EDSA: His, hers and ours

"Nothing will make me resign." "I believe I am the best person to lead this nation through this transition."

Whew! I hope Madam Gloria Macapagal Arroyo knocked on wood or crossed her fingers when she delivered those fighting words before the Foreign Correspondents Association gathering in Makati yesterday. For sure her statements will have gone around the world by today, and have evoked varied reactions from friends and foes alike.

***

The President must have been chafing from several reports yesterday, like that recaptured officer who, even while being hustled away by his captors, still managed to berate and lambaste her, calling her an "illegitimate president". Or perhaps she also read, or was informed about a Tribune columnist who described her regime as "clinically dead" while trying to project the image of being "in the pink of health". But that paper never praises her, anyway, so why should comments in it bother her?

***

As for the varied reactions, what can be expected to come out from her friends and supporters are laudatory words for being so bold and so brave as to talk that way before the international media. They may snicker a bit at what may sound like a lack of modesty, so unlike a typical Filipina, but, what of it? Modesty is not the order of the day, even her recent outfits indicate that. The least she wants to be considered is as a wimpy head of state, so other foreign leaders who read such statements will surely be impressed.

***

On the other hand, her words will also appear like a red flag to the raging bulls in the opposition, if not among the rebels in the military and in the insurgency. For sure, they will take it as a dare to them. One thing that can be predicted is that, because this is now EDSA season, they will dig up the bold and daring pronouncements of the late dictator, the one ousted by EDSA I, before the end. Watch for them in the media these next few days.

***

Speaking of EDSA, the latest on it is that, while former President Fidel Ramos has agreed to be at the rites, he and incumbent President Arroyo will not be there at the same hour, or even on the same day. GMA is said to be laying wreaths at the Libingan ng mga Bayani today, and in Bulacan, launching a housing project for soldiers on the 25th. Well, February 25 was really FVR's EDSA, while January 20 was GMA's. So they will have different EDSAs to mark. What matters most is which one Filipinos accept as THEIR EDSA.

***

As for those who are hoping to stage their EDSA III (or IV?), listen to what the beneficiary of the second one has to say - also before the foreign press yesterday: "The world will not forgive an EDSA III (so it's not IV). They will condemn the Philippines for it." She also had a dig for the EDSA I people. Without naming them, she said that some of its leaders think they have a "lifetime franchise" to it. Guess who "they" are.

***

In the meantime, someone is trying to portray her own heroism by declaring that she is giving up plans to go to Hongkong for medical treatment because she is going to her home province to help her people. Imelda Romualdez Marcos, the most famous Leyteña of all time, announced this yesterday in reaction to the efforts to rescue or, at least, find the bodies of the thousand or more who were buried under tons of mud in Barangay Ginsaugan, St. Bernard town in Southern Leyte. I'm sure the former first lady will be at her most Imeldific when she lands at the stricken valley.

***

We cannot contest what professional rescuers say about the impossibility of still finding survivors now that four days have passed since the unnamed mountainside broke and sent down water, mud and rocks, some said to be as big as cars, down to crush and cover everything in its path. During that terrible earthquake in Baguio in the 1980s, some survivors were found more than ten days later. They survived without food and water because they had some air creeping through the wreckage. In Ginsaugan, mud fully covered and suffocated them. We can only pray that, for the unfortunate ones, death came swiftly, with the least agony and pain.*

back to top