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LET us set aside for the moment the verdict of history on President
Arroyo. Because we all know that it would be any of these: 1)
negative, 2) cruel, and 3) unforgiving.
Dwelling on the present, foes and friends agree
on one thing. That she is a very lucky woman. We cant use the second
word used by the Albay governor in describing her.
Just a few weeks back, the ZTE scandal was about
to shove her out of her palace. A lynching mob was massing near the
palace gates. The headlines and the sound bites left no room for the
already-tired public to reconsider its damning opinion of her. A
survey revealed that between 3 to 4 million Filipinos were ready to
march till she gets booted out.
Malacañang was so tense that it had no time to
headcount the cabinet members all set to jump out of her sinking
ship of state. Even in her inner sanctum, the only ones not
preparing for an exit strategy were she herself and her immediate
family. The rest privately felt she was a goner.
Then three things intervened, coming out of the
blue, thundering out of nowhere to douse cold water on the gathering
political firestorm. Three ugly things to say the least.
First, was the proposal for the succession into
office of the incumbent vice president.
Second, was the Supreme Court vote on the case
of Romulo Neri.
Third, was the scary body of news on a looming
global food crisis.
The first two reasons need no elaboration. It is
enough to say that a Noli de Castro presidency is unacceptable even
to those at the frontline of the movement to oust President Arroyo.
The SC decision, in the words of former Senate
President Franklin Drilon, simply made a marshmallow out of the
Senate Blue Ribbon committee. The SC castrated the blue ribbon by
allowing the Cabinet members summoned to the committee to invoke the
“no talk, no mistake” mantra.
The scenarios of gloom and doom that came with
the reams of newspaper articles on a developing global food shortage
were, of course, the most effective dampener to the effort to oust
her. The ZTE stories were eased out of Page One. The food crisis was
everybody’s business. From kings to paupers, who all have to eat,
nobody really can ignore the issue of a looming food crisis.
The ZTE, a broadband deal that reeked of
top-level corruption, cannot simply compete with food shortage in
terms of which should get more news hole and bolder types for the
headlines. It so happened that the food crisis was a global thing,
not just a local issue. And the food commodity that was in short
supply was rice, our national staple and the staple food of half of
the people across the globe.
And it was a real crisis, not just a wag-the-dog
fabrication designed to shove the ZTE stories out of their big play.
Even with their best effort, Alan Peter, Ping
and Kiko cannot move the ZTE scandal back into the headlines. Their
combined media strategizing failed to deliver possible
headline-grabbing spins. Taking their cue from the major newspapers,
the TV crews started training their cameras less on the senators and
more on rice warehouses and rice paddies. In a country where
headlines can fuel rebellion, this was most unfortunate.
Journalists now are more interested in Nanding
Gabuya, the Nueva Ecija farmer who is ranked as the world’s 2nd
most prodigious rice producer, than the senators. We in the peasant
group Butil got real attention for the first time since our
registration as a peasant party. Our representative, Ka Nellie
Chavez, says she cannot understand the attention . Because all of
the problems of Philippine agriculture now have been problems from
time immemorial. I told her in a jest that we should just enjoy our
15 minutes of media attention.
Mrs. Arroyo’s reversal of fortune, also
brought Crying Jun Lozada crashing back to earth, from what he
believed was his saintly orbit. The self-proclaimed hero and ZTE
witness has been stripped of his forums, and worst, of his media
mileage.
What is Crying June without the cheers, the
adulation, the editorials that roll out paeans to his “courage”?
And the forums from which to expend his buckets of easy tears?
This is not fair to Crying Jun. And to the
senators that sincerely want to get into the bottom of the ZTE
cesspool.
But the battles of life, this is the sad truth,
often belong not to the brave but to the lucky.
mvrong@yahoo.com
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