De Quiros Column

There's The Rub : Roads

Conrado de Quiros dequiros@info.com.ph
Inquirer News Service

WATCHING GMA (Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo) last week tell the world with a straight face that it wasn't a matter of popularity, she had the vision, her enemies could only lead the country down the road to nowhere, I saw Marcos. That is one of the many things they have in common. Marcos could lie with conviction. It wasn't just that he was a good liar, it was that he actually believed his lie. He had internalized it to a point that it took on the aspect of truth etched in tablet-or in his mind. GMA is like that, too.

While saying it wasn't a popularity contest, GMA, of course, was preparing for a rally that would make her look popular. I would learn later that all the owners of the establishments in Baywalk were required to attend the rally, an order that probably came from Lito Atienza. All of which reminded me of Marcos' attempts at "hakot power" during the "snap elections" of 1986.

"This fight isn't about me," GMA told an audience of Fil-Ams, "it's about working within the rule of law and the virtue of democracy that we share with many countries, especially with the United States."

I don't know why the US Embassy didn't list the Fil-Ams who graced the event under the category of undesirable aliens. To be told by GMA that she shared a passion for democracy with Americans and not protest it is to not be an American. Can you imagine how Americans would react to knowing that their president talked to one of their election officials during the counting of votes? Can you imagine how Americans would react to their president admitting so but telling them to put it behind them and move on? Can you imagine how Americans would react to being told to not protest it violently out of respect for the law?

You'd have a revolution in America. Yet here all we saw were those Fil-Ams grinning from ear to ear and making the thumbs-up sign. Thumbs up to what?

What took the cake, of course, was GMA saying only she could lead the country to salvation, her enemies could lead it only on the road to nowhere. My cell phone was deluged by text messages that are not fit to print. I myself have always wanted to propose that TV carry a warning that says, "GMA causes hypertension, emphysema and cancer." I've had to tell friends to take life, including GMA-though they would protest the association-with a little more humor or end up drawing heavily on their health insurance. I'm not being entirely facetious when I say that GMA has not only caused more corruption, poverty and natural disasters, she has also caused more patients in hospitals.

At the very least, of course, better a road that leads nowhere rather than one that leads to perdition. The candidates the Comelec routinely weed out as "nuisance candidates" clearly have better programs than GMA for the simple reason that they do not include her. Their idea of love, peace and music may at least be argued to be possible, GMA's idea of democracy, decency and prosperity may not.

But that is nothing. Because the real question is not who has the better program, it is who has the right to offer any program. A thief may not scoff at the owner of a cell phone he has stolen and say he has a right to keep it because he has a better use for it while all the owner does is make tsismis with it. GMA may not scoff at the voters whose votes she has stolen and say she has a better use for the presidency, all the voters do is waste their votes on people like FPJ.

But we may not go without comment on the road GMA proffers. A year ago, shortly before the elections, I wrote a couple of columns, the first titled "Scary" and the other "More than ever, scary," both about GMA. In the first one, I said I had not seen such a scale of ambition and ruthlessness in anyone since Marcos. Not from Cory (Aquino), not from (Fidel) Ramos, not from Erap (Joseph Estrada).

Marcos won a second term by unleashing guns, goons and gold to an unprecedented level. GMA looked headed to a second term because she was unleashing gold, goons and guns to an unprecedented level. Marcos dreamt of ruling forever. GMA dreams of ruling forever.

A GMA supporter wrote angrily to say surely I knew in my heart that wasn't true, GMA was no Marcos. I replied in the second column that, on the contrary, I not only knew it to be true, I felt it to the very marrow of my bones. Was it possible, I asked, that people could not actually see how this person's compulsive drive to power resembled Marcos'? I look at our situation today and I am astounded at how we are reliving the nightmare all over again.

But there is one very fundamental difference between Marcos and GMA. That was that Marcos at least won the right to be president twice. He won the elections against Diosdado Macapagal in 1965 and against Sergio Osmeña in 1969. The irony in the latter was that he cheated when he never needed to. That isn't the case at all with GMA.

I look at our situation today and I am astounded even more by the fact that the one person who has wrought the worst crisis in this country since Marcos is one who never won the right to lead it. One who became President in 2001 without earning the moral right to, hiding under the bed while the battle was raging, and later thanking not Cory or Cardinal Sin, who took her by the hand when it was safe, but a Pope who was too dead to contradict her. And one who became President in 2004 without having the legal right to, conniving with Hello Garci to defraud the voters but refusing to step down upon being found out, clinging to her position with a tenacity beyond the powers of Epoxy or Mighty Bond to effect. Talk of tragedy repeating itself as farce.

But the consequence is bound to be the same: martial law, official or de facto. That is the road GMA offers.

Walking down that road has the same sensation as being flushed down the drain.