Sleepwalking in Malacañang / That nationwide strike - HERE'S THE SCORE By Teodoro C. Benigno

It’s uncanny, weird even, gazing at the visage of a purring pussycat contentedly slurping milk alongside barrels of dynamite. I refer most certainly to President Joseph Estrada’s offer of reconciliation to the multitudes massed in the streets demanding his resignation. El Presidente said reconciliation was "the only way out" of the continuing crisis threatening to devour the nation any day now. If this isn’t sleepwalking, silly, and absolutely witless, I don’t know what is.

Let’s hear some more words of regurgitated wisdom: "I will prove wrong those who have put their personal and political interests above the interests of the country and demanding my ouster and fomenting political and economic stability." Does President Estrada mean all this? Is he like a patient shaking off anesthesia after undergoing transorbital lobotomy seeing the world upside down? In brief, is he in denial?

Maybe he is and maybe he is not.

But eventually he must hear that ticking of the clock, a ticking that is unmistakable. And that is – this is the end game. And he has to resign, the sooner the better, to save that portion of himself that can be mended, assuming it can still be mended. If the people needed proof that his situation was desperate, it was the presidential hiring of Ernesto Maceda as his Ark of the Covenant. Mr. Maceda’s skills in resurrecting the dead are supposed to be legend. Except that he couldn’t resurrect himself during the last mayoralty elections in Manila when he landed third behind now mayor Lito Atienza and Amado Bagatsing.

But let us not be so hard on this man schooled in black magic. I can see Ernie Maceda succeed in derailing, paralyzing or seeking to railroad the impeachment process in the Senate. In a few words, that impeachment process is as good as dead, if the sought-for objective is to indict and convict the president. Word from the grapevine is that Mr. Maceda’s war chest for the job – courtesy, of course, of Malacañang – is a minimum one billion buckaroos.

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Just two or three senators – if necessary, more – can be induced to change their minds, go abroad when the votes are being counted, get sick of terminal dyspepsia or take temporary residence in the Bikini atoll. That’s easy stuff. According to Sen. Ramon Magsaysay Jr., quoting informed sources, P100 million per senator has been allocated. My own sources told me this could go as high as P200 million per! Of course, the impeachment proceedings can be railroaded and, lo and behold, the president can be acquitted in jig time. But that would smell to high heavens. Nobody would buy it. And those barrels of dynamite can explode.

As for the members of the cabinet who have chosen or even sworn to remain loyal to the president, let me just say this. The crisis will deepen, there’s no way Ernie Maceda or other viziers of the president can turn it around. We are close to hitting zero and no exclamations of May Day!, May Day! May Day! can prevent the present administration from sinking like the Titanic or, if you wish, the Lusitania.

Regard. When the first ray of light appeared that the impeachment process was well on the way and that Finance Secretary Titoy Pardo, in behalf of the president, was talking to Cory Aquino and seeking a "graceful exit", the local financial markets started to take on lustre. The peso appreciated against the dollar and foreign investors, who had long avoided the Philippines, were eyeing the possibility of coming in. When Erap Estrada vowed he would "never, never" resign, the vultures were back in the skies in no time at all and prepared to swoop again.

If anything at all, it proved that President Estrada was the problem – a problem that could only be solved, if he resigned.

Now, let’s take a look at that grandly ballyhooed "prayer rally" scheduled Saturday at the Luneta by Mike Velarde and his El Shaddai throng. We are told one million will appear – to be graced, of course, by President Estrada and his Malacañang condottierre. We are also told this one million will make the 100,000 who attended the November 4 rally at the EDSA Shrine look small beer and smaller bananas.

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This is poppycock. There is no difference between Saturday’s "prayer rally" and previous rallies staged by Brother Mike Velarde attended by millions. Let me continue. I have never thought much of Mike Velarde as a preacher and as a prophet. He claims to remain a Roman Catholic and precisely for that, I think this man should be excommunicated. The issue, the lone issue is moral. If Velarde is a moral man, he should flee in fright from Malacañang, flee as far as he can, flee as fast as he can.

The words of Robert de Castro, secretary-general of the militant church organization Promotion of Church People’s Response, are rather strong. He calls Velarde a "false prophet", "a religio-political opportunist" who he claims is misleading El Shaddai members into "supporting the unChristian and satanic policies and programs" of you-know-who. Well, I will not go that far. All I can say is that Brother Mike will have his comeuppance one day, just like Jimmy Swaggart had his. Kapow!

There is a lot of betting as to when President Estrada will go. Go as in resign. Go as in leave the country. Go as in vamoose. There are those who predict he will leave the middle of this month. Others say before November is out. Still others say before the end of the year. Very few see the president staying after the end of the year 2000.

My own hunch is that the forthcoming one-day nationwide strike November 14 by all of organized labor, including independent labor unions, to be followed by a crippling two-, three-, four- to five-day work stoppage all over the country will send huge flares into the sky. And these flares will consign the president to limbo. He will leave. The strikes will prove more than anything else he has no handle on the nation, and even the closest to him, or many of them, will desert the palace lest they too be swallowed by the deluge.

Lead roles in the impending strikes belong to former congressman Jose (Peping) Cojuangco and Pastor (Boy) Saycon. I have seen them work and I am impressed. They have forged bonds between the Left and the Right, an almost impossible task. And convinced the middle class to join in. Peping and Boy laid their lives on the line the moment they offered sanctuary to Ilocos Sur governor Luis Chavit Singson last September 1.

An earlier hesitating and even reluctant business community has waded into the waters, agreeing to extend financial assistance to the strikes after being assured no violence was intended. But if there would be violence, it would come from the ranks of the military and the police. If AFP chief of staff Gen. Angelo Reyes and PNP chief Gen. Panfilo Lacson would lose their cool in a moment of panic and desperation because the strikes would certainly tear out the guts of the economy. And very probably bring an end to President Estrada’s government.

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Reconciliation? Nobody in the street is in any mood to reconcile with President Estrada. And for good reason. The charges against him are charges that have never been foisted on any past president of the Philippines for they ran the gamut from largescale theft to flagrant violation of the Constitution. They say he has wined, dined and womanized on a colossal scale with a decided fetish for building huge and luxury mansions for his mistresses.

As though to affix the dots on the I’s and the cross on the T’s, the Presbyterial Council of the Manila Archdiocese headed by Jaime Cardinal Sin urged the media in a statement yesterday not to allow themselves to be used to hide the truth or distract people from the truth. As follows: "The issue is morality in public office. The issue is the immorality of the highest political leader of the nation. Let us stay focused not so much on the opinions and statements we hear but more on what the Lord wants us to do."

The rage is there. We are now entering the level of outrage and this is dangerous. Each passing day the president remains in office, he stokes the fires of popular fury. This is what the Messrs. Cojuangco and Saycon want to avoid – fury sweltering into ugly violence. It would do the military and the police a lot of good if they desist from the use of violence to break up the impending strikes on demonstrations. If and when they do resort to violence, I am afraid this violence will provoke counterviolence. Then we’ll have the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse galloping down the pike.

The military is a hate object right now and so are the police.

They cannot afford or dare to take over power because nobody or very few will obey them. And they’ll have a People Power insurgency on their hands. Plus the war in Mindanao. It is about time they learned their lesson, not to be used by a strongman or a dictator or a leader drunk with glory and power. The military remains stained with the blood of Ninoy Aquino whom they assassinated August 21, 1983. For which the military never atoned, asked forgiveness for, or at the very least apologized.