaces such as museums and parks." Are we getting to be a vast, ugly squatter city?

Merrill Lynch's Jojo Gonzales pointed out the Manila Stock Market was the region's worst performer. "There is skepticism, if not distrust, of the government," he said. So the Philippiness "will just chug along" while its neighbors in Asia bound up the economic highway like cheetahs after a deer pack for dinner. A Reuters dispatch said the Estrada administration was saddled with "the mismanagement of the budget deficit and a coterie of advisers who seem more powerful than the cabinet."

On top of that, he still has a cabinet in disarray. The appointment of a new "Chief of Staff", Dr. Aprodisio (Prod) Lacquian, is no guarantee the mists in Malacanang will disappear. This Lenny de Jesus weaves a kind of sinuous magic where she appears and disappears, and you never know, she will shortly disappear, then reappear back in the laps, oops, the warm welcome of a president who is said to swoon often in her presence, particularly when the Dragon Lady weeps like Lucia de Lammermoor.

Back to EDSA. Yes, however anniversarial it will be, it's taking place at a time, the start of the Millennium, when the smell of a nation in decay assails the nostrils. The president better believe this. His propagandists can say all they want. But virtually every coffee shop, every gathering, every family abode, every group, yes, everybody in town concurs the nation indeed is in crisis. And the shadows are coming close. If criticizing the president is disinformation and destabilization, then he is in heap plenty trouble. Virtually the whole citizenry is involved in it. Of course, Erap must be congratulated for putting Concord "in the freezer."

Talk show host Korina Sanchez of ABS-CBN didn't know what she would unleash when in a telephone survey recently she was quoted as asking if it was time the citizenry marched again to EDSA, as it did Feb. 22-25, 1986, to shake the fist of People Power against the powers-that-be. Kailangan umalsa ba ulit? Three out of four, or four out of five, said yes. This is the temper of the times or seems to be.

The president must heed it or not heed it at his peril.

He must do something spectacular, something bold, hit the ceiling like a thunderbolt. He must do something like Cory Aquino did after a coup in 1997 (or was it 1998?). At an emergency cabinet meeting, she rolled the presidential dice, threw and asked for everybody's "instant resignation." If I remember right, it was I who suggested it as her press secretary. For the crisis had already crawled in on us like a fog. Everybody scrambled for any piece of paper, napkins even, and wrote: "I hereby resign" with signatures affixed.

That eased the tension, covered the hole in the dike. Again, if I remember, President Aquino sought the immediate presence of then Defense Secretary Juan Ponce Enrile, who was not there with us, whose name was linked correctly or incorrectly with the right-wing RAM rebels. Cory Aquino hied to her offices at the Guest House when Mr. Enrile arrived, forthwith asked for his resignation. Got it on the instant. Returned to the cabinet conference room. The whole cabinet rose and exploded in applause.

That was crisis management. It enabled the president to immediately purge members of her cabinet whose continued presence would have sundered the republic. It no longer mattered whether she loved them or not. It was a case of the surgical knife plunging in to save the government. And democracy. Otherwise, a military junta could or would take over power. That was how serious it was at the time, the nation held hostage by some ambitious officers in the military.

I must mention that they hated Ninoy Aquino with a vengeance. It was a military tribunal under the Marcos dictatorship that convicted Ninoy on charges of communist subversion -- a big outrageous lie, of course -- and sentenced him to death by military musketry. The drums of crisis are upon all of us again.

Erap Estrada must move fast.