Pygmalion and GMA

I have this feeling in my bones. President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo will retract her pledge not to run for the presidency in 2004. She will probably announce this decision sometime in October-November-December as the nation prepares to celebrate the Yuletide and is bathed in the glow of Christmas. Half or less than half of this decision will be hers. The other, weightier half will come from the Great White Father. George (Dubya) Bush appears determined that GMA stay on as president for as long as America’s geo-political strategy in Asia remains on the drawing boards.

It is the stirring story of Pygmalion all over again,

In Greek mythology, Pygmalion was the king of Cyprus and a renowned sculptor. Out of the finest ivory, he sculpted the statue of a woman, beautiful of course, and fell in love with her. Smitten, the great king prayed that the statue come alive and – lo and behold! – the gods answered his prayer. The rest of this story is immaterial for this column.

To simplify. GMA is right now in the dumps – mottled ivory – where her popularity is concerned. Her low survey ratings were probably the main reason she renounced a presidential bid in 2004. She just couldn’t win. She had no peg, no brass ring, no hold on any booster rocket that could bring her popularity and credibility back. And so she made the decision that stunned the nation end of December 2002. Glory be! Almost everybody said she made the right decision and paeans rained on her, odes, quatrains, psalms and praises. That was sacrifice and duty to God and country of the first order.

But unknown to most everybody, there were other players who held the Philippines in the palm of their strategic hands. On one hand there was terrorism whose skull-and-bones signature September 11, 2001 showed the hand of Osama bin Laden and his al-Qaeda. On the other hand, there was America rising in exceptional outrage over this ignominy. And behind this outrage stood the man who almost single-handedly ignored a world in bitter protest against war. George W. Bush declared war on Iraq. In the blink of an eye, Baghdad, the seat of ancient civilization, slid into the pocket of Pax Americana.

So how do the Philippines and GMA come in?

It was long ago, about three years ago, I think, that the US government decided America would have to go back to the Philippines. That was even before 9/11. This information was vouchsafed to our group by a former Commander-in-Chief of the Pacific fleet. They would come back, no ifs or buts. The fulcrum of change, of political power, of industrial riches, of trade and the market was switching from West to East. In no time, if this is not arrested, the Asia-Pacific area would dominate the world’s economy – with China preponderant – and stick a knife into the heart of Pax Americana. Japan, the main strategic ally of the US in Asia, and the world’s second biggest economy, was floundering badly.

The so-called "rogue countries" were in the Middle East and Asia. But it was China the US was most scared of. Engage China? Contain China? And what about the shadow-shrouded Hermit Kingdom of North Korea which possessed the bomb or could possess it soon. And nuclear powers India and Pakistan, both at each other’s throats? What about the South China Sea presumed to contain untold submarine riches in oil and gas? What about Indonesia and Malaysia, where Muslim extremism in Aceh, Ambon could fall prey to an Islam increasingly defiant of America?

And so to make a long story short, when America’s war in Afghanistan broke the back of the Taliban – which had long sheltered Osama bin Laden – Washington decided the Philippines would become the "second front" in the war against international terror. That was crucial.

Why the Philippines? In all of Asia, it was the country friendliest to America. It was strategically located, right smack on the South China Sea where the world’s main commercial sealanes passed through. The Philippines was close to Taipei, and more meaningfully, China. Submarine and satellite spy technology focused on China would be more effective if its base was the Philippines.

The overarching treaty between the US and the Philippines was the 1951 Mutual Defense Treaty which neither country had renounced. The entry point was the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA). The VFA’s grease was joint US-Philippines military exercises, purported to modernize this nation’s rickety, shambling and certainly long outmoded military force.

And now the piece de resistance. The banquet of goodies to further ingratiate the Philippines would be provided by the forthcoming state visit of GMA to Washington. The highlight of course will be the White House state dinner.

There Pygmalion and the lady sculpted in rusting ivory will meet. There the spent Philippine president will come alive. There George W. Bush will announce to the world what a great president GMA is, her inestimable value in the war against terrorism. To show his and America’s gratitude, Dubya will call upon the safari to march and unload their precious cargo right at the very feet of GMA. There will be financial, economic and military assistance galore, in the hundreds of millions of dollars maybe, others say a billion, even two. The media, particularly our media, will blow the trumpets extolling GMA to the high heavens.

And what will be the expected result? Almost overnight, the rating of GMA will not only go up, perhaps skyrocket. That at any rate is the expectation. That is the game plan. The clamor will rise, the thrall will spread, conch shells sound the message. GMA must change her mind and run in 2004. Only she can save the Republic – yow! You can be sure America will be right behind. For the gift of renewed life, the regal lady formerly cast in wasting ivory will yield with stupendous gusto to Pygmalion.

I have played this scenario over and over in my mind. It is a scenario with two dimensions.

I am convinced it is a credible scenario. Else, why all the hoopla about GMA’s state visit to Washington? Many Philippine presidents have undertaken the same state visits, but none with the boom of propaganda cannon, the explosion of fireworks in the political sky, the White House blazing alive like a Christmas tree, the repeated emphasis that only GMA is getting this extraordinary red carpet treatment. Not even President Corazon Aquino – after EDSA 1 toppled Ferdinand Marcos – got this treatment during her US visit. Not Fidel Ramos. Certainly not Joseph Estrada.

Filipinos in the mass are suckers for this kind of thing. We love drama. But to the other dimension.

This columnist must issue a caveat. Assuming the scenario plays true, six more years of GMA in Malacañang – with Uncle Sam breathing on her back and calling the shots – could slam our Republic into a No-Man’s-Land in an Asia seething, churning and boiling with change. The choice of our destiny will no longer be ours. It will be America’s. In the same way that Iraq’s destiny is now in the hands of the Great White Father. A conquered country submits to the conqueror. We will be no different from a conquered country, dancing to the siren song of the political gods in Washington.

If we have any leverage at all, it will be the leverage of the sardine against the shark.

It wouldn’t be so bad – in fact it would be superb – if all over the country, we had American engineering and construction and social welfare battalions repairing and reconstructing our country like the Marshall Plan did in Europe after World War II. But no. American presence here is strictly military presence, combat troop presence, imperial presence, noses of nuclear submarines stabbing our waters, aircraft carriers and Chinook helicopters eventually unloading hundreds, if not thousands of US troops whose training is to kill. And wherever terror rears its head here or elsewhere, it will kill. And if it has to kill Filipino "terrorists" it will kill without mercy. Our political sovereignty disappears.

And where does our government draw the line? Under our scenario – I just don’t know. Nowhere perhaps.

And so, like Iraq which was set upon and occupied by Washington, the Philippines will gradually become a garrison state of America. Many Filipinos will like this. Many Filipinos will not. The savior syndrome will still be there. But that is no longer the point. The point is that continuing American military presence will cause rancor among many and revive if not ignite Filipino nationalism. The generous American will give way anew to the image of the ugly American. It will further isolate the Philippines in Asia and certainly incur the wrath of Islam.

The Americans will have to understand one thing. The savior syndrome is fleeting. More and more Filipinos, like the overwhelming majority of their Asian neighbors, will want to carve out their own destiny, reach for the skies with their own hands, bleed and break their bones to get out of the pits, fight their own battles, join a renascent Asia with its "Asian values".

The White House dinner for GMA is nigh. We shall soon see if this scenario is correct.