Last Tuesday, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo spoke at the opening of the 63rd United Nations General Assembly. Her aides depicted it as a speech that held the Assembly in thrall. There was little mention of it, however, on the BBC or Bloomberg or even Fox News. There was no mention of it, even among the miscellaneous items, in Yahoo or Google news or in that of Yahoo Messenger or Windows Messenger.
In her speech to the UN, which not unlike her addresses to the nation presumed a gullible audience (Transparency International had just reported her government as having become even more corrupt even as she spoke), Arroyo invoked peace. “There is no alternative to peace. I stand before you today to declare loud and clear that we are committed to the process of peace in Mindanao …. The context of our engagement with all armed groups shall subscribe to the UN-recognized principles of demobilization, disarmament and reintegration …. We maintain high hopes in our interfaith dialogue as a means to building bridges rather than barriers between communities.”
I’m almost sure Arroyo would have landed among the top stories of CNN, BBC, Bloomberg, Fox, Yahoo, Google and Yahoo and Windows Messenger had she delivered a different speech. It would have been a speech her country, quite apart from the world, would have loved to hear. That speech is this:
“There is no alternative to peace. I stand before you today to declare loud and clear that we are committed to peace. In that light, I stand before you today to declare loud and clear that I am resigning as president of my country.
“At the very least, I am doing so to dispel universal suspicion that my earnest professions of commitment to peace are merely tied to my veiled manifestations of commitment to war-against my country. So long as I am there, so long will the world believe I mean to use the effort to end war in Mindanao as an effort to amend the Charter to allow me to run again.
“Quite apart from that, I stand before you to declare loud and clear my profound embarrassment at being the only world leader to have resolutely prosecuted a peace process that has led inexorably to war. Before I unveiled the agreement to end the war once and for all in Mindanao, there was peace in Mindanao. A fretful peace, doubtless, interrupted by routine saber-rattling by armed groups to remind the world they are still there, but peace nonetheless. After I unveiled the agreement to end war once and for all in Mindanao, there was war in Mindanao. Whether that strikes you as horrendous incompetence or duplicitous intent, I mean to give peace a chance by declaring once and for all I am quitting.
“That is so moreover because I realize that war isn’t just ravaging Mindanao today, it is ravaging my entire country. I stand before you also to declare my absolute embarrassment at being the only leader in Asia still fighting a war against communists. At a time when communist groups have become part of the electoral process in other countries, including those that vowed to extirpate it. At a time when the communist rebellion no longer poses a threat to me the way it did to my predecessors. Indeed, at a time when my government is desperate to establish closer ties with the only communist power left in the world, which is China.
“While at this too, you might have noted the irony that we have abolished the death penalty only to institute the killing fields (plowed with the bones of journalists and political activists), that we turn a blind eye to runaway population growth only to pay attention to decimating the populace with war and want. Call it horrendous incompetence too or duplicitous intent, well, call it anything you want, it’s probably all of the above.
“I understand, moreover, that the war that’s ravaging my country isn’t just the physical war in Mindanao and elsewhere, it is also the spiritual war in the hearts and minds of the citizens. It is the monumental divisiveness that now wracks this country, which I myself predicted would happen if I ran for president in 2004. It is the profound distrust the citizens have for my government, not least because I have repeatedly given them cause to believe I say one thing and do another—they will probably think my vow to resign now is just another one of those things—and most of all because they figure I did not win the elections anyway. It is, sad to say, the unbearable hatred the citizens hold for me, which has hounded me and hobbled me at every turn.
“I realize that no country can possibly survive war and want, strife and divisiveness, the consumption of the body and the rotting away of the soul, without a leader the citizens can trust and unite behind. I mean to do a good deed today. I can only hope that, unlike the way things have gotten in my country, that good goes unpunished.
“I entrust the leadership of my country to a caretaker government to be headed by the Chief Justice, which will hold snap elections as soon as possible. The next government to be bound to taking the necessary steps to resolve the war in Mindanao, even if it has to submit the Charter to change to accommodate a lasting settlement with the Moros. At least it will not be suspected of harboring ulterior motives.
“But first things first: I stand before you today to declare loud and clear that we are committed to peace. I stand before you today to declare loud and clear we are committed to removing all obstacles to peace. I stand before you today to declare loud and clear I am removing the biggest obstacle to peace. I stand before you today to declare loud and clear I am removing myself.
“Peace be with you. Peace be with my countrymen. Peace be—such as my conscience will allow it—with me.”
