Class conflict? - CHASING THE WIND by Felipe B. Miranda

All Philippine presidents start their term with enough luck and enough well-wishers. President Arroyo, given the circumstances of her rise to the presidency, could be one of the most fortunate of post-war Philippine presidents. Unless she is determined to break her predecessor’s record in serving the shortest presidency in this country of smiling – often inexplicably laughing – citizens, President Arroyo is luckiest in succeeding President Estrada and, in a manner of speaking, having a possibly easy act to follow.

Deposed President Estrada appears to have drawn so much of the negative vibes of the public such that much of the latter’s negativism – its high sense of distrust earlier reserved for then Vice President Arroyo – has dramatically declined as she assumed the presidency. Metro Manila and national surveys done by Pulse Asia in the last three weeks – the latest involving 1,200 respondents nationwide and done between February 3 to 5, 2001 – confirm this observation.

Despite quite a bit of guarded pessimism – her initial appointments to the Cabinet and other agencies made skeptics of many people who supported her drive to the presidency – as well as bitter denunciations and cries of betrayal from a few others who religiously participated in EDSA II, President Arroyo has managed to sustain cautious optimism among a slim and apparently slowly growing majority of Filipinos.

In early February 2001, about six out of ten voting-age Filipinos provide President Arroyo a moral boost in attributing legality to her presidential takeover and anticipating that her administration will finish its due term in 2004. About 7 in 10 actually say the majority and not only a few of the citizenry supports her presidency.

The interesting thing about these sentiments is that they are now shared to the same extent by all socioeconomic classes, from the best-off class ABC to the most numerous relatively still poor class D and the poorest class E. For possibly the first time in the last four and a half months, no significant class differentiation and therefore no class conflict attends the people’s perceptions and sentiments of the national administration. The potential for class-delineated political struggle has markedly diminished, at least for the present.

Give the new tenant in Malacañang a chance to prove herself. This is basically the sentiment of the public now. As part of their traditional CARE package for any new president, Filipinos are again including in this often undeserved gift the usual assortment of popular tokens – higher levels of public trust, a suspension of the people’s understandable skepticism due to historical trends which increasingly beggar the many and a willful optimism that too often breaks down in the course of irresponsibly feckless public administration.

A great opportunity has opened for this administration as it has so many times in the past for others. President Arroyo may patriotically seize it and build a formidable nation from decent people who have been leaderless in this country for so long. Or she may, like many other presidents before her, simply build a formidable array of transactional politicians from her own limited circle of people and three years from now – if not sooner – be yet another figure in the public’s gallery of at best excusable rogues awarded a presidential seal.

If President Arroyo does not do well by this country between now and 2004, who would be brazen enough to suggest that the Filipino public – in an absolute display of national masochism – ought to award her an additional 6-year lease on Malacañang?