An embattled GMA / The Williams sisters

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo came to power at the worst time in Philippine history. Our brand of democracy is failing fast, our republican institutions are sinking, poverty streaks in ghastly numbers now bordering on real hunger, crime, graft and corruption tower like mushroom clouds. The economy is stalled on the highway, seeking to gain inches when what is needed is the roar of high speed, Filipinos are leaving the country in increasing droves, and everywhere hopelessness coils around the body politic like a boa constrictor. A few days of monsoon rain have many provinces including Metro Manila heaving in unprecedented floods, adding to the hopelessness, the misery, the dread feeling we Filipinos are headed for history’s scrap heap — unwept, unhonored and unsung.

A British foreign correspondent sought to place his finger on the riddle that is a helpless Philippines. He told me that he, and almost everybody else he interviewed, high and low, could not fathom President Arroyo’s character and personality. So enigmatic had she become, approachable and yet unapproachable, a chameleon in constant change, an Iron Lady in one moment of presidential fury, a pleading, teary-eyed Ina ng Bayan in the next almost on her knees and asking for help. I must admit the British journalist had something there. When a nation feels there is no strong, moral, knuckle-fisted president at the helm, with no credible road-map for the future, then the citizenry too feels lost, bewildered, almost helpless.

And that’s where we are at the moment.

The president is not entirely to blame. She thought she would rule a pliant and more malleable Philippines after People Power II overthrew Joseph Estrada. What she inherited was an avalanche of problems. These were problems of a nation’s failure, a leadership’s failure to provide a compass for the proper conduct of government and national behavior. So what immediately after World War II was just a blimp became a big sore over the years. Now we see our face in the mirror and we are scared stiff. It is the portrait of Dorian Gray grown skeletal and scabrous. For 50 years, we had screwed up. And we never knew we had screwed up so badly until neighbor nations in Asia extricated themselves from millennial poverty and are now rich, their tables plentiful, their access to the good life now a reality instead of an empty dream like ours.

It is not that we are blaming GMA for the terrible mess we are in. Previous presidents contributed to that mess, particularly Ferdinand Marcos. He installed a hated and heinous dictatorship without any moral scruple instead of a benevolent one. That looted without compunction. What many citizens are griping about is that GMA is screwing up not because she is not trying but because she goes about her job without any central issue to guide the republic. Her mandate has still two years to go. But the perception is she has her heart and mind riveted on the 2004 elections. And nothing but nothing can stop her from flagging down the presidency in two years time.

In so doing, assuming the perception is right, she clutches at every straw to make sure she is on target. But in so doing, she admits she makes a lot of political mistakes. And they erode the moral bedrock of her presidency. The latest instance is that of hiring the services of one Ronnie Puno who knows no master except power and the tinkle of gold. Puno, an old protagonist of mine, reportedly possesses mystical powers to make any presidential candidate he serves win. And it does not matter whether this is by hook or by crook. It is in instances like this that many feel GMA has deep-sixed political morality to win even by the grace of Mephistopheles in 2004. This is no way to lead a country seeking to extricate itself from the mud. It makes matters much, much worse. It gives her political enemies all the grist to argue she does not deserve the presidency because she lacks the values to lead a Christian nation struggling for salvation.

This is tragic. If it is not too late, GMA must reverse course.

Whatever she may think of me and Freedom Force, we do wish her well. At one time, I was her strategic counsel and political adviser when she ran for the presidency in 1996-1997. And I thought then she was a great learner. But she ran into the kind of political company that reeked of the caves of Ali Baba, that sought power for power’s sake. And so we parted ways. Now that GMA has the chance to redeem herself, we remind her of what Henry Kissinger said in his best-seller Years of Upheaval; "The statesman’s duty is to bridge the gap between his nation’s expectations and his vision."

The president’s main problem is that she has no vision until now.

