GMA’s challenge

The decision of President Macapagal-Arroyo not to seek reelection – but concentrate on being President instead of politician for the next 18 months – has by now been dissected to death. Right on, GMA!

La Gloria’s convent-school upbringing manifested itself when she pointed out that if Jesus made the sacrifice of coming down to earth on Christmas Day to die for our sins, she in turn had the duty to sacrifice her Presidential ambitions in order to seek the welfare of our people. In this New Year, that’s a good thought to ponder: The need for sacrifice.

All of us, political leaders and especially would-be presidential contenders included ought to measure up to GMA’s challenge, and sacrifice their personal aspirations and self-seeking political convenience for the nation’s good. It may sound corny, perhaps, to some – but what’s corny has, in the past, always ended up making the best of sense. If we’re to pull ourselves out of the doldrums and out of the hole into which we’ve dug ourselves, it’s time to make a turn-around. If we do good for others, we’ll discover that, at the same time, we’ll be doing good for ourselves.

When we speak of a New Year, we know what the term "new" connotes. New beginnings. New hope. New initiatives. A new deal.

* * *

The International Herald Tribune gave yesterday full play to GMA’s surprise move, under a headline saying: Arroyo Will Not Seek Re-election in 2004. She was photographed under an image of our national hero, who sacrificed his own life, too: Dr. Jose Rizal. (But not in the image of other Ateneans like Mark Jimenez, Willy Villarama, Nani Perez, Mike Arroyo, Erap Estrada, etc.) The photo was by Julius B. Reyes of Associated Press.

The dispatch itself, from the Reuters news agency, stated that GMA’s "surprise announcement changes the political landscape in the Philippines. Arroyo, whose popularity has slumped since she was swept into power in 2001 on the back of street protests against her predecessor, Joseph Estrada, said she wanted to spare the country fresh political turmoil and focus on reviving the economy."

Reuters noted that there were cynics enough, but some opponents praised Arroyo’s decision. Among them, as quoted by the IHT, was one of GMA’s more bitter foes and critics, Senator Panfilo Lacson, described by Reuters as "an opposition senator and potential presidential candidate in 2004".

Lacson gracefully declared: "Now that the President has paved the way towards one goal – that is, to uplift the lives of Filipinos – by setting aside her political ambition, we’ll all have to support her."

Well said, Ping.

That’s as good a New Year’s message as anything we may find to convey. Let’s all support her. Let’s, for a change, do something meaningful for ourselves, our children, and our disappointed nation.

Some people are remarking that GMA "is going for glory". That’s what we must, as a people, set our steps firmly on the Glory Road.

* * *

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) rang me up from London late Monday night to interview me about the GMA "stunner". Mr. Kim Luard, newscaster and analyst, asked me the usual questions – as well as querying me on who would now run for President.

I won’t write down in today’s column what I told BBC – if you’re interested, kindly twirl those radio dials yourself. I’d rather comment on how I inwardly reacted when, suddenly, that question was posed to me. I thought to myself, as I reeled out the names of a few "possibles", what a thin bench we have to replace GMA in the ball game. With apologies to the surveys, we have no superstars, only one movie star.

However, it’s much too early to speculate about 2004. The President is right. We must concentrate on the present: On what has to be done, and what’s doable – without politics "poisoning" every move.

It’s interesting that one of the expressions the BBC focused on was the statement attributed to GMA that politics had "poisoned" the atmosphere in our country. I told them in London that, indeed, it is a terrible poison which has crippled not merely our body politic, but every stratum of society.

Lord Acton is only partly right. It’s true, as he said in the only phrase he ever uttered which is remembered by posterity and by history, that power tends to corrupt. It’s also true that absolute power corrupts absolutely. There’s a twist to that maxim here, though: The belief that only the corrupt have the wherewithal with which to take power and keep it.

Otto von Bismarck, the Iron Chancellor of Germany, was more sanguine than Lord Acton. He averred: He who has his thumb on the purse has the power. And Al Capone, the gangster, proved even closer, in his concept, to the Philippine condition. Said Capone: You can get much further with a kind word and a gun than you can with a kind word.

Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, I submit, has achieved – if she persists – a power she could never have hoped for: The power of being able to act without expecting anything in return. That would make her invincible. I repeat, on the other hand, my caveat: That she persists in rejecting re-election – no matter what temptations are laid before her feet.

* * *

As we embark on a New Year, it’s pertinent, as Christians, to recall what India’s great Mahatma Gandhi once said: I love Christ, but I despise Christians because they do not live as Christ did.

The great Mahatma was later killed, shot in the head by a Hindu fanatic. But what he asserted about us so-called Christians remains, unfortunately, true today.

Since the President chose the occasion of the date of Rizal’s execution (December 30), in which to deliver her shocker of an announcement, perhaps we ought to examine anew what impelled Rizal to his own heroism and sacrifice. One view is that put forward by Father Fidel Villaroel, O.P., in his book, Father Jose Burgos, University Student, University of Sto. Tomas, 1971.

Wrote Fr. Villaroel: "(Father Jose) Burgos was executed on February 17, 1872. He was charged with conspiracy against the political institutions of the state and with being the prime mover in the mutiny that broke out among the troops stationed at Cavite on January 20 of the same year… Rizal lived in a period when a whole generation of Filipino intellectuals were struggling for national identity through the medium of the press. They found themselves carried away by a current, the stream of which had started precisely with the death of Burgos, Gomez and Zamora. They believed that the year 1872 marked the dawn of Philippine nationalism, the beginning of a feeling for national independence that swelled to national proportions and moved first the intelligentsia of the land and then the masses to seek political reforms, equal rights with the mother country and finally absolute and complete autonomy. ‘Without 1872,’ Rizal said, ‘there would today be no Plaridel or Jaena or Sanciangco, and those brave colonies of Filipinos in Europe would not exist.’… ‘The injustice and cruelty aroused my imagination even as a boy and I swore to dedicate myself to the task of some day avenging the fate of these victims.’ (Rizal wrote this to Mariano Ponce, April 18, 1899). It was to the three priests that Rizal dedicated his work, ‘El Filibusterismo’."

In the Charles Derbyshire translation to English, this volume is entitled The Reign of Greed.

Greed, alas, reigns once again in our land. It may be significant, or it may be sheer coincidence, that President GMA chose Rizal Day as the occasion on which she declared war anew on it. My respectful injunction to her is, as she marches to war, she must start in the corner where she lives.

That having been said: We cheer the President! We’re with her in this battle. May we all close ranks in the coming New Year.