Bitter pills

Someone who has known Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo since her early years told me that the President now smiles more easily and often. In the local afterglow of the Angelo de la Cruz case, she is on her way to becoming the country’s "best" president, the person told me.

Obviously this person is a supporter of the President. But for some time this was not the case, and I was surprised by the change of heart. Perhaps the President, now armed with a six-year mandate, is finally learning to turn on the charm and develop genuine empathy. Election victory can work wonders.

Fidel Ramos, cantankerous as military chief and later as secretary of defense, underwent a similar transformation when he became president, and has not reverted to his pre-presidential persona.

Afterglows, however, tend to dissipate quickly in this country. I don’t know how long the President’s honeymoon with certain quarters will last over her handling of the Angelo de la Cruz crisis, especially as the adverse consequences of the pullout start emerging.

While that honeymoon lasts, the President should use it to make the nation swallow bitter pills.

* * *

One such pill that the EDSA II crowd has already swallowed, amid the President’s repeated calls for unity: At the height of the hostage crisis the Sandiganbayan approved "rest house arrest" for deposed President Joseph Estrada. These days Erap is thinking of an Alpine holiday. If there’s another hostage crisis he could get his wish.

Also, while we were preoccupied with the saga of De la Cruz, tariff on crude oil imports was raised, which has to be one of the key factors for the latest increase in fuel pri-ces. That was one bitter pill we didn’t even realize we had swallowed. But now public transport operators are cla-moring for higher fares while labor groups are pushing for a wage increase.

Most of the bitter pills will require legislation, but I don’t know how much cooperation the President can get from Congress. She may no longer be worried about re-election, but lawmakers are, and no one wants to be seen as an ogre who sponsors unpopular but necessary bills.

Already the Catholic Church is threatening to campaign against lawmakers who are proposing measures to promote birth control, even with the elections still three years away.

A tough battle is also looming in Congress over the imposition of new taxes, which the government needs to reduce the massive deficit. By the time any such measures are passed, Angelo de la Cruz would have long been forgotten. Can President Arroyo sell those bitter pills to the nation?

* * *

Even in the afterglow of the hostage crisis the administration does not have the nerve to allow higher toll rates at the north and south expressways. Not that motorists are complaining; given a choice, of course we want the toll rates frozen throughout our lifetime.

But we are also aware that rates for all goods and services in this country must eventually be adjusted to realistic levels, reflecting market forces, if we want long-term efficiency.

Selling this idea to a nation used to dole-outs and entitlements can be difficult even for a president with a fresh mandate.

In her State of the Nation Address the President vowed to bring a steady supply of water and electricity to the nation. She omitted mentioning that this cannot happen without consequent increases in electricity and water rates at least in the initial phases, as those involved in power generation and water distribution move to quickly recoup their investments.

Somehow we also wonder if allowing Maynilad Water Services Inc. to raise its rates early on could have saved the company and improved its water distribution service. Instead the company’s financial woes became a political issue. We didn’t have an increase in water rates, all right, but to this day about half of the nation’s premier region doesn’t have sufficient water either.

The administration can’t have its cake and eat it, too. After raising the tariff on crude oil imports amid rising crude prices in the world market, Malacañang made noi-ses about trying to persuade the oil companies not to raise pump prices.

If the administration wants to make the nation swallow bitter pills, it better have the courage to explain its prescriptions to the public.

* * *

Reducing the bureaucracy is also a sound idea – but not when unemployment is running high, and not when there are so few decent jobs that nearly eight million Filipinos prefer to work overseas, even in war-torn Iraq.

Also, after promising to create a million jobs every year for the next six years, the administration will have some serious explaining to do in its planned downsizing of go-vernment.

If the "re-engineering" envisioned by Malacañang is to make any significant dent in the bloated bureaucracy, the downsizing should mean the loss of at least tens of thousands of jobs. How many jobs would be on the line, for example, in the planned merger of the departments of finance and budget?

Malacañang won’t refer to them as jobs lost, since the affected employees presumably would have opted for retirement. Budget officials have emphasized that there are funds for the "silver parachute" that the government is dangling to encourage optional retirement. But the parachute is probably not attractive enough; so far there has been no takers.

* * *

There’s one more bitter pill that the President will have to sell to her usual critics, who were briefly silenced by her pullout of the Philippine contingent from Iraq to save Angelo de la Cruz.

Praised for showing that she was not a lapdog of George W. Bush, in the coming weeks the President could be perceived by those same critics to be walking and talking like someone’s puppy again. Because there’s no escaping it – ties have to be mended and infantile squabbling over marshmallows and American comedians have to be set aside to strengthen ties in an interdependent world, especially in the face of a real global terror threat.

Such efforts at fence mending will quickly be branded by the usual noisy quarters as capitulation – not to terrorists but to Uncle Sam and his allies. And the President could quickly find her popularity back to where it was before Angelo de la Cruz was saved.