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Where and how do you stop describing or depicting the Williams sisters — Venus and Serena? Phenomenal is about the best adjective that comes to mind. For indeed they are the most phenomenal pair of women that ever played the courtly, stuffy game of tennis. Serena, the younger at 20, trounced Venus, 22, in what many now describe as the most dazzling, thrilling women’s finals at Wimbledon last Sunday. The score: 7-6 (7-4) 6-3. What makes the Williams sisters the celebrities that they are is that no woman tennis player, past or present, has ever covered the court as they have, with prodigal power and genius.

Not Martina Navratilova or before her Chris Evert. Not Steffi Graf and after her Martina Hingis and Jennifer Capriati. Monica Seles does not even merit a trumpet call.

Because the two were African-Americans, the huffy snobbish sport of tennis hardly gave them a gracious, civilized glance when they stormed into junior tennis about five-six years ago. They were negroes, nigras to be more precise. They were intruders in a game reserved only for pedigreed Caucasians, players high up or at the very least somewhere in the social register. The game’s crowning glory was Wimbledon, starchy as they come, royally sedate, aristocratic English to its very core. It was a white man’s sport and a white man’s lair until Arthur Ashe and Althea Gibson broke the color barrier at Wimbledon many years ago.

When finally, they climbed to big-time tennis some four years ago, Venus and Serena were just clumsily elbowed out of the social loop. They were laughed at and sneered at. With their hair wrapped up in silly-looking bangles whipping around in the wind like crazy kite tails, they were still not taken very seriously. Their kind would come and go. The white competition would eventually be too much for them — and so adios.

It was somewhat embarrassing, a whole world of white players being dumped down by the Williams sisters in a sport the white man invented. The last white hope was Martina Hingis whose all-around play drew raves from the critics. She was pretty, rode horseback in her spare time, lived, breathed, dreamed and played tennis. In her hands, the tennis racket resembled an orchestra conductor’s baton Leonard Bernstein, maybe?

But tennis had entered the era of power. And power, Serena and Venus had more than anybody else.

To that power, they added height and heft, the bulge of shoulder and arm muscles, speed as a puma has speed, agility, and a concentration that transfixed every player they met on the court. Perhaps it was because they were African-Americans that they tried harder. Perhaps their parents instilled in the sisters a fighting spirit culled from the years blacks in America could not even board public buses. Perhaps, Serena and Venus were really destined from the day they were born to play great and superlative tennis. Their father saw to that, drilling them day after day with a consuming desire to reach the top. The best, not the second best.

At 20, Serena has indeed climbed the heights. She has a total of three major championships, Wimbledon, the US Open and the French Open. For her part Venus has four grandslams. But Serena is narrowing the gap. Five gets you four she will in time surpass Venus. Why? Perhaps she has more court wizardy, a term you use when you can’t find a better expression. At Wimbledon Sunday, they played as no two women finalists had ever played before, tennis that fairly crackled like two jungle cats fighting each other to the death.

And they haven’t even reached their peak. Like Kobe Bryant in basketball.

Unless illness or serious injury intervenes, or a change of career, I don’t see Serena and Venus slipping away or sliding into a long, serious slump. They should still rule for the next four or five years. They were made, crafted and moulded into the sport of tennis. Who can beat them? Their service? The balls race at 100-110 miles per hour, power that only men had before. They scramble like mad at deeply-angled cross-court returns like cheetahs on the run. And whether they volley or play the baseline, they whack that ball with unexampled fury. Except when occasionally downed or weakened by injuries, Serena and Venus are relentless.

Somehow the sisters grow on you. They do. They have learned to use make-up, bundle their hair with more dash and derring-do, wear sleeveless sport dresses that enhance what they have most — raw, naked, glistening power.

Serena looks like she is the naughtier one, a prancer like a Portuguese horse trained for bullfighting. She is also getting pretty, her wide-open grin disarming as it is devastating. But who knows? I could be wrong. In her own time, Venus might recover lost territory, and teach her younger sister a thing or two about championship tennis. I do not know what the two sisters do off-court, who their boy friends are, how they tidy up their lives or give way to girlish hilarity, or just let their hair down in the company of close or bosom friends.

But once they are on the tennis court before the match starts, they have the unusual jungle snarl before they apply themselves to the grim business of championship tennis. Then at play, they are simply awesome.