One voice, one tune

Discerning political observers have noted that President Estrada has lately been keeping a low profile, apparently a tactical move aimed at resurrecting his image and restoring his popularity to their previous highs. Note that in the past, President Erap's ratings suffered, mainly because of his penchant to talk straight from his heart, unmindful of the consequences.

This strategy, though, must be implemented in a most flexible way. For instance, in times of crisis, the President must take a high profile -- to rally the troops, to buoy the morale of the people, to issue a stirring call to arms. This his spokesmen cannot do, for it is a role that only the top leader of the nation can perform. Remember Winston Churchill? Or John F. Kennedy? And other national leaders who, when their nations stood on the edge of peril, spoke to their people, directly and straight from their hearts? It was these leaders' high profile, in those times of crisis, that enabled their countries to emerge triumphant.

So far, amid the raging conflict in Mindanao and the escalating acts of terrorism in the metropolis, the voice of President Estrada has sounded mute. Louder voices have come from Orly Mercado, Robert Aventajado, Ronnie Zamora, Ping Lacson, Jojo Binay, Edgardo Aglipay, and other government underlings. What people yearn to hear is a rallying call from the nation's highest leader, President Estrada.

It is disturbing that disordant voices have come from the President's men. They are not singing the same tune -- and some of their voices are off-beat. The tragedy of it all is that their words are often conveyed to the public as the official tune of the Estrada government. The babel of different sounds has been quite pronounced, particularly in the case of the Mindanao war. The off-beat tune is not good at all, insofar as unifying the nation is concerned.

This is where the policy of "One Voice, One Tune" comes in. And the best person to enunciate this policy is no other than the President himself. A well-crafted speech, drafted after much thought and deliberation, and delivered straight from the heart of President Erap, can be a major factor in reassuring the Filipino people and the world that all is well in the Philippines, and that, sooner or later, the current storm will blow away.

Here are interesting insights from the book, Choices in Healing, authored by Michael Lerner, on the American cultures of conventional cancer therapies:

*There are wide differences in views between surgeons, radiation therapists, and oncologists on how to cope with cancer. Historically, great battles have been waged in medical practice and in the medical journals between these three professional groups regarding the efficacy of the treatment each offers for cancer.

* These battles involve not only a very human conflict between these specialties for control of cancer treatment fees, but also reflect the strong tendency of almost every specialty to believe in the benefits of its own skills and instruments in contrast to those of other specialties.

* What this means for cancer patients is simple but fundamental: If the first person you see about your cancer is a surgeon and he recommends immediate surgery, you may want additional opinions not only from surgeons but also from oncologists and radiation therapists. This approach is rarely spelled out to patients who want to obtain a second or third opinion.

Here are more insights from Lerner on aggressive versus conservative treatment:

* In all three disciplines -- surgery, oncology, and radiation therapy -- doctors vary in their predisposition to aggressive or conservative approaches to treatment. An aggressive oncologist faced with a metastatic breast cancer in a young woman may, for example, be inclined to recommend autologous bone marrow transplant in combination with a very high dose chemotherapy and radiation therapy, a process that is very difficult, painful and expensive.

* Conservative oncologists are inclined against such aggressive recommendations when there is no clear evidence of their benefit.

* There are also differences between aggressive and conservative surgeons and between aggressive and conservative radiation therapists. Each specialty belies in its own professional skills and tools. But within each specialty, there are those who wield them cautiously and those who wield them more aggressively.

* It may be wise for a patient to seek out a physician who has, or at least can accommodate, a style of relationship to risk that is similar to the patient's own.

Eastern Samar has a new police provincial director. But even before he could warm his seat, Supt. Conrado V. Calvario has already gotten himself embroiled in a raging tempest of his own making. Calvario ignited the controversy by ordering the withdrawal of long firearms (M16s) issued to the different municipal police offices (MPOs) in Eastern Samar years ago. Even before Calvario's whirlwind decision, policemen in the province were already among the most ill-equipped and poorly-armed in the entire country. That Calvario issued the recall order at night, with the instruction that his directive be followed within hours after it was made, injected an element of mystery into the controversy.

As backgrounder, a town in Eastern Samar would be extremely lucky if 70 percent of the members of its MPO have firearms. Many towns make do with a few pieces of handguns, and there are fewer with long firearms. Of course, there is plenty of wood to be fashioned into nightsticks or batuta. But what can one expect the police to beat back an NPA offensive, for instance, or arrest dynamite fishers if they are armed only with nightsticks?

The Eastern Samar mayors are up in arms over the Calvario order. They lament that they were not consulted about the withdrawal of the firearms. In fact, there are suspicions that Calvario issued the order at nighttime, to foil any attempt by the mayors concerned to stop the arms withdrawals. This, the mayors consider as a deliberate insult, and an attack on the principle of inter-office courtesy.

Worse still, Calvario's unexpected and unexplained directive has triggered a spate of wild talk, none of which is flattering to the government, particularly the Philippine National Police. One such rumor is that the military is running out of firearms in the face of the escalating conflict in Mindanao, and that the police M16s are being channeled to the Mindanao hostilities. If this speculation is even partly true, then the country is in deep trouble.

Even more unflattering to the image of the Eastern Samar PNP are speculations that the firearms recall order was a deliberate effort to weaken the MPOs, to ensure that they are inutile in going after unlawful activities like illegal gambling, illegal fishing, drug-trafficking, illegal cockfighting, illegal game cards, and others.

Eastern Samarenos have noted with alarm that since Calvario's assumption of the provincial PNP command, the illegal numbers game, masiao, has roared back with vengeance. The problem is expected to worsen during Calvario's watch unless he does something decisive to solve it now. In the meantime, Eastern Samarenos are keenly watching Calvario's every move, to see how he compares with his predecessors in the law-enforcement and integrity departments. For now, the early prognosis is that Calvario has started on a wrong foot.

Art A. Borjal's e-mail address: <[email protected]>