Smoke and mirrors / Tri-media coverage?

It’s uncanny. The whole thing is smoke and mirrors and we do not know which is which. A sitting president and an ex-president are now engaged in a grim mano a mano duel to win the hearts and minds of the Filipino people. I am, of course, referring to Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Joseph Estrada. Each in his or her own way has laid bare — okay, presumably laid bare — their hearts to clinch the support of the citizenry for their respective causes.

GMA has scratched off her mataray veneer.

Her public image was that of a hell-for-leader president (Isang bala ka lang! . . . I will crush them!) who did not suffer fools gladly. On every occasion, or almost, she flew into all sorts of tantrums, ultra-sensitive to criticism, quick to anger and quick to hate, with the memory of an elephant to past slights, real or imagined. The president’s face, formerly nurtured to resemble that of a captivating and crowd-caressing Nora Aunor, had become a vivid and livid battle-axe once she ascended to Malacañang.

Last Monday night, the television audience saw another Gloria.

She was subdued like a mill pond. Her face was a pleading face, a beseeching face, very tremolo at the end as she sought the citizenry’s heart strings with the parting words: "Ang pakiusap ko lamang ay magtulungan tayo. Kailangan ko kayo." Not anymore the proud, inglorious boast that the nation was well on the way to political, economic and social stability after just a year of GMA’s presidency. Everything, she said then, was going up roses. Now she was burdened with problems. In Tagalog she said: "And as mother of the house, I am clear on what I should do — to lift the Filipinos from poverty, defend our homes and improve our livelihood." In effect, she was admitting the nation was mired in crushing poverty, that the shadows of crime and violence now threatened almost every home, that the economy was stuck in a quagmire. All in pianissimo, sotto voce.

Now she was communicating the truth. Whatever the criticisms, that she was "insincere and acting", her Monday speech a "gimmick" and a "publicity stunt", GMA must have realized the nation was teetering on a coin, and it was time to call a spade a spade. And look contrite — and credible. Will she succeed? Only time will tell. Events are spinning so fast, in quite a number of dizzying directions that Joseph Estrada has also been compelled to take his legal drama out of the courtroom and switch it to the public, and there too, like GMA, play on the nation’s emotions.

A very reliable informant tells me that after the Supreme Court shafted Erap Estrada (upheld the legality of the plunder charge, gunned a special division of the Sandiganbayan into being, denied Jinggoy Estrada’s plea for bail), the former president got ballistic. He called in his closest advisers (among them reportedly Ernie Maceda) and reportedly blurted out: "I’ve had enough! It’s now one year I have been imprisoned, and things are getting worse. We’ll have to do something fast. Kailangan buwagin na ang lamesa!"

True or apocryphal? I am inclined to believe this narration approaches the truth. It explains the whys and wherefores of the Senate and House resolutions, the gathering waves for knee surgery abroad, eventual exile, and the threat that if Erap Estrada does not get what he wants, social turbulence will explode and reduce GMA to a quivering, bleating pulp of a little lass pleading for her life.

But I see things and events a little bit deeper, wider, and in more troubling perspective. The whole system is beginning to crack up. What is happening, in truth and in fact, is a continuing travesty of our democratic, free-enterprise, social, political and economic system that does not work anymore. Or like a doomed locomotive that runs on tracks leading to Ground Zero. Estrada cannot complain about the very generous treatment he is getting from the government. Ninoy Aquino was in jail for seven years and seven months —- in solitary. Often in his solitude, he talked to one or two mice tarryhooting in his room. Former president Jose Laurel Sr., arrested by the Americans for "collaborating" with the Japanese Imperial Army during the Occupation, was thrown into Japan’s Sugamo dank and dreary prison for one year. And the Old Man was stricken with asthma. Brought back to the Philippines to face collaboration charges, he was immediately shunted to Muntinlupa. Eventually, he and the others – including Benigno Aquino Sr., father of Ninoy – were acquitted.

