No living happily ever after

“Once upon a time, I lived happily ever after.”

Movie actor Mickey Rooney offered this one-sentence story of how he bolted to stellar roles alongside Spencer Tracy and Judy Garland. Then he slumped into drugs, gambling and bankruptcy.

Once upon a time, an economics professor, who grew up  in Malacañang and studied at Georgetown University, thought she would live happily ever after. As the 14th Philippine president, the 5-foot tall Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo  stared down coup plotters and gutted repeated  impeachment bids, Agence France Presse recalls. But Friday’s arrest for electoral sabotage turned GMA “from superstar to reviled figure in a spectacular rise and fall through the country’s chaotic democracy.”

“When quiet, studious Gloria Arroyo became Philippine president in 2001, she was hailed as the perfect antidote to her loud, hard-drinking predecessor Joseph Estrada,” the BBC noted. “But over her nine-year term, her popularity plummeted as she faced allegations of vote-rigging and corruption.”

Laid at GMA’s doorsteps are scams, from the overpriced Macapagal Boulevard and the ZTE  scam to the “Hello, Garci tapes,” etc., etc. She played fast and loose with the truth in claiming life-threatening ailments that needed medical attention only available abroad, Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno wrote in her dissent to Arroyo’s TRO petition. Prognosis by Filipino physicians saw full recovery in less than a year.

“If  his mother were really seriously sick, would Ang Galing Rep. Mikey Arroyo leave for abroad, as he did on Nov. 17, to raise money  for his political party?” asked former Sen. Rene Saguisag. The Quezon City Regional Trial Court, where Mikey and his wife are facing a P73-million tax evasion case, approved his trip.

“The Arroyos seem to keep insulting our little intelligence,” Saguisag said. In a play on Cicero’s 63 B.C. speech, he asked, “Quo usque tandem abutere, Gloria, patientia nostra?” (How much longer will you, Gloria, abuse our patience?)

The Pasay RTC approved on Monday temporary hospital arrest for GMA. Mug shots of her will not be released. The constitutionality of the DOJ-Comelec panel will be challenged.

The blood pressure of a haggard Arroyo stood at an elevated 140/100. She has lost appetite and is being hydrated with IV fluid, her doctor said.

Who hit the replay button? Once upon a time, the 13th Philippine president assumed he would live happily ever after, after taking his oath at the historic Barasoain Church.

Joseph Estrada’s favorite conversation peg  then was a unique watch. It counted down the 2,191 days from his first day in Malacañang to a repeat oath-taking, which would come after a no-sweat re-election campaign. That was how the script ran.

But Erap’s wristwatch stopped ticking two years after his inaugural “Now Power is with the People” address at the Luneta. Concubines, a “midnight cabinet” of thieves and Petrus wine uncorked by the case blacked out intimations of mortality. He failed to deliver. People Power 2 yanked him out, as they did his predecessor in People Power 1.

Once upon a time, the eighth Philippine president assumed he’d live happily ever after in a bizarre Camelot he dubbed as the “New Society.” But Ferdinand Marcos never dreamed  that a “walang alam” widow clad in yellow would lead People Power and end, without bloodshed, his corrupt 14-year dictatorship.

Hawaiian exile and death from lupus at age 72 scrubbed FM’s scenarios. President Fidel Ramos agreed to an Ilocos Norte burial. The Marcos family backtracked and insisted on a Libingan ng mga Bayani funeral. Holding back decay by protracted embalming, the Marcoses have displayed the body in a Batac mausoleum for two decades now. President Benigno Aquino III, however, scuppered a resolution signed by 214 congressmen calling for a Libingan burial.

Not even God can alter the past. Men can only doctor historical accounts. And the records do show these facts.

US National Archives records exposed Marcos’ 37 war medals as bogus. “At no time did the Army recognize that any unit, designating itself as Maharlika, ever existed as a guerrilla force in the years of Japanese occupation 1942 to 1945.”

Three years after Marcos clamped on martial law, Amnesty International reported: “The Philippines has been transformed from a country with a remarkable constitutional tradition to a system where star chamber methods have been used, on so wide a scale as to literally torture evidence into existence… Over 1,500 were murdered and thousands arbitrarily detained.”

Marcos’ tax deficiency added up to P23.2 million. That did not include Ferdinand Jr.’s  P18.5 million debt.

In 2003 the Supreme Court forfeited $836 million stashed away in shell foundations abroad. For his secret accounts, Marcos used the alias “William Saunders” and Imelda Marcos signed as “Jane Ryan.

“Call back yesterday,” Richard II cried. “Bid time return.” But these failures are already etched into history.

Ferdinand Marcos, Joseph Estrada and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo were gifted by the people with a rare opportunity to achieve greatness through selfless service. All three blew it. Now, it’s too late.

“Four things never return,” the old proverb says, “the sped arrow, wasted time, the spoken word—and missed opportunity.” There will be no Camelot-like living happily ever after.

Once upon a time, an itinerant Teacher from Galilee wept over Jerusalem. The city squandered opportunities for grace. “Because you did not know the time of your visitation,” He  warned, “not a stone will be left upon stone in you.”

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Email: juanlmercado@gmail.com