Gloria and the seven curses

EDITORIAL

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07/27/2008

Hunger, poverty, poor governance, corruption, abuse of power, lack of mandate and an uncertain future. These in gist are the seven demons that Gloria had brought down on the nation, which was what the former senior government officials were able to enumerate.

In Gloria’s seven years in power, the scourge that she had wrought upon the Filipinos cannot be condensed in just seven hundred categories, much less seven, but for the benefit of Gloria’s seven years of non-governance, the FSGO’s list would be symbolic.

Many of those in the loose group of the ex-men that Malacañang collectively calls the FSGO in derision, were the same people who had extolled Gloria Arroyo during the 2001 naked power grab from the legitimately elected President Joseph Estrada. She was their anointed and they didn’t care that the rule of law was being trampled upon or what the consequences were.

But what took them so long to see the curses that Gloria wrought on the nation?

A few months into the presidency, she had already broken her word that she would not allow her relative to run for office. Her son did and she campaigned for him. Less than two years into the presidency, she vowed that she would no longer run for the high seat as she acknowledged that she was the cause of the serious disunity of the nation. She broke her word again. And yet, knowing that she was not a woman of truth and substance, these were the very same ex-men who even supported her candidacy and kept silent despite the electoral fraud committed which was already in evidence as early as 2004.

But perhaps the ex-men are slow learners.

Still, when Gloria intensified with her wicked ways of exploiting the presidency for her own benefit, these officials finally realized their part and their responsibility in having created a monster in Malacañang and they are now exerting every effort to try to undo the curse.

Gloria, as a curse, has proven to be one of the most potent ever that has befallen the country. Several efforts of equally diverse manner have failed to detach the curse from the nation. It even grew stronger as time passed.

The Filipino nation bears the pain from the seven-year scourge.

A few months after what the civil socialites built up then as People Power II, supporters of Estrada sought to reclaim his constitutionally-vested and mandated power and held Edsa III in which many died in the first attempt to exorcise the evil in Malacañang. And many of the ex-men cheered her own, despite the killing.

In 2002, after the military-backed takeover, the most painful scourge of mismanagement of government finances befell the nation.

Also on that year, Gloria, in plugging a record budget deficit, began to borrow like mad from abroad and through the issuance of local debts contributed much to the country’s astronomical obligations of P4 trillion.

The growth in the nation’s debts resulted in an increasingly less proportion of the budget being used for basic government services while more than 30 percent of the government’s finances went to the payment of an ever-increasing debt.

Also on that year Gloria pledged to the nation that she would not run for the presidency in the 2004 elections.

The next year, Gloria was already actively campaigning for the presidency, saying she had a divine mandate to seek a new term. By that time, the nation realized it would have to carry another curse, that of Gloria’s deception.

By 2003, Gloria’s deceptions had grown unbearably, so much so that a group of junior officers called on her to step down in what is now known as the Oakwood Mutiny. This began a string of mutinies that have identical calls of upholding decency in government and the military, that have been prostituted by Gloria to serve her interests.

The 2004 elections proved to be a further prolonging of the scourge through the use of devious powers that the 2001 event gave on a silver platter to Gloria and from where she learned to manipulate to tighten her hold on power.

Four years of more manipulations, deceit and abuse of power lead to tomorrow’s seventh State of the Nation Address of Gloria, the president who assumed power in a questionable manner and is holding on to it through more anomalous methods.

The FSGOs speak of a curse but one from where they should have learned it emanated.

For sure, rooting out the curse or curses will bring them back to those days of ignominy in January, 2001.

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