Unsolicited Advice for The Lady in waiting; Golota not Golgotha - HERE'S THE SCORE by Teodoro C. Benigno

Outside of President Joseph Estrada of course, the choice subject of political conversation is Vice President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. There she is, prim and pretty, dishy and diminutive, almost always swaddled in elegant clothes, intoning phrases calculated not to hurt anybody or displease anybody. She rejoices, not unlike the Queen of Sheba, at the turn of events and her fortunes. She is certain she will – sooner than later – become president of the Philippines because, well, God, the constitution and destiny are on her side.

And why not?

President Estrada is right now turning and twisting agonizingly in a barbecue pit, being fried many say in his own fat. The hue and cry gets stronger by the day for his resigation, impeachment or ouster. If there is anybody who knows the predicament the president is in – so they say – it is GMA. She eagerly joined Erap’s political caravan, preened proudly as the president’s secretary of social welfare for more than two years. Then – lo and behold! – she jumped ship after more than two years of cozying it up to Erap.

If she jumped a month, two months or three months earlier, GMA would have ridden a chariot, been smothered with praises, soared like an angel in the adulation of the citizenry. Her problem is that she jumped right at the time that Ilocos Sur Governor Luis ‘Chavit’ Singson, came out with his shattering expose that the president was allegedly the lord-in-residence of all jueteng lords in the Philippines. That was a blockbuster. The presidential masonry cracked into pieces because 80-90 percent of Filipinos believe Singson is telling the truth.

And thus the problem of GMA.

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There is no doubt that constitutionally she will succeed to the presidency. And this could be soon. The president’s credibility has plummeted to near zero. And as a result there is no way he can prevent the economy from swooning to a goodbye epileptic fit. There is no way he can prevent the streets from pealing more and more thunder. And when the multitudes should gather in front of the gates of Malacañang by the tens of thousands if not by the hundreds of thousands on the call of the Cardinal and Cory, he will have to flee or resign.

Now back to Gloria. Her big, big problem is that wherever you go today, her name is nyet. If she does not know this yet, then her people are shielding her from the truth. I was at an upscale dinner party two nights ago and I didn’t meet anybody who had a good word for GMA. "Don’t we have anybody better?" is a common reaction. The ladies were particularly nasty. The left, ideological and not ideological, would, as a matter of fact, seek to prevent her from assuming the presidency.

The reasoning is that as of now the only change would be GMA replacing Erap Estrada. The whole rot will remain, the House, the Senate, a venal judiciary, the same police, the same Armed Forces, the same institutions, the same crime and racketeering. The same smugglers. The same gamblers. What should have been turned into carcass by EDSA in 1986 remains a big, stinking monster. The additional argument is that GMA does not have the leadership, the integrity, the courage to launch reforms since she herself has to be reformed.

That is what I hear and it is terribly disturbing.

Another criticism against GMA is that (again the Queen of Sheba syndrome) she believes and behaves she is the real leader of a "united opposition". I understand she was told bluntly two days ago that the real opposition "is in the streets", not the Lakas-NUCD. And she has not even bothered to link up with the demos. So watch out.

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Should I dispense advice to this lady who has continuously spurned this columnist? This lady who has accused me of prodding her to "shed my blood" and "become a street-fighter" when all I did was ask her to state her opinions, her side on burning national issues? Because that was what democracy and leadership are all about? But no, she chose clinging to Estrada’s coat-tails – benedetti, benedetto – "because that is what the people want me to do." Hah!

Stuff and nonsense. GMA was playing it safe, very safe and now the whole thing is blowing in her face. Like rinderpest.

But we all live in this democracy. We all want to reform it from within if we can, and there’s no way we can remove Gloria unless the streets get out of control, and the military takes over. Or a collective leadership. Well, Gloria, Advice No. 1. Get out of your woolly, goody-goody two shoes, pretentious self ("I ask and wait for God’s discernment) and show spunk. Speak out. And speak out with vigor, intelligence, courage and resolution on national issues that have been tearing our country apart. Crooks in Malacañang, crooks in congress, crooks in the judiciary. Are you going to kick ass when you get to be president?

Advice No. 2. You always say you are the beneficiary of all this sound and fury against Erap. And so you can’t talk, you cannot assail the president and all the shenanigans you saw in Malacañang. This is baloney. Well, if you too were a sinner (a sinner by omission, as you say), then say you are sorry. You are a Christian, by gad, and you are compelled by the values of your religion to go back to the straight and narrow path. Effective and sincere leadership, specially at the level of the presidency, is morality more than it is anything else. That was the undoing of Mr. Estrada.

Take morality out and you have a brothel. Which is what our politics is today.

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Advice No. 3. I would like to see what your intended cabinet looks like. If it’s still the same roustabouts, the same chiselers, buccaneers and opportunitists who gave President Fidel Ramos a bad time and also a bad name late in his term (maybe FVR was helpless or he may have wanted it that way), then you’re starting with the wrong foot. And you will fail. Maybe we cannot pull out graft and corruption root and branch. But we can hack it to splinter wood by arresting, charging and convicting the biggest crooks and criminals, smugglers, tax-evaders, gambling lords. I understand the Chinese camarilla of President Estrada is now knocking at or have entered your chamber door. That, dear Gloria, would be fatal.

If you get to be president, and I think you will – for those snap elections suggested by Juan Ponce Enrile have the smell of Pearl Harbor and will not prosper – you will be walking on egg shells. The nation is not the same anymore. Poverty is pandemic. The Left is wide awake (and so is the Right), and if you misfire, you can only have yourself to blame. Today, in a sense, is another emerging EDSA. But it is EDSA on borrowed time. The smell of Payatas – political, economic, social – is in the air. The nation’s patience is close to snapping. The people are angry.

Reform and you survive. You don’t reform and the streets will teem again – this time with ominous thunder.

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Blimey, but I witnessed the strangest, the eeriest, the queerest pugilistic encounter I ever saw in all my life. We were made to expect that the Mike Tyson-Andrew Golota heavyweight fight in Michigan would be a humdinger – nasty, bruising and dirty as all get out. It was a fight only in the first round when Iron Mike downed Golota to his haunches with a jolting right to the head. Golota, a head taller than Tyson, bounced up, took a mandatory count. The bell rang.

This bozo Golota, who towers like a lamppost and is built like a marine, turned out to be a quitter. His trainer Al Certo told newsmen after the fight that even after the end of the first, Golota wanted to quit. He was hurt by Tyson’s right to his head? His brain was addled? There was a roost of chickens in his breast? Bats in his befry? Anyway, he agreed to go out for the second round.

Come to think of it, Golota did not do badly in the second. He got hit, but he poured in his own shots and for a moment we thought Golota would explode. Then came the moment nobody ever saw in ring history. Golota got up from his corner before regulation time, third round, which surprised referee Frank Garza. The referee motioned to Golota’s corner and said "Your one-minute rest period is not over. Go back to your corner."

To which Golota replied: "I quit."

Quit? He was not even hurt bad. He had a body that could take on the slam of an oncoming truck. He could have lifted Mike Tyson bodily into the air and pitched him to the cheap seats. He could have bent a barbell with his bare hands. But Golota quit like a child deprived of his lollipop. Strange.