GMA: The ‘Iron Lady?’ / Guingona gives way

The whole town is agog, it seems, over the latest issue of Time magazine whose cover is no less than President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The president, of course, was ecstatic ("elated" was the word she used), saying she had never expected Time to treat her and her presidency with such favorable prose considering the magazine had been quite critical of the Philippines. La Gloria glossed over the fact the cover title had a big question mark after Iron Lady with the caption: "US troops have landed, coup rumors abound and poverty persists. This could be President Arroyo’s finest hour – or her downfall."

Voila. This explains the question mark which has everybody intrigued. For GMA, either she goes up like a flight of hawks or drops dead.

As I write, my job is that of a part-time historian who knew the original, the one and only Iron Lady rather well. She is Lady Margaret Thatcher, for almost 12 years the prime minister of Great Britain from 1979 to 1990. I had an unforgettable interview with her in 1996 and conversations afterward which she described in writing as "superb, I liked them very much." It was in the invocation of Lady Thatcher’s name that the Financial News of London about a month ago depicted GMA as Asia’s Iron Lady.

Time magazine took it from there. The cover photo of President Arroyo was rather serious, close to grim pensiveness, hair waved down to the left side of her forehead, lips normally smiling now pressed grimly shut, both hands gripped as though in prayer with a huge diamond ring showing. The iron in the lady was supposed to show. Did it?

Margaret Thatcher is remembered best for getting Britain into the Falklands war with Argentina in the spring of 1982.

Almost singlehandedly she won that war. She put the Argentine navy to rout in foul weather that had the British navy tossing nervously as Exocet missiles flew thick and fast. Very few believed Ms. Thatcher could pull it off. One such cynic was the opposition’s Enoch Powell, a tart-tongued growl-jawed master of parliamentary debate. Powell sharply disagreed with Soviet leaders, who during a visit of Thatcher to Moscow, were impressed with her toughness and command of frosty but eloquent language.

Earlier, the Soviet Tass news agency called her the "Iron Lady" and this is how the whole thing began. Enoch Powell dug his blade in and stated: "In the next week or two this House, the nation and the Right Hon. Lady herself will learn of what metal she is made." He indicated tin was the more appropriate metal to expect.

Enoch Powell ate all his words. The British navy scored a resounding victory virtually under the command of Thatcher. Powell agreed there was a lot of iron in The Lady. Thatcher’s words were equal to the occasion: "We rejoice...and take pride . . . But we do so, not at some flickering of a flame which must soon be dead. No - we rejoice that Britain has rekindled that spirit which has fired her for generations past and which today has begun to burn as brightly as before."

All of England cheered. Thatcher thereafter became the world’s most popular woman. Even after she left Downing Street. She was arrestingly attractive and statuesque. She had more balls than all the men of parliament combined. She was resolute and eloquent, had all the fire her belly could contain. And what was more, she commanded the heights with Churchillian eloquence. When we conversed, that English of hers had me in a spell.

In the 1983 elections, she scored another massive victory. She routed the Labor Party at a time "democratic socialism" was the lone challenging ideological eagle in the political sky. The powerful trade unions threatened to cast their imperium over all of Britain as democracy seemingly wavered in the Marxists’ "long march to Utopia." The National Union of Mineworkers, led by the redoubtable Marxist Harry Scargill, a terrific spellbinder, pulled out all the stops. They would show her, this woman with pretensions to greatness. Instead, Margaret Thatcher showed them. The nationwide strike came a pathetic cropper as Thatcher cut them down. Again her words could only be those of an Iron Lady: "Marxists wanted to defy the law of the land in order to defy the law of economics. They failed and in so doing, demonstrated just how mutually dependent the free economy and a free society are."

And thus was born Thatcherism, alive until today.

Thatcher fought many other fights. She fought against the Irish Republican Army (IRA) which sought to bomb her to hellangone in her room in Grand Hotel in Brighton in 1980 – and failed. Also memorable were her bruising fights within the Conservative Party where she said ‘the most deadly of the species is female", how she stood up to Iraq when the latter invaded Kuwait in 1990, how she fought almost all alone when the back-benches of the Conservative Party ganged up on her.

She was a born fighter. And these were her words as the Tory Party flung shadows at her leadership: "I had not the slightest interest in appearances nor in the trappings of office. I would fight and, if necessary, go down fighting – for my beliefs as long as I could. ‘Dignity’ did not come into it." Fight – that was her spear and armor.

How does President Arroyo shape up?

To merit the appelation "Iron Lady", (and Time was right in adding a question mark), President Arroyo will have to get out of her comfortable velvet-draped cocoon – and fight like a stevedore. And fight again and again. GMA hates to fight, is non-confrontational unlike Thatcher. She has so many dragons to slay and until now she has not slain a single one. Once during a late night one-on-one at the Palace, I counseled her to crack down on high crime and one particular notorious criminal. She hasn’t until now. Jaime Cardinal Sin just recently curtly told her to stop posturing, visiting the poor with the whole of media in tow. Eating with her hands a la Erap – all show. She said yes meekly for who could say no to the Cardinal. Let’s see how far that goes.

But until today the subriquet Iron Lady eludes Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. By a long mile.

* * *

In the end, Vice President Teofisto Guingona had to give way. I would have sued the word capitulate but after we talked by phone Wednesday evening, a sadder but wiser Tito Guingona admitted he was ranged against forces he just couldn’t defy. So he got into line with a heavy heart, still convinced inside him that his heart was right where it was but his mind – particularly his legal mind - had to follow the party line.

Alas, I and many others had wanted Guingona to stay his course. We wanted a hero in these days where there were no heroes. Things and events had gotten to such a pass that in the government, in the ruling system, where the fat god Bacchus and the Golden Calf called virtually all the shots, we needed a hero fitted after the Greek model. The last one was Ninoy Aquino and he died with the murmur on his lips that the Filipino was worth dyiing for. Was the Pinoy really worth dying for?

Anyway, let’s hear Secretary Guingona as he lowered his nationalist flag, the same flag he so proudly bore to high mast when he voted in 1991 to kick out the US bases and again in 1998 when voted no to the Visiting Forces Agreement: "The DOJ is of the opinion that the President, as the chief architect of foreign policy, can approve this exercise under the VFA...How can I argue with that."

"Teddy," he told me over the phone, "I was once also the secretary of justice (under FVR). When he says this is it, then this is it. My feelings, my sentiments and opinons have to take a back seat. It is painful, but I had to concede." Would he change his mind if the agreement got out of hand, and the Americans widened the range of their military-combat presence to go after the NPA guerillas? Would he remain as is where is if this would set off social turbulence and huge protest groups returned to the streets? Tito said he hoped this would never happen but if it did, "I shall cross my bridge when I get there."

This writer would have wanted an Archimedes who said: "Here I stand and from here I will shake the world." Or a Leonidas at Thermopylae or a Gregorio del Pilar at Tirad Pass. Or a Ninoy Aquino of course. In his last days in Boston, he told me it was time the Philippines got out of the embrace and ideological tutelage of America and go it alone if need be. He was for the eviction of the US bases Clark and Subic long before the Senate acted on the issue. In Raul Manglapus’ words, "the removal of the umbilical chord tying the Philippines to America".

I am both assured and scared. I joined the agreement only insofar as it shatters the spine of the hated Abu Sayyaf in Basilan and elsewhere if they manage to escape. But if there is a conspiracy somewhere and the US is out to reduce the Philippines anew to a puppet – as I told Tito Guingona – hosting US military bases, with GMA’s okay, then hell will bust loose.