President Arroyo is paying a huge price for being terribly unpopular. There is hardly anything that she does that does not stir some hornets' nest. Of course, a fair amount of the things that she does are necessary and warranted. But her critics just couldn't care less.
When President Arroyo makes a personal side trip in the course of an official one, the nation goes into uproar. When she goes into a hospital, speculation rents the air. When she meets an influential bishop, the nation is swamped with innuendo.
Now, of course, we do not demean the intelligence of her detractors. Maybe they really are on to something. And maybe, President Arroyo must indeed have some hanky-panky lined up when she does this things.
But all things being equal, it should also be fair to suggest that the things that she does are attended by regularity, that she has a job to do and that she must do it regardless of what her critics may ascribe to the deed.
This is not in defense of President Arroyo because she quite able to defend herself, and she has a whole battery of people who can do that for her. But sometimes it is unsettling to hear critics part with their criticism as if they knew everything.
When the critics and detractors of President Arroyo talk, they talk as if they have the inside track to everything. Hearing them talk, the impression they give is that they are so all-knowing they must be actually residing under the bed of the president.
But it does not take much intelligence to know that most of these critics and detractors are merely shooting from the hip, saying everything they want to say under the sun with impunity knowing that it has become the national fashion to flog the president.
When they say the president is running for congresswoman in Pampanga, they sound as if she herself already told them so. This too much reverence for conjecture is a reflection of the kind of people that we are --- which is that we are as bad, or even worse, than she is.