She was already campaigning. Mikaela burbled. Her father Mikey grinned from ear to ear. The chemistry was palpable. GMA was testing the political waters in a time of vivid national crisis, and got what she wanted – 62 ovations from both houses of Congress. They were not thunderous ovations, of course. But they were more than enough to convince GMA and her political backers that the official throwing of her hat into the presidential ring was just a matter of time. And most of the time, she spoke in Tagalog to make sure she got to the masa. Hmmm.
The State of the Nation Address was really nothing much.
The prose was mediocre. Paragraphs were simply stitched together in a cheerleader’s roundhouse call for applause from the boxes and bleachers. Again, the President resorted to cute verbosity in declaring war on all fronts: War against terrorism, war against corruption, war against disease. War against drugs, "the greatest menace facing our country today." Again, the appeal to Congress to enact measures to cope with these problems. Again, the appeal to the people to unite. Again, the rousing call for redoubled effort on the part of everybody to work his guts out so the nation could extricate itself from social, political, economic crises.
Everything was déjà vu. Under ordinary circumstances, GMA’s SONA would have entered Guinness Book of World Records as the year’s most boring speech.
But the speech stood up. And it stood up because GMA has just scored a resounding victory over young, idealistic but fumbling military rebels who sought to paralyze the nation Sunday by wiring bombs to strategic buildings in Makati. They had probably expected People Power to emerge, but they terribly miscalculated. They probably followed the counsel of their political and military godfathers who staged a spectacular coup in 1989 to topple Cory Aquino but came a cropper. The public completely ignored them. Come to think of it, the military cuts no ice with society.
The speech stood up because nobody at this time – despite a profusion of martial rhetoric – was ready to take up arms against the government no matter how inept and corrupt it was. No matter how the police and military had settled deep into corruption. At times, they could no longer be distinguished from the criminals they were pursuing.
I remember 1989 and the years immediately before. The government of Cory Aquino was under frequent siege from rightwing military rebels called the RAM. They were led by Col. Gringo (now senator of the realm) Honasan whose perceived political patron and godfather was Defense Secretary Juan Ponce Enrile. I was then presidential press secretary and spokesman. One early morning, the President roused me from bed. She said she was preparing to address the nation that morning on a nationwide radio-TV hookup. And call for People Power. She said she was ready to fight the mutineers head-on and she had the support of AFP Chief of Staff Fidel Ramos and Defense Secretary Renato de Villa. I expected a terrible bloodbath. The President had a determined tremor in her voice I never heard before. I rushed to the palace.
In this eyeball-to-eyeball confrontation, Gringo Honasan retreated.
In their last aborted coup in 1989, holed up in Makati, Honasan again and his RAM threatened hellfire and damnation. Cory Aquino and the bulk of the military did not retreat an inch at all. In the end. Gringo and his mutineers, including one Capt. Danilo Lim, now head of the AFP’s elite Rangers who confronted last Sunday’s rebels led by Lieutenant SG Antonio Trillanes, laid down their arms. They were a sorry and pathetic phalanx as they marched back to Camp Aguinaldo. Now, or so its seems, Gringo Honasan is at it again. DILG Secretary Joey Lina says he has the goods on Honasan and will arrest him posthaste. Let’s see.
Karl Marx was right when he said: History repeats itself twice, the first time as tragedy, the second time as farce.
What does all this mean? Outside of ballooning perception that GMA will run in 2004? Our military and police establishment may look like they are at loggerheads, In truth, they are bound by strong fraternity bonds and the mystic cult of the Mistah. On whatever side they may be in a conflict, they will never shoot at each other. Already at the gates of Camp Aguinaldo in 1987, Honasan’s well-armed rebels could have shot their way inside and overpowered the camp since reinforcements awaited by Generals Ramos and De Villa had not yet arrived. But Gringo later admitted to this writer they just couldn’t shoot at the PMA comrades.
That was the moment they could have taken over the government and they didn’t. If shots were fired, they were fired into the air. "Acoustical warfare," then Executive Secretary Joker Arroyo commented with a wry smile. And he was absolutely right. The Mistah Cult was mystically at work.
But as in politics, so it is in the military. Young politicians like the Spice Boys start their career with a flourish of vows and pledges to change the system. They end up coopted and corrupted by the system. Young police and military officers, ditto. Look at Honasan who in his time described pork barrel as the devil’s pitchfork. Look at Lt. Antonio Trillions. He gave up too soon. He and his boys could have stonewalled at Oakwood, since they had two foreign ambassadors as hostage, and strapped bombs in the immediate vicinity. For all their vaunted bravery ("We are all prepared to die here for our convictions"), they surrendered without even a battle cry limping in the air.
What to me is shocking is the sight of a handcuffed Ramon "Eki" Cardenas arrested by law-enforcement agents. I knew Eki way, way back as a political choir-boy, a talented academic joiner who means no harm. The government now accuses him of allowing his posh Damariñas residence as a "staging area or safehouse for the mutineers". Whaaat. Eki a closet rebel? A passel of arms and ammunition was seized from the residence. And now comes another turn of the screw.
Former President Erap Estrada is pointed to as probably the mastermind of Sunday’s military. The point may have some merit because that was no spontaneous mutiny. It may have been badly planned. But it was meticulously prepared and well funded in terms of high-powered arms, munition, including Camelback water pouches, satellite phones, Motorola radios and Icom base equipment. Where could the funds have come from? Political backers maybe and some ultra-right wing corporate tycoons? Estrada?
But back to Mikaela and her lola.
They carried the day, meaning the delivery of the SONA. And GMA managed without going into any detail on the "great escape" of Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi, which was the biggest and bloodiest blot on her administration. That would have stayed on. The public outcry against the Philippine National Police and Gen. Hermogenes Ebdane would have stayed on. But as Margaret Thatcher always said, "Expect the unexpected." The unexpected occurred Sunday.
An event many thought has banished from contemporary politics struck again. Makati and the nation woke up Sunday to realize well-armed rebel soldiers were in their midst ready to blow up strategic areas of Makati if President Gloria Arroyo and specific members of her cabinet, led by Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes, did not resign. That was terrifying. Their leaders were young, grim, apparently idealistic. For a time, they struck me as suicide commandos ready to blow themselves and their hostages out. They held the nation in their grip. And so when GMA retorted they would be set up, arrested and tried, the nation barreled into formidable crisis even before the guns of August could claim center stage.
And when GMA announced with almost hysterical joy Sunday evening the crisis had been resolved, she had the nation somewhat in her thrall. Puny she was, and wimpy she was, and almost always undecided she was. But right now, she enjoys the psychological edge. She didn’t say anything in that SONA. She left unsaid many things that had to be said, many admissions that had to be admitted. After all, her regime was supposed to be teetering.
And we are a nation under siege.
But behold. She just made all those emotions vibrate during her delivery, and having said nothing, said almost everything. It was a launch that was not a launch. A step into the political wars of 2004 that was not a step.
"Mikaela, dear child, take heed, I am running."