Enough already

There was a time, long before he became vice president, when Teofisto Guingona, then a senator, made no secret of his ambition to be president. In other words, he wanted to be the leader of this country.

Like anyone who wants to be the leader of a nation, Guingona was presumed to at least have some of the answers to the country's problems. Surely, he did not think that leadership was something that was just for show.

And so, with probably that in mind, Dong Puno invited Guingona to be his guest in his popular television talk show. This would afford the presidential aspirant the chance to let the entire country get a glimpse of what he had to offer.

Puno then asked Guingona what his platform of government would be and Guingona answered that, if given the chance to be president of the Philippines, he would focus his energies mainly on three things - food production, garbage collection and traffic solution.

I will never know if the entire country that watched that show that evening was as flabbergasted as I was to hear that enumeration. But let me tell you something without any exaggeration - I was floored.

Here was a man who wanted to be president, and all he could think of to lead the country in addition to food production was garbage collection and traffic solution. I have no problem with food production. That is good. But garbage collection? Traffic solution?

For God's sake, Guingona was being asked what he would do if he became president, not if he became barangay captain or mayor. Garbage collection and traffic solution are problems that are not for the president of a country to solve.

The image Guingona conveyed to the nation that evening was that of an aspiring leader who was grossly incapacitated by myopia. Here was a man who cannot see beyond the stalled car ahead of him or the smelly pile of trash he passed as he turned the corner.

I will also never know how damaging that Dong Puno Live edition had been to the chances of Guingona for the presidency. What I do know is that, in the end, Guingona never got to run for president.

I am recalling this because Guingona, now very much older and more frail, is in the news again. This time Guingona made the headlines because he was among those who got hosed down when police broke up a demonstration against the sitting president, Gloria Arroyo.

Arroyo herself should not have been president. Like Guingona, she too had salivated at the presidency and was so repugnant in her open salivating that people were turned off. Eventually, she had to settle for the vice presidency.

But she made the presidency anyway, albeit through the back door when the president at the time, Joseph Estrada, was ousted on corruption charges. One would have thought that that was the end of the story. Arroyo, in fact, said she was not running anymore.

But Arroyo lied. She took back her words and ran again. Nevertheless, by a stroke of fine luck, the unpalatable Arroyo turned out to be more palatable than any in the pathetic cast that she had for adversaries.

Some say she cheated to win. Maybe, maybe not. What is clear, however, to those who would care to be open-minded is that, given the kind of opponents she had, Arroyo did not have to cheat to beat the hell out of the opposition. Fernando Poe? Ping Lacson? Eddie Villanueva? Bah.

And so there she is, still in Malacañang. Failing to beat her at the polls or otherwise, her opponents now want to oust her by means of people power. But what is people power without the people? The only people power there is, is made up of paid and prostituted warm bodies.

Oh, there are a few legitimate ones, like, well yes, Guingona. Guingona has materialized at the head of demonstrations. To be sure, he has the right to be there. But the exercise of a right is not like Everest that has to be climbed solely because it is there.

But despite having the right, just what the heck is Guingona doing leading rallies? What has he got to offer aside from testing the limits of government intolerance to demonstrations? He has had his chance and the people did not bite. Enough already.