MANILA, Philippines?She sits on a striped green couch in a white suit and gold-and-white heels, bare legs demurely pressed together, hand to chin, all wide-eyed wonder as she poses questions to the plump columnist in the big armchair. ?Is that Camus? It?s a French saying? You know, I used to read Camus a lot. Would you know how that line translates into French??

The mirrored walls reflect a gold salver from the King of Malaysia, and a marble elephant from the Prime Minister of India. She talks of communists with a smile, preaches about prayer, and talks of reforestation and disaster reduction and opening the Press Office on Saturdays. ?I didn?t know Sunday had the biggest readership.?

Beside her, then Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita nods to sleep.

This is Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, president of the Republic of the Philippines, holding court at the Palace, mere months before the end of her nine-year rule, clucking over an unfortunate politician who had just recently been booted out of office.

?That?s why me, after elections, I don?t want to talk until I?m proclaimed.?

A woman with mahogany hair leads Her Excellency into a dining room wallpapered with printed beige wood. The new deputy spokesperson is present, 79-year-old Charito Planas, who had told reporters she meant to behave like their grandma. She is cheery and effusive, her comfortable bulk wrapped in her trademark purple, and speaks of the public reaction to her recent appointment as the newest Arroyo mouthpiece.

?You know, when I was doing my daily walk, I was stopped by so many people who congratulated me with smiles and hugs. They said they?re not mad at you. That?s a wonderful indication, even up to now I?m receiving messages of congratulations.?

That wonderful indication comes side by side with Pulse Asia?s most recent survey, giving the woman Planas claims has been the best since Manuel L. Quezon stepped into office in 1935 a record-breaking 59-percent disapproval rating. In the decade of Gloria, the truth begins with ?Hello Garci? and ends with ?I am sorry.? A promise means a woman standing in a makeshift Baguio stage in the sunset of 2002, promising to step back from the presidential elections of 2004, because her ?political efforts can only result in never-ending divisiveness.? Justice means press conferences for alleged multiple murderers, and Supreme Court judges flashing shriveled balls at a cynical public. To protest means to piss through the nose with compliments from the honorable Jovito Palparan, or, at best, an X-rating for films that ?tend to undermine the faith of people in government.?

So wave your orange banners and tie your yellow ribbons, paint every tin urinal green. This election is not about platform or performance; it?s about how far a candidate can run from the tarred brush of the Arroyo administration. Short of assassination by cyanide poison, the elections may be the only way to pry Ms Arroyo?s white-knuckled fingers from the Malacañang throne. She does not care about image or morals, say the white-hot oppositionists. She is responsible for poverty and torture, death by mutilation, nepotism and thievery and the butchery of the Constitution.

And so she is, but she is not the only one. After all, loyalty to a tyrant is not the fault of a tyrant, it is the choice of the men who sit laughing with her in Malacañang drawing rooms, bobbing their heads at her every smiling statement, reassuring her of the public?s love and trust, writing the press releases and rubber stamping whims.

It is an interesting question, as to whether there would have been a Gloria without a Gary Olivar to say that the President deserved to spend whatever she wanted on Le Cirque dinners and rented limousines and P6 million in government funds on tips to waiters and bellboys. The late Cerge Remonde left a legacy of lies that ranged from his angry denial of presidential breast implants to his harried defense of her ZTE involvement. The gentlemen of the Supreme Court wrote away their reputations when they decided to backhoe the Constitution, Gilberto Teodoro wrote away his when he chose to retain Ms Arroyo?s guns in Maguindanao. He condemns the massacre and speaks of the Ampatuan savagery, and then announces he cannot speak against the woman who gave a 40-year-old man a chance, forgetting, for example, that the man had a choice to accept the chance at power.

There is something insulting about all this sudden morality by the gentlemen from the court of the crimson queen. Listen to Arroyo economic spokesperson and Albay Gov. Joey Salceda?s justification for bolting the administration party, after he decided his ?lucky bitch? wasn?t so lucky anymore. He says his desertion of the administration was due to suddenly seeing on television ?that our two top party officials are quarrelling,? as if Lakas-Kampi-CMD party members had not been howling at each other in the last decade. It would have been more believable if Salceda had gone independent, risking his win for the sake of his much-touted principle, instead of throwing his lot behind the man whose survey numbers have crowned him king.

When Davao del Sur Gov. Douglas Cagas and Camarines Sur Gov. Luis Raymund ?LRay? Villafuerte Jr. offer their leashes to the Nacionalistas for the chance to run on the billion-dollar track of the Villar campaign, there is more to it than a ?better lineup.? When House Speaker Prospero Nograles says he is ?considering? the Villar camp, he has no right to claim righteous indignation?or exasperation?at being ?left out of the loop? by an administration party ?that is in total disarray contrary to what is being bandied about in the media.? It is an interesting commentary on Nograles? definition of principle: he will stake his name on a rape of the Constitution with his furious push for the administration?s Charter change in April 2009, he will bring his wife to a presidential US trip on the assumption of a free ride on the government checkbook, he will defend martial law on the vague grounds of rebellion by an Arroyo ally, but, by God, he will not stand for being ignored. Listen to them talk of people and duty, nation and stability.

Former Senate President Franklin Drilon, from the Liberal party, insists that the defection of administration bigwigs to the Nacionalista Party proves that NP standard-bearer Villar is the secret presidential candidate of President Arroyo in this election. I do not know what that makes the Liberal Party after loaning Salceda a new wardrobe of yellow shirts; perhaps Ms Arroyo is hedging her bets with a number of secret candidates. Whatever the truth is, the stink of the Arroyo name does not only belong to those who run under Lakas, it belongs to every candidate who takes in the new moral Lancelots of the republic, and every man who offered himself as shield and sword in her name.

On Dec. 7, 1955, Albert Camus delivered a speech at a banquet in honor of exiled President Eduardo Santos.

?The welfare of the people in particular has always been the alibi of tyrants, and it provides the further advantage of giving the servants of tyranny a good conscience.?

?Camus?? says President Arroyo, tapping her chin. ?Yes, I like Camus.?