The Old Man Laurel was a great man, a great nationalist who was assigned by President Manuel Quezon to shelter the Philippines from extreme Japanese depredation. He successfully fought off conscription. I cannot say the same thing for Joseph Estrada.

But as I said earlier, this is all a trick of mirrors and smoke.

So ravaged has our system been over a span of more than 50 years that it has already broken the spine of Philippine politics. As in Argentina, the most hated of the species in the Philippines today are the politicians. In a narrower context, it has wrought havoc on the executive branch of government — the presidency. Two EDSAs, two People Power uprisings — the first toppling Ferdinand Marcos, the second upending Joseph Estrada — have only succeeded in exposing the rot underneath, armies of termites already eroded the system beyond redemption or repair.

As we have said before, the towering garbage pile overhanging the system is not GMA’s fault. This was the result of decades of neglect and utter indifference, of a leadership network that didn’t give a hoot for national progress and the welfare of the poor, that valued money more than anything else, of a ramshackle culture that cultivated the poor’s patience and Christians resignation, of a rich and ilustrado class that never really broke its bonds with cacique behavior, and consequently of an uneducated or ill-educated citizenry that fell easy prey to the populist blandishments of Erap Estrada.

And as the cracks get bigger, the last standing domino is the judiciary.

If Estrada has his way, if he subverts the legal process through emotional, tear-jerking mumbo-jumbo and abracadabra, then believe you me the entire system collapses. There are those who believe that getting rid of Estrada through exile will allow the system to breathe. Air can be pumped again into the nation’s languishing lungs, a shaky peace served and perhaps order restored. I say all that is hokum and hallucination. There will be no peace as civil society rises in disgust. And outrage. Democracy in shambles.

After all it is civil society, the middle class, the middle forces that comprise the dynamo of any society. The masses were never in the vortex of history tumbling to front and center. What made history were the great minds of revolution and reform, the Meijis in Japan, the Shanghainese visionaries of China, the Cromwells of Britain, the Jacobins of France, the Bolsheviki of Russia. The masses simply followed. If the Estrada forces should sow chaos and anarchy, neither they nor Estrada will benefit. The Armed Forces will simply take over.

* * *

There is now a spirited debate as to whether the Supreme Court should now allow tri-media to cover the trial of Joseph Estrada. One school hesitates and is even against. They worry the fallen president, all alone and shorn of his preferred lawyers, will bleed the trial for all it is worth. If it is televised, he will portray himself to the public as a woebegone underdog if not a martyr, helpless and hopeless against a court determined to sentence him to death. The evidence, the witnesses will no longer matter. The crucifixion of Estrada alone will seize and envelop the public mind and the prosecution under extreme duress will have no choice but to acquit him.

Another school argues this boo-hoo, woe-is-me stuff will only be good for two weeks or so. After that, just like any act, it will wear off. Estrada can draw only so many tears. The public will eventually concentrate on the trial, on the evidence, the witnesses particularly Clarissa Ocampo. And then they will be convinced the trial is fair, balanced, decent, civilized, and not at all what Estrada and his lawyers accuse it to be — a kangaroo court.

I am inclined to accept the second school favoring television coverage.

I am on sixes and sevens regarding the acting ability of Joseph Estrada. If he is really that good as his admirers and followers claim, then ooh-la-la, I shall be at ringside to watch the Great Thespian, the Filipino equivalent of John Barrymore who even when drunk on stage, could mesmerize the audience, make it weep, chortle and guffaw. They say he saw the greatest Shakespearean movie actor ever. But I have my doubts. Erap was not really great on screen, his so-called Westerns mostly spaghetti westerns. But he was great as an actor-politician, parlaying his paltry and puny persona to the presidency of the Philippines.

If only he had good counsel, or followed the advice of his betters in government, he would still be president of the Philippines today. But Erap pushed his luck too far, stumbled and sprawled. They never learn.