Erap can no longer be Erap: He's someone else called 'PresidentEstrada'

It's too late to re-label him and insist on his being addressed more respectfully (or stuffily) as "President Estrada."

In his chummy-chummy manner, even after he assumed office in Malacañang, Joseph Ejercito Estrada permitted everybody -- including the electronic and print media -- to refer to him as "Erap." Probably, he wanted to say: "Hey, I'm the same guy you elected." Perhaps he didn't wish to sound pompous. As a result, even he may have forgotten the solemnity and gravity of his high office.

As happy-go-lucky Pacific islanders and children of the sun, we Filipinos have a tendency to be over-familiar -- even insolent. Rebelling against the hauteur and snobbishness of the Spanish colonial masters (those born in Spain, the Peninsulares, even looked down on Spaniards born in the Philippines as Insulares), Jose Rizal and his propaganda movement gangmates coined the counter-cheeky term of Indios Bravos. The Americans, when they took over, compounded this by preaching that "everybody is equal." They meant equal in the eyes of the law, but failed to qualify this (they didn't understand it themselves) by pointing out that in reality some men and women are bright, others are dumb, some are tall, others are short, some are lazy, others are diligent, some are thin and others (like policemen) are fat, and so forth.

Equality of opportunity was the only thing supposed to be guaranteed. Instead "democracy" -- to demonstrate everyone's equal status -- came to be equated with bad manners.

And so, when Erap let it be known that he could still be referred to as "Erap", even after putting on the mantle of the Presidency, people presumed he was still the rough-and-tumble guy who had been mayor of San Juan and a movie "action star." Worst of all, he himself believed he hadn't changed -- and didn't need to change.

That's where he's mistaken. He's no longer Erap but President Estrada. The other day, Executive Secretary Ronnie Zamora told us that "Erap has his own style," and that he simply "has to be Erap." Wrong. A President must change his style. He's no pub crawler or cardsharp but the leader of the nation. Erap has to become the Chief Executive, not any longer the brawler from the backstreets of San Juan.

"Mr. President" is not a title lightly bestowed on just anybody by millions of Filipino voters. They voted him into office so he could take care of their lives and fortunes. But when he can't even curb his hotheaded impulses and watch his tongue, how can they have confidence that he's curbing graft, corruption and crime?

Joseph Ejercito Estrada must metamorphose from "good old Erap" into the President of the Filipino people.

In every generation, Presidents demanded respect not because of their own virtues but by virtue of their high office. This was not arrogance; it was a symbol of governance.

Thus, Manuel L. Quezon, when elected President of the Philippine Commonwealth, ejected the American Governor-General (later called High Commissioner) from his quarters in Malacañang, so he -- the President -- could live there. MLQ could have had his choice of other opulent mansions (he had many rich "cronies," and I mean very rich). Yet, it was important for him to reside in Malacañang where the archipelago's rulers had held forth for more than a century so that the nation and the world would be served notice that a Filipino President had taken power. This was a "fiction," of course, since Washington, DC still controlled and we were still an American colony, but Quezon pulled it off.

"Don Manuel" was a name reserved only for his closest intimates, just as his successor was known to his close friends as "Sergio". To everybody else he was known as President Osmeña.

The man who defeated him in the first postwar election and became first President of the present Republic, Don Manuel Acuña Roxas, was also carefully called "President Roxas." When Roxas died of a heart attack in Clark Field, Pampanga, his Vice President assumed office, and in turn was called "President" although he was Apo Pidiong (by his familiars). In Ilocano (he hailed from Caoayan, Ilocos Sur, right next to Vigan), "Apo" denotes that he was both lord and father, a title of high respect. (God is addressed as Apo Dios). Then came Ramon Magsaysay, the man of the masses, who was correctly called "The President," or "President Magsaysay," or "The Guy," but Monching only in private.

When Magsaysay perished in a plane crash, his successor Carlos P. Garcia was never "Caloy" but always "President Garcia." The naughtiest title he got was that created by the then Manila Times columnist Joe Guevarra. Since Garcia dabbled in poetry -- writing "balaks" in his native Boholano -- and was, to boot, dark in complexion, the irrepressible Guevarra dubbed him "The Balak Beauty."

Even the "Poor Boy from Lubao", Diosdado Macapagal, still had an honorific attached to his name as "Cong Dadong." The man who dethroned him by pledging that "the Philippines can be great again" (the Philippines regretted again, instead), Ferdinand E. Marcos was never referred to in the press, except by columnists, as "Macoy" or "Andy" (his real nickname), but as "Apo Ferdinand" or "Apo Marcos."

I don't think President Corazon C. Aquino really relished being referred to as "Tita Cory," nor could you conceive of President Fidel V. Ramos being addressed in print as "Eddie" or even Apo Fidel (despite his folksy ways). Columnists had poetic license, or were simply licentious in calling him El Tabako, but he was mostly FVR or Ramos in headline-lingo.

Alas, I've always felt queasy about newspaper headlines saying "ERAP," but almost two years down the Presidential road, I guess he's stuck with it. Yet, that's the trouble. They will always, now, treat him as just "Erap."

The President's problem is that he is increasingly infuriated by all those Erap jokes which are mushrooming on the Internet and in cellphone text messages. He hates being scoffed at and humiliated.

I told him a year ago that such humiliation goes with his "job description." With his growing propensity to ring up radio stations or go on early morning radio-TV to say things testily (he's not at his best in the morning), I wish he would remind himself of that.

Even Jesus got crucified by His critics -- and he's not Jesus.

It may annoy him that anybody suggests it, but Sir Erap ought to take a leaf from Vice President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Despite the frontpage attacks launched on her by the President (about her either staying on the team or quitting), egged on by Executive Secretary Ronnie Zamora, what we've got from La Gloria who's hunkered down in San Francisco, California, is total silence.

Gloria made the wise decision of leaving for "visits" to China, to Israel, and now to California, USA, when things got hot -- and she's been sending propaganda photos and stories home, but no reactions to anything being said or done. In politics, sometimes "silence" is not only golden; it's essential for survival.