The SONA of hope, or the ‘Last Sonata’?

There will be the usual denials, but La Presidenta’s declaration of tomorrow, Monday, as a holiday was a strategic political move to get people off Metro Manila’s streets, decongest traffic, and enable the police to meet any hardcore rallyists head-on, unimpeded by "innocent" passersby.

Businesses and executives are, of course, distressed by another "non-working day" suddenly being foisted on them. Such interruptions are financially painful. But, you get GMA’s gimmick: most people went home Friday night happy to be gifted a long weekend, and probably won’t be back till tomorrow night or Tuesday morning.

The Opposition and the Left will, if determined enough, still be able to mobilize a phalanx of protesters and "GMA Resign" demonstrators, but their efforts will now have to be tripled, or more. Since a survey reported a few days ago that almost eight out of 10 Metro Manilans want GMA "out of Malacañang" they now have an opportunity, if that’s their sentiment, to go out into the streets tomorrow to shout her out of the Presidency. Will they?

When all is said and done, rallies and slogans, cries of "shame, shame," and petitions of rejection even from Pampanga, La Gloria’s native province, won’t unseat a President who’s set on hanging tough.

Those of us who were at the barricades of EDSA in that grand, inspiring, buoyant first "People Power" revolution of February 1986 don’t discount the value of courage and self-sacrifice, the blessings of God and Mother Mary, the efficacy of the Holy Rosary, the prayers of the brave nuns, or the "influence" of the sandwiches and flowers thrown at the advancing troops and armor to "win" them over to our side. Yet, inside Camp Crame in those stirring days, we had a sort of "war room" with a blackboard on which we daily tallied in chalk how many "generals" and officers (and their units, naturally) had moved over to "our side" and abandoned their waning Commander-in-Chief the lupus-afflicted Ferdinand E. Marcos.

In short, we praised the Lord – but kept track of who was passing the ammunition. The Air Force defected. The day came when Macoy’s remaining units, from the Marines to the Infantry and Artillery refused to fire on us, the demonstrators at the barricades. If they had opened fire we would have been ketchup on the sidewalk. (That’s what happened in Myanmar – Burma – when they tried to emulate our "People Power" over there. The Army mowed down the pro-democracy marchers, and our revered heroine, the gallant Nobel-prize laureate Ms. Aung San Suu Kyi is still in jail).

In the case of Macoy, even when the jig was up, the Americans still had to zoom to Malacañang to… well, as they said "rescue" him from the approaching and violently angry mob – meaning guys like us. The truth is that they plucked him out, wrestled him and family and loyalists into helicopters. The late Apo grumbled afterwards they said they were taking him for safety to Paoay, in his native Ilocos Norte, but instead they (his version) "kidnapped" him to Hawaii.

What did we learn from this episode? That only the military can eject a President from Malacañang. If Marcos’ armed forces had remained loyal, not even the Yanks would have come to yank him out.

I’m proud we were there at the barricades of EDSA 1986, but it’s wrong to over-romanticize the roots of our victory over the Marcos dictatorship. Macoy’s soldiers deserted the Dictator. What about our La Presidenta?

It’s nice to be upheld democratically, but – as this writer warned in this corner more than a week and a half ago, the President and the generals must not underestimate the unease which exists among a considerable number of younger officers – for instance of the "Oakwood" generation. There, too, are the majors and colonels, who command units and hold real military decorations – and thus are icons to the younger officers and personnel.

Why don’t they move to express their disappointments and grievances in mutiny, or some violent fashion? Because they’re the real patriots – not those hypocrites posing as patriots – who know that any destabilization, whether successful or unsuccessful, would destroy our country. But don’t take them for granted.

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And now comes a fascinating poll survey revelation: that most Filipinos today prefer the Marcos regime to the GMA government as reported in our frontpage streamer yesterday. I don’t doubt the Pulse Asia nationwide Ulat ng Bayan survey which was unveiled by Professor Felipe Miranda in an address to the Far Eastern University last Friday. Pulse Asia Director Miranda, one of our former, much-respected STAR columnists, is both careful and conscientious in conducting his surveys.

He once proved to us that we’re somewhat inaccurate when we refer to "the Filipino crab" pulling down other crabs (thus giving rise to the favorite phrase in our rhetoric, "the Filipino crab mentality.") Dr. Miranda filled a basket with crabs. While, as he pointed out, the crabs indeed were all struggling to climb up to the top of the basket and crawl over the side, none of them attempted to pull any of the others down! Oh well, it’s still a cute and expressive phrase, and continues to describe the Pinoy defect dramatically.

