When Ferdinand Marcos ruled as dictator of the Philippines, he was often described as a man astride a tiger. President Arroyo is far from ruling the country like a dictator. But for all intents and purposes, she is just as Marcos had been in his time, also astride a ferocious tiger.
There is, however, a noteworthy difference between the two leaders. Marcos opted to use a combination of brute force and cunning and guile to hang on and avoid falling and be eaten alive. Arroyo, on the other hand, appears to rely on nothing but plain luck.
Which is the better tactic, we do not know. It is too early to tell. For while we know that Marcos eventually fell and got torn to pieces by the unforgiving tiger of history, Arroyo is still hanging on, although only very barely.
If there is one thing that can be said about Marcos, it is that there seemed to be a method to the madness of his dictatorship. If he failed, it was not because the method gave way. He simply stayed too long he got overtaken by events.
Arroyo does not have the same clockwork precision that Marcos had in plotting a course through the tumultuous seas of unpopular leadership. She simply coasts along, surviving each crest and trough with the uncanny luck of driftwood.
When Marcos did something, it was almost always the product of careful, if devious, planning. Arroyo, on the other hand, just bumps along, much like a pinball making its way down through a gauntlet of snags and hitches.
Maybe this was also why Marcos fell so hard. For all his meticulous planning, he finally failed to count on the possibility of people actually rising up in peaceful revolt. Arroyo whirls and turns at each corner or hump, ever ready to fall, but cushioned by slow motion.
With Marcos, while nobody dreamed he would fall at the time that he did, it was almost a foregone conclusion that when he left, it would be a painful leaving. No one is betting on which way or how Arroyo would go.
For somebody with no clear direction, three more years before curtain time seem such an excruciatingly long time, time that is rife with so many dire possibilities. If there are those who see her at the finish line, they see it in a pipe dream.
Those who believe in her and who wish her well see no day in which they do not get scared shitless by her unwitting tendency to court disaster. The woman is simply a magnet for one's most horrible nightmare.
Her latest caper is a dalliance with Joseph Estrada, the convicted former leader who, after hemming and hawing before the cameras, sought absolute pardon, something which Arroyo also promptly extended as if her life depended on it.
Will her luck continue to hold this time? Many fear this will be the straw that will break the camel's back, the evidence of doing wrong to the nation that all previous allegations so direly sought and so direly missed.
The country went through so much pain, expense and indignity to convict a former president of plunder that to extend pardon just to curry favors or buy peace for her own interest makes the whole sorry episode beg for an answer to the question "what was all that for?"
And yes, indeed, what was all that for? Why go through the process toward conviction if Estrada would only end up being pardoned? Was the whole thing really about justice or just another cross-fingered trial balloon for self-preservation?