Hell hath no fury / So landscape swerves

The fat is in the fire. When in public, and within hearing of the entire citizenry, President Joseph Estrada loses his cool and vents his wrath in Tondo Tagalog, then you know things will never be the same again. The President though mad could have brought credit to national letters by soaring to the cutting prose of an enraged Balagtas. Instead, he will be remembered for all time for this classic expletive, Huwag kang magsinungaling! Baka tamaan ka ng kidlat." It sounded more like Asiong Salonga.

The object of presidential fury was outgoing Securities and Exchange chairman Perfecto Yasay. Many days earlier, Yasay blew the whistle on Erap Estrada. He said the president called him up by phone five times to get his buddy BW Securities boss Dante Tan out of trouble.Tan and several others had been accused of rigging the stock market in BW's favor. Another object of presidential rage was Sen. Raul Roco. Both Yasay and Roco were highly critical of Mr. Estrada in the Debate talk show of Winnie Monsod and Oscar Orbos.

In any case, the president was watching Debate. The show's come-on was whether Erap Estrada delivered on his promise when a long time ago, he mounted the presidential temple to say: "Walang kamag-anak! Walang kaibigan!"

The results, to say, the least, were catastrophic for the president. No less than 14,613 said no, the president did not deliver. Only 2,214 said yes, he delivered. This too flung the president into a torrential outrage. He said the phone survey was rigged. The numbers mentioned couldn't have been tallied in an hour. And so, he was Hamlet being fed to the wolves by accusers out to destabilize him. This was too much, he told himself, and so he exploded. He would slay his enemies before they could get to him.

Which brings us to Baron de Talleyrand who said: "The only thing worse than a crime is a blunder."

First, those Debate phone survey results were legitimate, at the very least accurate. Media high tech, in this case the Telemessage, had 120 phone lines open, able to process 72,000 calls in just one hour, 288,000 in four. Fiber-Optic technology can compress the entire Encyclopedia Britannica into one CD-ROM. That is the biggest problem bedevilling the president. He cannot, will not, just refuses to believe the citizenry is turning against him -- in droves.

Well, it is. The citizenry believes Perfecto Yasay was telling the truth when he said the president called him five times. The citizenry believes Mr. Estrada -- for all he said to the contrary -- was out to save his buddy Dante Tan from the BW Resources quagmire. That could be why a lone justice of the Court of Appeals could throw a spanner into the works by temporarily stopping the SEC probe into the Philippine Stock Exchange. The citizenry believes Sister Christine Tan was telling the truth when she said sweepstakes resources were being arbitrarily funneled largely for the use of the First Family instead of worthier charity projects. And it will not do the president any good when he threatens to file a libel suit against the good sister. The nation will stand by her.

Never mind for the nonce the Aprodicio Laquian scandal. Both deserved each other.

The citizenry believes the president did the wrong thing, a shocking stupefying thing when he went on the air during Debate to verbally flog the Messrs. Yasay and Roco. To their credit, they remained polite and mannerly and refused to be provoked. I was at a big dinner Friday and many commented that the president's intervention during Debate was a cheap, tawdry and petty thing to do, unpresidential, unfortunate and embarrassing for it unclothed his high office.

I have seen President Cory Aquino in a blue funk. Her eyes flared, anger mounted to her flushed checks, her lips quivered, and she gave it in spades to her close-in staff at the Guest House, told them to resign if they couldn't take the heat, and continued to bicker. When she finished, it was like a storm lifting its skirts and she flounced off. She was angry again, fit to be tied even when columnist Louie Beltran accused her of hiding under her bed during a coup. She walked like a portable chimney, smoke issuing out in black curling bursts.

But all this took place in private.

I have seen President Fidel Ramos similarly angry. Once, during a staff meeting prior to the presidential elections in 1992, the cloud atop his head cracked wide open. He switched to colorful -- if somewhat frightening -- barracks language, took off his cap and threw it against the wall. Mounds of paper on his desk next fell victim, and they were tossed into the air. Again while already president, we were told by a Malacañang protocol officer that Fidel Ramos' cigar jerked wildly in his mouth, as he vent his anger on something or somebody, then started to empty his desk of paperasserie by throwing them in all directions. Those in the room stood frozen, not knowing what to do, not daring even to pick up the papers discarded on the floor.

But all this took place in private. The presidency, better still the public presidency, is a chalice that must never be diminished or defiled. A priest never disrobes in public.

What now? As Seneca said, the best remedy for anger is delay. Maybe a quotation from Thomas Friedman is more apt: "When do you really get enraged? When you have a neighbor who never lets you feel at home." The presidency, rather Malacañang, I believe, has always been a stranger to Joseph Estrada. Its rituals, its commemorations, its pomp and pageantry, he can live with. In fact, he probably feels this is the best part of his job. But the challenge of the presidency has always been his problem.

For that challenge is mental and intellectual as it is also moral and spiritual. Here, Joseph Estrada is largely in terra incognita as he himself admits. But he has a temper and habits that go way, way back. These are habits culled from a decades-long movie career which stifled individual initiative, muffled creative thinking, as movie producers, directors and scriptwriters did almost everything for him. The plots were simple. He was an abused, belittled, banged-about hero in the beginning. But in the end he triumphed by dint of gun and combat, and a heart that never faltered. Applause, always applause.

The presidency, on the other hand, is a leadership labyrinth that can never be scripted beforehand. And often, you get lost.

And many say that right now the president is lost. He believes what he has always contended -- that he is doing all right, but the media are out to get him, refuse to publish his achievements. He persists in his belief there is a middle-class conspiracy bent on buckling him to his knees. He trusts or is comfortable only with friends and buddies from long ago. And they tell him what he wants to hear, that more than any other Filipino, he has a right to the temple that is Malacañang. He is doing great, it's just that media and his political enemies are fudging everything. He told Lisa Barron of CNN: "I have complete control of the government. I have complete control of the military."

There's one in his cabinet who probably does not believe that anymore. Vice President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. In a month or so, I believe, she will jump and discard her Secretary of Social Welfare portfolio. Or she gets booted out of the palace. President Estrada was blunt in that CNN interview. Either GMA lapses back to silence on national issues, or she has to leave. Gloria stuck a knife into the ribs of the president when she said the BW Resources and PCSO scandals were similar and the guilty heads would have to roll.

Meanwhile, we await the Ides of March. The nationwide surveys by SWS and Pulse-Asia on the net approval ratings of the president.

If they should turn negative, then the real floods will come. Couple this with the widening war in Mindanao, widening poverty, widening social strife, widening graft and corruption, and we are into a No-Man's-Land. There the tramp of feet in the streets may well characterize and depict the national mood. Impeachment? Right now, that seems remote. But if the ugly public mood spills into Congress, this could scare our legislators who right now prefer pork barrel and the Golden Calf. A Third Force, maybe? The youth, the principled have long fled our politics in disgust, and maybe would enlist. Joseph Estrada resigning in the face of a popular tumult?. "No way!" he told Lisa Barron of CNN. He had the nation firmly in hand.

And so the standoff. The president views the Philippines through roseate glasses. We don't. But of one thing many people are sure. A sickening blight has taken over our country. Even as the leadership rows, the nation goes backward. The young have to believe in something somebody. And there's nobody, no force to lead them. And the republic must be saved. Who could be the savior?