After us, the deluge / Jasmine Trias, our Jasmine

We had long scripted events before, during and after the May 10 elections, and by the sainted beard of the prophet, almost everything we had forecast is coming true. Nobody at the time saw President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo about to break her "word of honor". She said she would never, ever disgrace her political integrity by running for the presidency in 2004. She was through with politics. She had learned her lesson. Really?

Well, we spotted her volte face ahead of everybody else. Once President George W. Bush stroked her shoulder at the White House, GMA broke her word. And traipsed back to the forbidden path like a French poodle.

She may or may not admit it. But like the face of Cleopatra – "the face that launched a thousand ships" – GMA’s dramatic turn-around launched the thousand blips now turning into what looks like a post-election hurricane. None of her presidential rivals is conceding, not just yet. Sen. Panfilo Lacson – of all people – may but FPJ, Brother Eddie Villanueva and Raul Roco are up there on the promontories, swords about to be drawn that the May 10 elections were the dirtiest, meanest, the most dishonest ever

The rumble of social discontent has not been placated any by the rising, and throaty claims of Malacañang that the elections are over, and she, GMA, will rule the Philippines anew for another six years. Whoopee!

FPJ, pealing the first thunder, claims there was massive cheating and has now amassed the evidence to prove it. Brother Eddie, who drew the biggest crowds and garnered the least votes, had this expletive: "We cannot accept a bogus president!" He released a statement Friday in tremulous octave he would never concede as long a huge pall of doubt was up there like a mushroom cloud. Raul Roco warned of "dangerous times" should the Comelec fail to prove the elections were honest.

Dangerous times? Remember that Roco once said he would command his followers to march in protest to Malacañang if he was convinced he was cheated.

We wrote in this space much more than a year ago, massive and sustained social turbulence could follow the May 10 polls. This was not because GMA was the culprit of it all. This was because the Philippines, like an antiquated ship of state, was flaking off bit by bit. It would soon deteriorate to the point where shipwreck was inevitable. Often we used the expression "a social volcano about to explode". Not an original term really. The dictator Ferdinand Marcos flung this about long before he declared martial rule in September 1972. Funny, that was about the only honest thing he said.

Now the political cauldron is full, boiling and seething, close to busting its lid.

These the bulk of our people do not understand. These – the real issues – GMA and the nation’s grubby, greedy, grasping politicians, not to mention the business and Church elite, purposely swept out of the electoral campaign agenda. And so the whole 90-day campaign was almost wholly dedicated to Bacchus, the god of wine and revelry. For we Filipinos are the greatest fiesta lovers in the world. Who really cares about poverty except to mention it during Sunday Mass and in pretentious rhetoric? Or an explosive P5.230 trillion national deficit now grown to the size and strength of a boa constrictor about to strangle 84 million Filipinos to death?

I have, of course, discoursed on these issues over the months, over the years. But few cared to listen. Many curtly dismissed me as a doomsday prophet, a weeping and woebegone Cassandra who couldn’t see the trees for an imagined forest. The system has reached, or is about to reach the end of the road. What we will feel soon are the temblors, the turbulence. Then the cracking of the earth under our feet.

"Angleterre, ah la perfide Angleterre."

Ah, perfidious Albion! was what the French savant Bossuet exclaimed about Eng-land (read Albion). Albion was the giant son of Neptune, almost named Albion, in mythology, but the eldest daughter of the King of Syria was Albia. The 50 daughters of the king were all married on the same day, and murdered their husbands on their wedding night. They were all set adrift as punishment and eventually reached the island of England. Yes, England, again in mythology, could have been the Celtic name of Great Britain.

So, is it, in retrospect, la perfide Philippines?

And is it simply an accident that GMA is a woman? And she could never be like Albia, the eldest daughter of 50 daughters, who plotted the mass murder of their 50 husbands-to-be? By alliteration, critics of GMA contend she was a scheming woman like Albion and set out to murder the republic the moment she set foot in Malacañang.

I deny that canard. Often, in this space, I stated she was just the last in a long line of presidents who burgled this country. In fact, nobody can deny GMA’s claims she campaigned the hardest, worked the hardest, covered twice more territory than her rivals did, prayed the hardest, plotted the best campaign strategy, and in the end possibly "won" because she was the savviest, twirling the entire government bureaucracy on her fingers like Sun Tzu’s master strategist before going into war.

Future historians will recall that like a deux ex machina in reverse, she entered Malacañang in 2001 at a time the Philippines was already prostrate on Ground Zero.

The system was not working anymore. Nothing could make it work anymore. La Gloria went through the motions of making it work. She had seen the beast eyeball to eyeball – meaning, the system. While she took fright earlier, and that was why she flung May 10, 2004 out of her sight, it was not difficult to suck her back. The power, the glory, the dazzling prestige, the raiments, the riches, the prodigal plunder, the magic caress of George W. Bush, the trumpet call of a spurious posterity were just too much to ignore.

She should have stuck to her pledge not to run in 2004.

But history was never GMA’s strong suit. Nor the social sciences. She imagined there could never be any turbulence, any madcap street demonstrations. Now, in her moment of "triumph", she calls on the nation to unite, on the citizenry to forget and forgive each other. No, Ma’m, it’s not as easy as that. The savant Francis Fukuyama, in his best published book ever, TRUST, wrote these lines:

"Civil society builds on the family, the instrument by which people are socialized into their culture and given the skills that allow them to live in a broader society and through which the values and knowledge of that society are transmitted across the generations.

"A strong and stable family structure and durable social institutions cannot be legislated into existence the way a government can create a central bank or an army. A thriving civil society depends on a people’s habits, customs and ethics – attributes that can be shaped only indirectly through conscious political action and must otherwise be nourished through an increased awareness and respect for culture."

Mrs. President, you cannot unite a nation simply by winning an election. And a ferociously-contested election at that.

"Now, let us begin," President John Kennedy said when he won the White House. Begin? America had been in existence for centuries. But Kennedy wanted to rebuild America whose leadership had become too power-oriented, too greedy, too inward-oriented, too focused on instant gratification, on drugs, on pleasure of the senses. The Chinese could phrase it better: "The journey of a thousand miles starts with the first step." And so the nation could accept the rigors of the Long March which led to the caves of Yenan. Which led to more turbulence, more blood, more sweat, more tears, the last stages of a civil war that had killed millions.

And now on the mere snap of your presidential fingers, Ma’m, you expect the nation to forget the huge, gaping wounds and grievances of more than half a century?

We haven’t even begun.

* * *

The reason I am partly enjoying myself these days is the performance of a 17-year-old Fil-American, Jasmine Trias by name. And, oh boy, do I love her. Jasmine had made it to the Top Three in America’s latest entertainment craze – The American Idol. This is no mean feat. There were hundreds of top-rated divas at the beginning of American Idol, all guaranteed to catch your eye, collar your throat, captivate your ear.

Jeezus, I have no more space.

Hold on Jasmine, I’ll write more, much more about you in a future column. I am not alone in my enchantment. Millions of Filipinos here and abroad, particularly her home state of Hawaii, are rooting for her. As they have never rooted for anybody before. Ah, my little gamine of a Jasmine, sing on, sing more, sing the life out of me!