What Pulse Asia found, then, in its new survey is that the late Apo Macoy garnered the highest rating of 7 percent among the five past Presidents and the present leader. GMA got the lowest score of 3.4 percent. I guess Ferdie scores higher, then, than Cory, FVR and Erap. Salamabit.

And yet, it’s not surprising. It’s due to amnesia. Sure, those among us who were slapped into prison, or kept under the bootheel of Macoy’s Metrocom and the Military, or were tortured, or family members murdered or "salvaged" (a quaint distortion of the term), and remember how the treasury was looted, lives and careers demolished, etc., are a vanishing breed.

The traffic jams on Ayala avenue, or the Jojo Binay rallyists, now ignore the statue of a bound Ninoy Aquino on that main street, giving no thought to his assassination at the airport, his seven years and seven months in cruel Fort Bonifacio prison (most of it in solitary confinement). The Marcos authoritarian regime is to most people Ancient History (like the pyramids of Egypt, I suppose, or the Great Wall of China).

And, by golly, let’s face it: the leaders and their merry men and women who came to the fore after we overthrew Marcos were… not much better.

The Marcoses are back in power after a brief hiatus – in Ilocos Norte. Bonget is Governor, Imee is Congresswoman, down in Leyte, the Romualdezes are back. There’s still the Mariano Marcos University, the Marcos Highways, etc. There are those who notice – for all the stories of plunder and the thousands of pairs of footwear of the Shoe Lady – that Imelda at least built the Cultural Center, the PICC, and other structures owing to her Edifice Complex. What did Macoy’s and Imeldific’s successors build? Instead, if you’ll recall, they sold off the "treasures", art objects, priceless paintings and works of art, and overseas buildings Macoy and Superma’am had accumulated – instead of preserving them in local museums and keeping them as the patrimony (the recovered "loot") of the Filipino people.

No wonder, undeservedly, Marcos, despite a 20-year regime of kleptocracy and iron rule, has been rehabilitated.

Oh well, so was Richard M. Nixon after his fall.

I think it was Abraham Lincoln who said that "a people get only the kind of government that they deserve." If we got no better, perhaps that’s what we deserve.

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I won’t try to second-guess what President GMA will say in tomorrow’s State of the Nation Address. I’ve remarked that a speech is only a speech – it’s action that counts. On the other hand, tomorrow afternoon’s SONA, in a sense, may be the most important speech of the embattled Presidenta’s career.

As Stuart Chase, the father of semantics put it, "with words we govern men."

If we think this is a uniquely critical moment in a nation’s life, let’s recall what NEWSWEEK Magazine said in its April 30, 1973, issue in a cover story headlined: "Nixon and Watergate."

Inside, the article was slugged: "Watergate: The Dam Bursts."

The story went: "It was the most damaging scandal to befall the Presidency since Teapot Dome – and when it finally cracked open last week, the temblors shook the government to its foundations." The article noted that "ten months to the day after it broke, Richard Nixon finally faced to the Watergate mess . . . The resulting spectacle was a shattering one for the President and the Presidency, and Mr. Nixon assented to it only when events left him no other choice. His move to save himself reduced his government to an anarchy of finger-pointing among his top aides, with thinly veiled threats to spread the blame as far as possible. The morality of the men running America had become a major issue . . . and the nation itself was damaged as the President’s own credibility was called seriously to question. His Gallup rating plummeted 14 points in eleven weeks . . . His design for his second Administration was placed in jeopardy."

There are those who’re declaring that La Gloria has reached that point.

Well, the Watergate tale has spawned many aftershocks in America, there’s now even a new book – the autobiography of the Whistleblower, Deep Throat, who disclosed everything. But most Americans seem to be more concerned about Iraq, Bush, gasoline prices, and the challenge of China (RMB devaluation and all). And the London bombing.

What ought to worry GMA is the way some of her legal "friends" may sycophantically blunder the "impeachment" procedure, in their overeagerness, insecurity, and zeal to be seen as her defenders. Only a fair and credible impeachment test can save her Presidency. Or condemn her.

Even her critics and the Opposition will ruefully concede that, in this, the odds are still in her favor.