Failing to help while there is still time

Watching the events that unfolded during the last few days, I could not help but ask whether what I was seeing was what a great political thinker meant when he wrote about men being more led by blind desire than by reason.

The sheer savagery with which the president has been attacked and the oft-repeated exhortations to disregard established and time-honored doctrines and practices in resolving the current political crisis leaves very little doubt about the noisy minority's agenda of private advantage.

The Constitution clearly defines the process to be observed and the remedies available against a president who is accused of violating his or her oath. The provision on impeachment is not an idle concept and is not a useless one as demonstrated in the case of former President Estrada.

The demand for President Arroyo to resign is admittedly a legitimate exercise of the constitutionally-guaranteed freedom of expression. But resignation is an option that belongs to her; it a judgement call that only she can make in accordance with the dictates of her conscience.

If she refuses, as she has so refused, to resign, then the remedy is impeachment. The Cabinet members who turned their backs on her know this. So do former president Aquino, Senate President Franklin Drilon and the members of the Makati Business Club.

It therefore grieved me that instead of pursing this constitutional remedy, the above-named persons joined the ranks of the noisy minority in demanding that the president stand down and in the process pushed the country closer to the edge of a political precipice.

I would like to believe that the above-named people were simply misled into doing what they did and I appeal to them to reconsider and instead work with all right-thinking Filipinos in preserving our democratic institutions.

Let me end by borrowing the words of the late Winston Churchill: The saddest epitaph that can be carved in memory of a lost society is that is possessors failed to extend a helping hand while there was still time.