As I speculated last year, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is now using the economy as her political tack to keep power. The idea being that these are desperate times and there is no one better equipped to deal with desperate times than, well, a desperate person. Or, as she has tried to project it these past months, one who has become a global statesperson, whose advice on economic matters is being seriously taken by the world.

She has been busy increasing the volume on that spin, complementing House Speaker Prospero Nograles’ moves to initiate Charter change. Over the last couple of weeks, she (or her officials, quoting her) has said she will focus exclusively on economic matters and eschew everything political. Which, she says, she has been doing anyway over the last few years. If she had allowed herself to be distracted by politics, she says, she would not have been able to build the roads and bridges she has built. She will do more of the same.

That of course collides frontally with the very political juggernaut to change the Charter. What has Charter change to do with the economy? It will have as much effect on preventing the global economic recession from hitting our shores as incantation will on stopping a superstorm—with incantation probably having the better chance. If Ms Arroyo is on “economic mode” and wants the world to do the same, why isn’t she stopping her son from politicking in Congress? (Forget Nograles, he’s just a stooge.)

That of course also doesn’t particularly bother them. Consistency, or even plain believability, is the least of their concerns. You repeat a lie long enough and you can always have someone believing you. Which brings me to the point:

Unfortunately, the call for us to focus on the economy can’t entirely fall on deaf ears. These are desperate times, and it’s all we can do to prepare for the ripples of the economic tsunami that has hit the world. We do need to focus on the economy.

None of it means keeping Ms Arroyo forever, all of it means getting rid of her for good. That is so, first of all, because you have to ask yourself, “What is the economy?”

The economy is not just about GNP, GDP or whatever three-letter acronym you can use to measure the amount of goods and services that gets to be accumulated in a year. The economy is not just about inflation, deflation, fiscal balance, balance of trade, balance of payments, taxation particularly the kind without representation, and all the other items to get to fill up the books of bankers and accountants. The economy is not just about the figures you hear Ms Arroyo parade every time she delivers a State of the Nation Address to try to feel important or dispel the stench of corruption, whichever is more achievable — those are just statistics, and as Mark Twain brilliantly observed, there are three kinds of lies: big lies, little lies and statistics.

The economy is first and last about people.

The American presidential debate last year showed that quite dramatically. The economy wasn’t about all those concepts accessible only to a priestly cabal that could speak the language, it was about Joe the Plumber, it was about owners of small businesses and what tax breaks they could do with, it was about ordinary people who needed to send their kids to school, who needed health care when they got sick, who needed a roof over their heads as the banks tried to foreclose on their home mortgages.

The candidates did not just answer questions about the economy with GNP and GDP and the bailout of Wall Street (though they did that, too, in part), they answered them by talking about what they would do for the ordinary American. It wasn’t just good campaign strategy, it was also a reaffirmation of the fundamental truth that the economy is far too important to leave to economists. The economy, like democracy, is by, of and for the people.

What has Ms Arroyo done for the ordinary Filipino except to treat him like a mushroom, keeping him in the dark and nourishing him with bull?

It is so, second of all, because you have to ask yourself: In direst times, who would you like to lead you?

It bears repeating again and again: In times of war and want, what you need is not a general or an economist, what you need is a leader you can trust.

Winston Churchill was not a general, he was a civil servant. Yet he proved a beacon of hope in Britain’s darkest hour, when German bombers crowded London’s skies at night trying to pummel the country to submission. He united a country, turning fear into a determination to fight through with blood, sweat and tears.

Franklin D. Roosevelt was not an economist, he was a lawyer. Yet, he proved to be a rock of stability during America’s darkest hour, preventing a country that had fallen into utter want from sinking into utter despair. He unveiled the New Deal, a thing John McCain would have proclaimed as the socialist nightmare, and, with the public behind him, plucked the country out of the Great Depression into the Great Elation.

I suspect, or hope, Barack Obama will do the same, having as well the public behind him, having transcended the greatest adversity, and being the voice of change. But that’s another story.

It’s not a question of popularity, it’s a question of trust. Moses could not have led his people out of the desert if his people thought he was a con man with a beard or refused to reveal God’s communications with him on the ground of prophetic privilege.

That, quite incidentally, should apply as well to the next leader of this country. These are deeply troubled times, and we can all do pitching in behind someone who can pluck us out of hell, the one threatened by the global crisis and the one wrought upon us over the last nine years. Someone who understands that improving the economy simply means improving the lives of Filipinos.

And above all, someone we can trust.