PGMA or CGMA?

It’s confusing, and getting more so as the days roll along and we move towards the "twilight zone"–otherwise known as the election campaign period.

For example, this early, it is getting harder and harder to tell where President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo ends and Candidate Gloria Macapagal Arroyo begins. When she went up to share the stage with teen-age singing sensation Mandy Moore that Friday night (the day her finance secretary announced his resignation, the day a 10-year-old schoolgirl was kidnapped and another kidnap victim was yet to be buried), was that the President or the candidate? When she attributes the rise in kidnapping and other crimes to politically motivated destabilization efforts, is that a pronouncement from the President or the candidate?

Unfortunately, practically everything she says and does from here on in will be viewed with suspicion, will have campaign overtones–whether intended or not, whether she likes it or not. That was why her declaration back then that she would not seek re-election was so good–or could have been so good–for the country. For then, she could have acted in the best interest of the country, and no one could cry campaign or cast aspersions on her actions.

Now though, many regard her as just another candidate, delivering candidate-coated promises and pronouncements. Even when she says or does something as the nation’s President, there will always be those who will brand it as just another campaign manuever.

Like many people, I must admit that I am disappointed that she changed her mind about not seeking re-election, that she became CGMA instead of sticking to being PGMA. I always believed that if only she would do right by the country and people, if she would be true to the pledge to serve the people and not her political allies and supporters, then the people would carry her, sweep her in to another term, without her having to turn candidate on us.

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It is sad that reactions to last week’s column on hope vs. hopelessness weigh in largely on the hopeless side. The general observation was that the hopeful young man felt that way only because he hasn’t lived here long enough. Are there really so few people out there who look at the country with some significant measure of hope, who believe that it is still worth fighting and living and working for? If our people no longer have hope, then we really–sadly–are hopeless. And no amount of campaign rhetoric or candidate promises will change that.

Can we please have a President–full-time, one hundred percent–instead of a president/candidate at the helm of our government?