When GMA’s rating dips, it’s time to change tack

The President shouldn’t get unduly alarmed, but she ought to take heed. When a Social Weather Stations (SWS) survey conducted March 4 to 23 shows her public satisfaction rating drop from 53 percent last November to just 16 in a poll taken three weeks ago, this is an indication that her government isn’t doing well. There’s no way to fudge that.

The most obvious conclusion to be drawn from the dip in ratings is that her endless sorties everywhere – i.e., non-stop campaigning expeditions – are not making her more popular. Perhaps the people are trying to tell her that they’d much prefer her staying out at her "command post" in Malacañang to run the country, rather than have her running all over the country.

In any event, ratings go down, and they go up. A chief executive would be ineffective if, overcome by anxiety, she constantly paused to take the public pulse before going on to make the next decision. The President should just do what her conscience tells her, not what she believes would be popular, or convenient.

There are three quotations I’d like to recommend to GMA, two from American presidents, the third from an Englishman. The first was uttered by Ronald Reagan who said: "Politics is supposed to be the second oldest profession. I have come to realize that it bears a very close resemblance to the first."

The second comes from Lyndon B. Johson: "I seldom think of politics more than eighteen hours a day."

Finally, Britain's late, great Prime Minister Winston Churchill pointed out: "Politics are almost as exciting as war and quite as dangerous. In war you can only be killed once, but in politics many times."

These are not quips or jokes, but the distilled "wisdom" of three men who met – in Rudyard Kipling’s words – "with triumph and disaster" and treated "those two impostors just the same."

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The abrupt decision of brand-new Press Secretary (concurrently presidential spokesman) Rigoberto ‘Bobi’ Tiglao to jump ship is mystifying. Tiglao was designated "Press Secretary" only last April 1, then, out of the blue, he told Malacañang reporters he was leaving for Japan on three to six months’ leave of absence. His "leave", he asserted, is effective April 15, or next week.

Sus, what’s really behind such a hasty departure? Bobi said that the Visiting Professor Fellowship he’s taking up at the Kyoto University was offered to him long ago, and "while the fellowship term is six months, I’ll try to fulfill it in three months’ time and get back to work." What a strange development. The impression some are getting, having watched Bobi Tiglao explain his sudden decision to decamp on yesterday’s television, is that this ploy is a face-saving gesture. (Whose face? GMA’s or Bobi’s?) Will he really come back?

Malacañang has, for years, been described as a snakepit, or a "nest of vipers". When you’re stung, you may not even know where it comes from. Something stung Tiglao into announcing he was going away. What it was, I won’t venture to speculate.

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Now that the appointment of Justices Renato Corona and Alicia Austria-Martinez to the Supreme Court is a fait accompli, Secretary Tiglao – and certainly not the Hon. Corona himself – should not be defending the appointments announced by the Chief Executive.

Newly-minted Associate Justice Corona, obviously one of GMA’s longtime pointmen in the Palace, doesn’t do himself any good by declaring that he is a man of integrity and will be very fair and impartial in any and all issues. He can only demonstrate that by his deeds in the future. Remember the expression; "Methinks the lady doth protest too much!" Any words he might express are self-serving.

Tiglao, for his part, should not be defending Corona’s designation by asserting that Sonny Corona was considered by the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) "to be the most qualified because of his corporate law background," and that "all of us would want to have a new breed of justices in the Supreme Court."

What about the old breed of justices, then, Bobi? Were they "no good"?

It’s useless to argue that Corona was nominated by the JBC, which is not under the Office of the President. It’s an open secret that the President wanted Corona to be nominated by the JBC.

The two new Justices were announced to fill the vacancies left by the retirement of Justices Bernardo Pardo and Arturo Buena. What’s fascinating is that the JBC list of eleven nominees was transmitted to Malacañang three days ago by the Office of the Chief Justice (Hilario Davide, Jr.) This means that it took the Palace only one day to "assess" the individual qualifications of the eleven nominees and choose Corona and Martinez. That’s not just fast work, it’s "lightning" work.

