Prayer power

The fallacy of emergency executive powers being able to address the many problems that an impending drought can bring is apparently lost on President Arroyo, who is reportedly getting ready to ask Congress to be clothed with sweeping authority.

A drought is a natural consequence of a lack of rainfall. It is an act of God, or at least a quirk in the weather to those who feel more comfortable with scientifically explainable phenomena.

No amount of emergency executive powers will be powerful enough to address what God has decreed, or what the forces of nature happen to unleash. Not even absolute dictatorial powers can apply with persuasive influence over things that are beyond our control.

Previous presidents have tried dictatorial powers but only one ever succeeded, Ferdinand Marcos, and only because he used those powers for their designed purpose, which was to quell dissent and impose his will on people. He knew enough never to try it on nature.

One anecdotal attempt to tamper with the weather has been attributed to Marcos, though. According to the yarn, the strongman decreed that a typhoon stop dead on its tracks. Of course it didn't, silly. But at least Filipinos briefly forgot about martial law and had a good laugh.

As to other bouts with greater natural and divine forces, we all know that Marcos eventually succumbed to lupus. When God finally intervenes, even dictators quiver and shake, and in the end give up.

Corazon Aquino and Fidel Ramos in their time also dabbled in milder versions of emergency executive powers, a term that is actually a neat euphemism for a de facto dictatorship. But unlike Marcos, they tried the strength of these powers on the weather, or weather consequences.

Power crises also descended on the archipelago in their time on account of the weather, similar to what we are experiencing now and what Arroyo expects to deal head-on with emergency executive powers.

Of course it is easy to be inspired by the Aquino and Ramos experiences. The weather had not gone totally berserk at the time, and what the two presidents viewed as a successful use of emergency powers was actually just the weather eventually deciding to make a U-turn.

The weather's sense of timing perfectly suited the Aquino-Ramos dalliance with emergency powers. The weather corrected itself within the terms of the two presidents, and they got to reap the accolades from the turn of events their extra powers had absolutely no hand in achieving.

But God and nature may no longer be so positively fortuitous with Arroyo. Having been so lucky thus far in all her other endeavors, the law on averages must now be breathing heavily on her neck. Something has got to give pretty soon that she doesn't have to go looking for trouble.

The weather is no longer the same as before. It is angrier and more impatient. God, who is all-powerful, is telling us something through the weather. It is not for Arroyo to respond by assuming more powers that, in the end, will still be pathetically puny against the word of God.

Arroyo would be grossly naive if, by assuming extra powers, she thinks she can fight the drought by embarking on unhampered purchases of mitigating equipment, or ordering, under pain of punitive action, such acts as may cushion its impact.

The best that can be done by any president under the circumstances can be done without resort to emergency powers. And, in one of the rare occasions that I agree with today's priests and bishops, what is really needed is prayer power by everyone, not just the president.