Praying President

More things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of. Thus runs a biblical passage, and we know of men and women who start their day with a prayer, and who fall down on their knees before making any decision – big and small. Divine intervention is sought on such diverse matters as whether a woman should marry this man, where to invest one’s money, or whether one should bring an umbrella to the office on account of unpredictable weather.

Historians tell us of American President William McKinley pacing around a room and asking divine guidance on what to do about a string of islands in the Pacific called the Philippines that the Americans had acquired with a measly sum of $US20-million as a consequence of the Treaty of Paris at the turn of the 20th century. All at once, a voice from heaven told him what to do: to Christianize the Philippines. And that moment of illumination was supposed to have taken place 400 years after the Spaniards arrived in the Philippines with the sword on one hand, and a cross on the other, the former signifying death to recalcitrant natives, and the latter signifying the vision of converting what they believed were heathens, to Christianity. God knows how much pain and suffering this country experienced in the cross-bearing hands of the Spanish colonizers.

That prayer gives answers to pleas for divine intervention where the human mind cannot find solutions and the heart can no longer bear, we will not discount. Prayer groups are in existence in a lot of places – at the hospital bedside, in living rooms and quiet nooks and corners as people pray for the healing of a sick child, for the successful surgery of a friend, for the transformation of a wayward son or husband. Prayers for miracles are said everyday, everywhere. So many women are praying for Kris Aquino. At the height of the Marcos regime, as political activists fought the dictators with their pens and lives, priests preached and laymen and ordinarily-cross-stitching matrons prayed that God would put an end to the repressive rule of the Marcoses and their minions. Catholics would say their prayers had been heard by Mama Mary who made EDSA I happen, and Protestants, by the Lord and no other.

Now we read Presidential spokesman Ignacio Bunye saying that President Macapagal-Arroyo is invoking "divine guidance" as "the principle" that will make her decide on whether or not to seek the presidency in next year’s elections.

Mr. Bunye said that the President has been swamped with calls from members of the ruling Lakas-Christian Muslim Democrats (Lakas-CMD), business leaders and administration supporters, asking her to reconsider her decision made December last year that she was withdrawing from the 2004 presidential race. "This is a very sensitive decision and I’m sure that (the President) is praying very hard for guidance on this matter," Bunye said, adding that we "leave this matter to the President and let us help her pray. Let us pray and hope that she gets the guidance that she needs and let us pray for our country."

The President may be helped in her decision when she makes her courtesy call on Pope John Paul II during her state visit to the Vatican in Rome this weekend, Bunye said in his government radio program the other day.

A lot of people believe that the President’s final decision rests on what Father George of Washington D.C. tells her on October 18.

MORE COMMENTS on my column on land reform. From Eduardo F. Hernandez of Legaspi Village, Makati City: "Thirty three countries in the world have adopted Agrarian Reform and they all failed except in three countries, namely, Taiwan, Korea and Japan. In Taiwan, they acquired only 400,000 hectares, in Korea only 600,000 hectares, and in Japan, only 1.6 million hectares. But here we already distributed six million hectares. And yet, we now find ourselves importing rice, sugar, chicken, pork and all agricultural products. While the government gives land and pays lip service to the farmers, on the other hand, because of our joining the World Trade Organization, we import all agricultural products.

"It is time to stop this mindset of breaking up lands into miniature farms. In this 21st century when we have to compete globally, there is no country in the world that is chopping up its modern farms. Even the communist states, from China to Russia, are now allowing consolidation of lands. Indeed, it is time to provide an economic solution to an economic problem. Not a political solution to an economic problem."

From Valentin Afable Ybiernes of Los Angeles, Ca.: "Our land reform laws are very primitive and need to be revised and initiating profit sharing and cooperatives. The current laws are moving us backward; they are similar to the "sari-sari store‚ system (akin-ito system) of distributing land which the new small landowner cannot afford to make productive."

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