Caretaker President - GOTCHA by Jarius Bondoc

Ask any businessman how long he thinks it would take to put the economy back on track, and he’d say one year, even two. Prod him again why it would take that long, and he’d first say that’s the way things go. But then he’d quickly add, if only GMA were a little bolder…

Businessmen are a conservative lot. Too many laws for too little capital make them so. Yet when Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo declared during her inaugural that she just wants to be a good President, not only Leftists but businessmen, too, were disappointed. Here was a tested leader raised to the highest office in the land not by mere election but by People Power, and yet she sounded too cautious. They had expected her to announced bold initiatives from the euphoria of yanking out a bad predecessor, and yet she seemed unsure of her footing.

Succeeding events somehow confirmed their fears. On her first day in Malacañang, GMA said she would respect the bureaucracy. What? That bureaucracy has grown so fat and sluggish with political appointees and institutionalized corruption, yet she would let it be? Why, it needs a top-to-bottom reorganization.

But it’s not to be. Firm only in her cautiousness, GMA recruited some youthful men and women to her Cabinet, but allotted more seats to old pols and retired generals. She had proclaimed as her No. 1 priority boldness in national ambition, especially in fighting poverty. But she seems more bent towards her No. 2 aim: A return to basic morals in government and society.

Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But the millions who marched to EDSA – no, not the trapos onstage – already had resolved to change their bad ways along with evil government long before that. A new, basic morality was their weapon. They were waiting to be led to fiercer battles for political reform and economic resurgence. They were willing to follow a new President who would wield the awesome power of the initiative to stir up cities and farms into action.

GMA, it would seem, prefers to be a caretaker President. This is the source of discontent among radicals and conservatives alike.

Perhaps it’s precisely because she rode to Malacañang on dizzying shoulders of People Power and not the traditional ballot that makes GMA think her role is to be caretaker. In the three-and-a-half years of Joseph Estrada’s unfinished term, she would just maintain a coalition of disparate sectors in EDSA II: civil society, military, business clans. If she balances off their equally disparate interests well enough, maybe she could win her own Presidency the good old-fashioned way in 2004. And then she’d start to govern.

But that’s where danger lies. Politics is so nasty a trade that it never allows a vacuum. Leaders who hesitate creates peace for bolder ones to fill. There’s never a dull moment, no time for waiting.

Caretaker Presidencies work only in developed economies like the US. There, private sector sets the trend, Congress follows suit with policies and regulations, the President enters last for monitoring and enforcement. Not so in a slow economy like RP. Here, a President must take the initiative, Congress helps out with budgets, and the people participate last.

The present US system is not one – although it used to be – that depends on strong or fails on weak Presidents. Rather it gives rise to strong Presidents when it is in array, and weak ones when it is in disarray. Again, not so in RP. Here, Presidents need to be bold in taking up from where a predecessor left off. RP is in disarray, and direly needs a strong President to point the direction.

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Know your candidates for mayor or governor, congressman and senator. Catch Balitaktakan (Election 2001) every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, 7:30-8:30 p.m., starting tonight on Zoe Broadcasting Channel 11. See you there.

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INTERACTION. Edelina Macaspac, hotmail.com: Miriam was never a student at Cambridge (Gotcha, 28 Feb. 2001). Here’s the reply of the university custodian to the query of my friend who’s studying in Oxford: "Dear Mr. Malaga, I regret that neither the Alumni Foundation nor the University Archives have any record of Miriam Defensor-Santiago having been a member of this University. Yours sincerely, Jacqueline Cox."

Christopher Dicdiquin, 19, University of Asia and the Pacific: I agree that we need to change the electoral system, a rich man’s game so government power falls in the hands of the elite (Gotcha, 26, Feb. 2001). We must also change the social structure, which is like a feudal system with a wide gap between the elite and the masa. EDSA-I and II taught us the need for unity of the masa and elite.

Hermenegildo C. Cruz, ambassador (ret.): President GMA has decided to follow strictly the Armed Forces retirement law. I hope she does likewise with DFA retirement as provided for in RA 7157, The Foreign Service Act of 1991. The Act was another victim of lawlessness that characterized the Estrada tenure. Under Sec. 23, Title II, the absolute age for serving in the DFA is 70. It has a fool-proof provision, Sec. 22, which states that "the DFA shall not authorize, nor shall the Commission on Audit pass" payment of salaries and allowances in violation of this law. In spite of this stringent provision, many ambassadors past 70 still serve and get emoluments. DFA employees should take this matter to the Ombudsman.

Thank you, too, Melchora Lamonera, Josse Labrador, Jet Nera, Aida Aguas, Willie Vicedo, Danilo Nacua, Nimitz Benedicto, Ipe Torres, Eric Valenzuela, Jeffrey Gleane, John de la Cruz, Gras Reyes, Lendi Tiongco, Wally Silaban, Bernabe Gomez, Steven K. Landry, Nilo Pelayo, Claudio Sandoval, Jojo Dancel, Dondi Mapa, Dely Sidiongco, Alvin Casuga, Generoso de Guzman.

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YOUR COMPUTER. Privacy may not be an individual right in China, but it beat the US to "purifying" cyberspace. The Ministry of Public Security has released new software designed to keep "cults, sex and violence" off the Net. A police official said this will prevent users from getting "unhealthy information" from foreign and local websites. Take that, you capitalist pig.

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