GMA isn’t alone – In Thailand, Bangkok mobs demand that Thaksin be ousted; in USA, they’re crying – ‘Bush step down!’

I did a double take yesterday when I read the Financial Times of London. The top six-column photograph on page 2 was an AP (Associated Press) photo of demonstrators in Georgia, USA, carrying a huge streamer saying – "Bush step down!"

In short with three years still remaining in his administration, poor Dubya Bush’s approval rating has plummeted disastrously. An AP/Ipsos poll three days ago showed that confidence in his presidency continues to fall, even among his staunchest supporters in the Republican Party.

Two-thirds of Americans in the same survey, say the country is on the wrong track, with a disapproval rating that shut up from an already disquieting 61 percent just a month ago. Seventy-seven percent now believe a civil war will start in Iraq, including nearly 70 percent of his fellow Republicans. With off-year elections soon coming in the US, these developments have begun to make the once-exuberant Mr. Bush a "lame-duck president."

In Thailand, angry demonstrators in the thousands are demanding that Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra be kicked out. The Prime Minister, once riding high, has had to dissolve parliament and call for snap elections.

The urban population, of course, never his greatest admirers, was outraged the other week when Thaksin’s family sold its controlling stake in Shin Corp. The telecommunication’s giant he himself founded and operated before his entering into politics required him to "divest". Thaksin gave his controlling stock to his own family and closest friends, but very few believe, naturally, he truly divested. And when his family unloaded its shares to Singapore’s Temasek Holdings for a tax-free profit of Baht 73 billion (US $1.8 billion), this provoked an outcry that sent surging and fist-waving protesters into Bangkok’s streets to demand that Thaksin resign for corruption.

If you saw Thaksin being interviewed on CNN the other day, he looked unusually tired, harassed, and almost querulous, as he tried to explain to CNN’s Mike Chinoy why the deal was simon-pure. Sadly, the Thai leader, a former policeman and electronics genius, had seemed to lose his legendary street smarts when he obviously approved his family’s money-making move. He has now obviously run afoul of the old doctrine which every statesman and politician in my late father’s time used to invoke: that of "Caesar’s wife". This dictum warns that "Caesar’s wife not only should be virtuous, but must appear virtuous."

Alas, most of our own politicians and leaders seem to have forgotten or they blatantly ignore that same inexorable maxim today. They’ve found that not only does crime pay, but it pays very handsomely. Unless we punish crime in this benighted country, they will continue to arrogantly wallow in corruption and greed. We don’t need a new Constitution at this point, or even new laws. What we need is to enforce the law.

What aggravated the Thai political Wonder Boy’s problem is the fact that Shin Corp. is the nation’s biggest cell phone provider and telecommunications conglomerate, and it was sold (horrors!) to the powerful Temasek Holdings which is the Singapore government’s international procurement and investment agency, run – by the way – by the wife of Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, no less. The very thought of a foreign government "controlling" Thailand’s biggest telecommunications empire which includes television networks is appalling to many Thais.

Thaksin of course, may surmount this challenge even though painfully battered since he retains widespread support in the rural areas, where about 70 percent of the Thai people live. The rural folk believe that he has been paying more attention and giving more help to the provinces than any previous leader. What enforced his popularity among them was his unrelenting, even bloody war on drugs, which he launched on 2003 and during which no less than 2,500 suspected drug dealers were summarily assassinated – or, as the Thai media has already been saying, "executed".

La Gloria declared in her exclusive interview with our colleague Babe Romualdez which was published yesterday in the Star, that she would wage an unremitting war on the drug racket, which she alleges is also financing the communist insurgency and Leftist movements. Will the government really do so at last? Will she adopt the Thaksin mailed-fist formula? The drug lords have many politicians and lawmen in their hip-pockets, so this drive will be interesting to witness. We’ll soon see whether in this and other matters La Presidenta, in her own words, will "go for the jugular".

In any event, will the coming election in Thailand, with the screaming demonstrators still in full cry against Shinawatra, result in a showdown between city and countryside? Abangan.

At least people can now say to La Gloria: "Hindi ka nag-iisa." She’s not alone in having demonstrators rant at her and demand her resignation or ouster. In this troubled planet there’s crisis upon crisis. But sad to say, our insular vision doesn’t go beyond the ten mile limit.

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President Bush was severely damaged by having been repudiated by US Congress on the White House’s approval of the Dubai Ports World, corporation’s looming takeover of the operation of five major container ports on the eastern seaboard of the United States. The controversy began when Dubai Ports World purchased the British P&O in a surprising US $6.8 billion transaction. The problem is that P&O, the huge British containers ports and ferries operator, as part of its globe-girdling empire, runs five of America’s busiest port terminals. These include New York, Newark (New Jersey), Baltimore (Maryland) – which is not far from Washington D.C. – and Miami (Florida).

The prospect of an Arab firm, even one belonging to the "friendly" United Arab Emirates, apparently shocked many Americans, including the majority, it turns out of Mr. Bush’s own bedrock supporters in the Republican party. The opposition Democrats gleefully turned somersaults of joy at the prospect of being able to accuse the Bush administration of being lax on the security of the American people in exchange for a profitable international deal. The House Appropriations Committee last Wednesday voted 62 to 2 to reject the deal, a clear repudiation of Bush even in his own party.

In the beginning, the US President stone-walled, threatening to veto any congressional measure aimed at torpedoing the Dubai Ports World takeover of the US container ports, alleging that it would damage relations with friendly Arab nations and dry up investments from the Euro-dollar rich Middle East. Later, realizing to his agony that after the terrorist attacks and the destruction of the Twin Towers in New York and part of the Pentagon in the 9/11 2001 incident, most Americans remain uneasy, even paranoid, at the idea of any Arab group taking over the operation of five of the America’s most strategic container ports, Bush tried to back-pedal or grope for some face-saving formula.

Dubai Ports World which initially insisted on implementing that $700 million deal, the other day decided to drop out of the controversy by announcing it would "transfer" to a still undesignated — American firm its planned US operations. The company did so at the direction of Dubai’s ruler Sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al-Maktoum who evidently wanted to defuse the situation and help retrieve Mr. Bush’s fortunes. This timely move averted a showdown with congress that Mr. Bush was certain to lose.

However, how can you argue against the American nightmare: that an atomic or other dirty bomb might be smuggled in aboard a container ship and detonated somewhere in America? It may be insulting to the Arabs, unfortunately, that such an attitude persists – but can you blame the Americans? The trauma of 9/11 is very much with them, and the fear of another assault continues to loom ominously in their everyday lives. This goes beyond politics or business or the prospect of investments.

There’s no doubt that wealthy America wants and needs foreign investment. Foreign companies put $38.8 billion worth of direct investments into the US in the third quarter of last year alone. Last year, according to government statistics, capital flows into Treasury Bonds, Equities in American companies and other Securities came to more than $1 trillion. Much of this investment came from China and the Middle East.

But while business is business, I guess, for the American people safety comes first. Many Arabs are surely hurting, and resentful of this "insult," and perhaps the fears are unjust. However, the raging and violent mobs which recently assaulted and burned Danish Embassies and Consulates and those of other Scandinavian countries, and even burned some Christian churches, further railing against the US (which had nothing to do with the affair), all as a result of six cartoons published six months ago in an obscure Danish newspaper, gives everybody pause. The Muslim rioters declared the cartoons had "insulted" the Prophet Muhammad, and this explosion of rage even expressed itself in demonstrations held in Metro Manila and Mindanao.

It’s not only the Americans who are asking the pointed question: How can you calculate what any Muslim will do if he comes to the conclusion that God "commands" him to do it?