Is it still Arroyo, warts and all?

Right from the start, there was never any doubt that it had to be President Arroyo caught in that wiretapped conversation with an election official. No fool would embark on a mission to topple a president and settle for Willie Nepomuceno or Ate Glow.

But being convinced it was really Arroyo and hearing her much later admitting it was she indeed who was caught on tape are two different things. The admission, from her own lips, live on nationwide tv, has to be more shattering than a preconceived notion.

Yet, except for the opposition, whose ploy it was to trap the president in the first place, there seems to be no groundswell of disenchantment manifested in physical numbers that could be ridden as another ramrod toward a new presidency.

In other words, the disillusionment seems deeply personal. The people may feel greatly betrayed, but they seem convinced it is better to bear the pain in silence than whip up another storm that cannot guarantee things will change for the better.

Right now, with all these developments, only a fool will continue to insist that Arroyo remains untarnished. But the bigger question is whether she has become too tarnished to lead effectively, hence the need to call in a new leader regardless of credentials.

Look at it this way. If only there had been a better alternative to Arroyo, there would have been no Arroyo in the first place. Right there where our troubles started, in the election of May 2004, we would have elected our Mr. or Mrs. Right, if only such a person existed.

Unfortunately for this country of ours, in the lineup that was presented to our people in May 2004, Arroyo was clearly the better choice. Whether she had to cheat or not, to think of any other leader emerging from that godforsaken lineup was unthinkable to right-thinking Filipinos.

In taking a gamble with Arroyo, the people chose to forget that she already lied to them once, when she promised the nation she was not running for president and then shamelessly eating back her own words just months later.

But the real trouble with our country is not Arroyo but so many people wanting to be president yet none of them actually possessing the credentials to make a great leader who can really take this country to the greatness it has long been denied.

Oh, it is so easy to replace Arroyo, just as it had been so easy then to replace Ferdinand Marcos and Joseph Estrada. But people have grown wary of the ease with which Filipinos have grown accustomed to replacing their leaders.

More importantly, people have become wary of the replacements. Right now, Arroyo is on the brink. All it takes is for one credible voice with credentials to speak in a loud voice, and the sheer vibration from it is enough to make the president keel over.

But there is no such voice, much less a voice with credentials. So the nation is faced with a dilemma of a different sort. Stick it out with Arroyo, warts and all, or with someone else far more diseased?

Actually, the woes of our nation, at least the ones associated with Arroyo, are only just beginning. She still has five more years to her term. So, even if Arroyo survives this crisis, it almost comes as a given that there will be more coming.

The greatest weakness of Arroyo right now is the erosion of her moral authority. Her political base is, at the moment, more or less intact, considering that politicians almost always tend to gravitate toward the center of power.

But with a severely eroded moral authority, it would only be a matter of time before her political base also begins to crack, unless she can make a dramatic reversal that will win over the people, the final arbiters, to her side.

One way out is perhaps the most painful - make a sacrifice of her husband, son and brother-in-law. Let them take the fall, deserved or not, to save the presidency. Other options like the miracle of an economic turnaround can take too long, they may come too late.