Let’s see how the two Justices vote in the next delicate case being considered by the High Tribunal.

What case? You guess.

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In contrast, four new Court of Appeals Associate Justices were appointed by Malacañang. It took almost the prescribed upper limit of 90 days after the list of nominees was submitted to the Office of the President for the appointments to be announced.

The new CA Justices are Manila Regional Trial Court Judges Mario Guariña and Edgardo Sundiam, Pasig RTC Judge Danilo Pine (who is the president of the Philippine Judges Association) and retired Commission on Elections Commissioner Regalado Maambong. The three RTC judges are career jurists who have served at least 12 years in the Bench.

I know Judge Sundiam. He’s a native of Guagua, Pampanga. This makes Guagua, in a sense, unique. That town now has three Justices currently on the Bench: Supreme Court Justice Jose C. Vitug, Court of Appeals Justice Remedios Salazar-Fernando, and newly-appointed CA Justice Edgardo Sundiam. From what I’ve heard for a long time, Sundiam is a man respected for his integrity. His father, Justice Carlos Sundiam, incidentally, also served in the Court of Appeals.

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I don’t know how US Secretary of State Colin Powell, a former top general himself (whose Gulf War experience certainly gives him the bona fides on understanding, at least "through a glass darkly", the Middle East), will manage to bring about a "ceasefire" between the Israelis and the Palestinians. I’m afraid matters, for the moment, have gone beyond diplomacy. There is too much blood on the ground, too much hatred poisoning the air, too much stubbornness and angst beclouding judgment.

Even before he got to Jerusalem last night (unless he was delayed), Mr. Powell in mid-journey was already forced to change his mind. Hassled by Arab rulers and leaders as he wound his leisurely way towards Jerusalem, Powell had to say he was going to "meet" with Palestine Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat, when it was clearly indicated by President George W. Bush and Powell himself that they wanted to deal with different Palestinian leaders – excluding Arafat.

Israel’s bellicose Prime Minister Ariel Sharon – whose tanks and IDF soldiers have kept Arafat bottled up in his broken-down headquarters in Ramallah, not just a virtual but an actual prisoner, didn’t want Powell to see Arafat – bellowing that it would be "a mistake". But what the heck: Is Sharon going to order Powell shot down if he ventures to Ramallah (just outside Jerusalem) to talk with Arafat? Sharon still doesn’t get it. The more he tries to isolate and humiliate Arafat, the more "popular" he makes Arafat, who was practically a spent force before the Israelis began persecuting him and demolishing his official buildings, apparatus and infrastructure.

As for President Bush’s increasingly strident calls to Sharon to withdraw his Israeli’s Defense Forces from the West Bank, where they’re still on war-footing (although the "battle" of Jenin is over), they will be ignored by Mr. Sharon. The Israeli "hawk" insists that Israel is in a war for survival, and he can’t pull his forces back. "What if he defies Mr. Bush?" the Arabs and the Europeans are asking. That’s very interesting, but unfair question. Of course, Sharon will get away with it.

As the NEWSWEEK correspondent over there remarked when queried by CNN (I’m sorry I forgot his name), there’s probably "a wink and a nod between Bush and Sharon". If you’re familiar with that good old Yankee turn of phrase, you get the picture.

The trouble with the Arabs and the Europeans, is that they dislike, and even hate the Americans – and yet in the clutches, they demand that America do what they don’t have the guts or the clout to do themselves.

One critical flashpoint remains the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, built over the cave where, by tradition, our Lord Jesus Christ was born. For more than a week, the question has been whether the Israelis (who have encircled that church with their troops and armor) will hold back — or finally assault that holy shrine where 200 Palestinians, quite a number of them "wanted" radicals and well-armed militants and jihadis, have holed up.

If you ask me, I can only say that some trigger-happy combatant could – at any moment – set off a slambang shooting match. The Jews, after all, didn’t hesitate to crucify Jesus. Why should they hesitate – if their "survival" as a nation requires it (in their estimation)– to shell, rocket or bomb the church of His nativity to pieces?

That’s how the situation is. Explosive – in more ways than one.