Get it through your heads

Naturally, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s camp, led by Elena Baustista-Horn, Raul Lambino and Ferdinand Topacio, made a fuss over her transfer to the Veterans Memorial Medical Center last Friday.

They made a fuss over the delay, saying that Arroyo was up and about as early as 6 a.m., but government probably just wanted to make her wade through traffic out of spite, or add to it, to get the public pissed off at her. They made a fuss over government messing up the arrangements, springing the possibility of a helicopter airlift at the 11th hour without thought of the bad weather. They made a fuss over government bungling security, issuing conflicting orders, with no one in charge to put order to the chaos.

Naturally, Arroyo’s camp made a fuss over those things. Just as naturally, the public was not incensed, it was amused. Just as naturally, the public did not bristle with indignation, it howled with merriment.

About time you got several things through your heads people:

One, the government cannot make Arroyo more unpopular than she already is. What can cause a stream of vituperation to issue forth from the lips of commuters and bus drivers—the kind depicted in comic strips in the form of lightning bolts and swastikas—is not the sight of her adding to the 8 a.m. traffic, it is the reminder to the public that she used to do that with a barrage of escorts bearing down on the world with wang-wangs. The riding public sees her entourage winding down the streets quietly, with only flashing lights to announce its passing like a funeral cortege, it will not feel outraged, it will feel satisfied. It will not think dark thoughts, it will think sweet justice.

Two, you yourselves can no more make her an object of pity than you can make her husband an object of desire. Though it may help if you put it in writing that you are waiving all your fees for your services now and in future to at least create the verisimilitude that you are doing all this out of love for your boss and not out of love for your pockets. I warned about it long ago: Unlike Ferdinand Marcos and Joseph Estrada who had their share of ardent loyalists, people who loved them for what they were and not for what they gave, Arroyo when she lost power could enjoy no such luxury. People who lived by transactions died by transactions.

When you ferry a handful of “loyalists” from Pampanga to show support, only to see them cower in discomfort at the first sign of rain, you are not going to solicit sympathy, you are going to draw laughter. When Mike Arroyo vows to join his wife in Veterans and share physically and not just symbolically in her lot, people are not going to sigh and say, “Ah but that is the sign of true love,” they are going to snicker and say, “Ah, but they truly deserve each other.”

Three, you really should put your shrill alarum about the government wanting to “Put the Little Girl to Sleep” to sleep. It’s not just that nobody’s going to believe it, the little girl having cried wolf so many times, it’s that everybody is going to believe the opposite. The real threat to Arroyo’s health does not come from the government, it comes from she herself. It’s in her interest to make herself sick, or look it.

I remember in this respect Buddy Gomez’s theory about Marcos’ death, which he wrote about during Cory’s time. Marcos was known, he said, to have made himself sick each time he got summoned by the courts in Hawaii. He did that by eating hamburgers, which provoked his already much abused kidneys into rebellion. He went too far at one point, however, and his kidneys finally rebelled with finality. Like Marcos, Arroyo can always gamble with her life to avoid prosecution. And like Marcos, she can always gamble with her life and meet prosecution—by St. Peter.

The government has no reason to want to Put the Little Girl to Sleep. It has every reason to want to keep the little girl awake—to face the scolding.

Four, you have every reason to feel the noose tightening around your necks. It is. Arroyo made the fatal blunder of not fleeing abroad when she had the chance to. She completely underestimated P-Noy’s resolve to see justice done. And now, too late the villain.

The possibility that she might get public sympathy on her side a la Erap is just not there. The difference between her and Erap is not just that she is guiltier than Erap, though there’s that, too. Erap merely stole money and women’s hearts. She stole the vote and the hope in people’s hearts.

Far more than that, Erap had her for prosecutor while she has P-Noy. That is the difference between night and day.

When she arrested Erap for epic thievery, she had just gained power through epic irony. She had not led Edsa, she had tailed it. She had not risked life and limb to overthrow tyranny, she had cowered behind Cory and Jaime Cardinal Sin to benefit from it. From the start, she showed her need and covetousness for power, making all her moves reek of political calculation and personal gain. She did not prosecute Erap to punish the guilty, she did so to remove a threat.

When P-Noy arrested her for corruption of even more epic proportions, he had been President for a year and a half. He had become so by leading an Edsa that masqueraded as an election. From the start, he showed a healthy distrust for power, initially balking at running but bowing to the people’s will—and his destiny, when he could no longer escape it. After he became President, he went on to show a healthy respect for it, vowing to use it wisely and well to leave a legacy to the nation. Consequently, his moves have resonated with rational deliberation and a desire to do well by his people. He is not prosecuting Arroyo out of spite, he is prosecuting Arroyo out of justice.

Get that through your heads, people.