What the people can expect

Published by the Visayan Daily Star Publications, Inc.

NINFA R. LEONARDIA Editor-in-Chief & President

CARLA P. GOMEZ Editor GUILLERMO TEJIDA III Desk Editor NANETTE L. GUADALQUIVER Busines Editor ERIC T. LORETIZO Sports Editor (On Leave) RENE GENOVE Bureau Chief, Dumaguete MAJA P. DELY Advertising Coordinator

CARLOS ANTONIO L. LEONARDIA Administrative Officer

There is a saying used by people who do not believe, or do not want to listen to what somebody wants to tell them. They say, often with tongue in cheek: Tell it to the Marines.

The Marines were not there, but the foreign media were, the representatives of foreign publications and international wire services were present, and they were the ones who were told by our President that she has no intention whatsoever, to resign, or even to agree to shortening of her six-year term, which she fully plans to finish.

That, she also told her foreign audience, is because she believes she is the best person, perhaps the only one, to lead the country during the period of transition from presidential to parliamentarian - as she has also planned.

Many of her constituents, including some lawmakers, are surprised at the certainty she has expressed over the change in the form of government because, up to now, there appears to be more and more people who are questioning, not only the changes that the charter change proponents have laid out, but even the need for a change at all.

These doubts have probably been triggered by the fact that when the President herself announced during her last State of the Nation Address that she would go for charter change, most had the impression that she was, in effect, also agreeing to the proposals that there was a need to shorten her own term upon adoption of the new Charter.

Apparently, she had another thing in mind, even then. As she must have had when, she had announced, about two years before the election, that she had decided that she would no longer seek reelection in the year 2004 because she was being regarded as the cause of the divisiveness in the country.

Well, that is the way things stand now in this country. Perhaps its people will be better off by rephrasing and adopting another saying, "Expect me when you see me" as "Expect to happen what is already happening".*