Distracted

Oil prices are hovering at around $60 per barrel. The peso has slid to the P56:$1 level once more in the face of political jitters. Yesterday, the expanded value added tax came into effect.

These are tough times.

Government ought to be focused on reassuring our people. The price of oil might be something beyond our control. But it is a problem that can be mitigated somehow by a comprehensive conservation program and a more urgent shift to alternative power sources.

It is not enough to say that the price of crude is beyond our means to manage. Looking farther ahead, we must reassure our people that supply will be available. Nothing can be more expensive than having no supply of the precious commodity. Given the extent to which global demand for oil has crept up to the level of global supply, the availability of oil to meet our needs will be a strategic problem.

The softening of the peso and the spike in global oil prices will push the domestic inflation rate significantly above the projected level. Add to these the price impact of the EVAT.

Government need to present our people a reassuring plan to mitigate the inflation rate. Nothing distresses our people more than spiraling prices of basic commodities.

It is true that our economy has become more solidly grounded before the latest outbreak of political controversy. But now our national economy is seriously shaken.

All the accusations hurled against the political leadership deserve a serious look. But somehow, the groups behind these accusations, with their respective hidden agendas, have managed to reduce the whole thing to the level of political burlesque.

At both chambers of Congress, we have carnivals instead of inquiries. An election done a year ago is again being contested – not in the normal channels for redressing electoral grievances but by means of hysterical appeals intending to produce an emotionally deranged public.

The leftist groups are in the streets again. Having failed to direct the course of two previous uprisings, the Left is obsessed with having an uprising of their own. They see an opportunity to escalate a scandal into a crisis of legitimacy, to churn the political earth quixotically, searching for a crack at power.

Trying to commandeer whatever outrage there is to harvest, the Left is driven by political obsession. They try to compensate lack of number with shrillness. They will cut a pact with the devil if necessary, and so they have formed tactical alliances with the most unlikely parties. As has happened many times in the past, their very predictability makes them vulnerable to manipulation by smarter, more insidious, groups.

There is not enough in the issues and scandals brought forth the past few weeks to generate enough political passion to dislodge government. A lot of the things that excite partisans is contrived. But the political noise is distracting enough.

At a time when government should play a reassuring role in the face of great challenges, the political leadership is focused on managing a political storm. Under siege, its ability to focus the public on what we need to do together to mitigate economic adversity is impaired.

This is not a happy time for the nation.

Fortunately, there are enough sober voices that prevent us from dragging ourselves and our institutions to the brink. Desperate forces are trying to create a firestorm that no one can really control, hoping to pick the ruins in the aftermath of a self-inflicted political calamity.

Susan Roces was the paragon of reasonableness during the Samuel Ong episode. Then either something snapped or she yielded to goading. Last Wednesday, she delivered a speech whose shrillness undermined its own capacity for broad appeal.

Former presidents Corazon Aquino and Fidel Ramos have called for sobriety, an adherence to constitutional processes and a return to a proper sense of proportion in assessing the issues presented before us. Religious leaders, always important in investing moral ascendancy to one side or the other in a severely polarized situation, did not join the emotional surge that those who want a quick conflagration expected.

The present controversy seriously disturbed the civil society groups – the force that only four years ago drove out a failed president.

For the most part, there is a sense among these groups that serious moral issues exist and must be addressed. That concern has been tempered, however, by a sense that there was a serious political play in progress and hasty judgment could make the groups vulnerable to manipulation by unseen hands.

After many weeks of discussions and caucuses, the civil society groups that convened last Thursday adopted a position less severe and less excitable than what many voices in this network might have been disposed to. It was significant that the grassroots organizations of the civil society networks was disinterested in helping fan the flames of a controversy that was, to a significant extent at least, contrived.

True, there is much to be disturbed about in the contents of recent revelations.

But there is a way of addressing the outstanding issues without razing our institutions to the ground, without pushing things into a wild spin that builds its own logic and gathers its own force.

And there should be a way of dealing with this controversy without distracting the entire government from the urgent things it must do, especially at this time of great economic adversity.

It will not be easy to build consensus on that least disruptive way. It will be highly unlikely that we could build this consensus if we leave the matter to grandstanding politicians, obsessive militants and political playmakers.

Once again, the concerned and organized Filipinos who compose that nebulous thing called civil society are called upon to help rebuild that consensus. They may be disturbed about the nature of the issues. But they must also be restrained in the political stances they take.

So much of our collective sobriety depends on their ability to open a non-partisan path out of the present storm.