President Arroyo's lost (political) adolescence

President Arroyo's lost (political) adolescence

By Amando Doronila

MANILA: The presidency of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is being
hardened in the crucible of a succession of crises and demands
for economic reforms seldom experienced by any other president
since Manuel L. Quezon.

Four months into her presidency, Arroyo has already surmounted
a rebellion of the poor manipulated by counterfeit pro-masa
leaders, a legal challenge to her legitimacy by deposed President
Joseph Estrada and his corps of clueless lawyers, and a setback
in her first reform initiative in pressing a lame-duck Congress
to pass the Omnibus Power Bill.

The failure of the power bill to clear the bicameral
conference committee -- the stage where usually loose ends of
House and Senate versions of the bill are hammered out -- came
amid the more nasty rebellion from the Abu Sayyaf expressed in
the terroristic abduction of 21 hostages from the Dos Palmas
Beach Resort in Palawan.

No Filipino president has been assaulted by a similar wave of
challenges in such a short a time, and these tests will show
whether or not Arroyo has the nerves of steel and the will to
overcome them. The Abu Sayyaf kidnapping sent tourism, at best an
anemic industry, to its knees and has knocked back efforts to
revive the economy that has been bouncing from one crisis to the
next since the 1997 Asian financial meltdown.

So far, the President has taken these blows on the chin. She
has responded to rebellions with tough ripostes. She has
dispersed the rebellion with "maximum tolerance" although some
would say the Armed Forces and the Philippine National Police
should have been tougher and that she should have rounded up
those demagogues who agitated the mobs to storm the Palace in the
midst of the attack.

Instead of succumbing to rebellion and terrorist menaces, she
has not hesitated to use the instruments of state power to crush
them and defend the integrity of the Philippine state. The
Philippine presidency is acknowledged to be one of the worlds
most powerful presidencies, which are constrained in the exercise
of power by their democratic framework. The issue facing
President Arroyo is how much space she has in dealing with these
challenges while staying within the democratic rules. I believe
that she has not pushed the limits of these powers.

President Corazon Aquino was assailed by seven coup attempts,
the last of which in December 1989 nearly toppled her government,
but during her first year after taking power in February 1986,
Aquino presided over a revolutionary government exercising
emergency powers.

President Arroyo has no such weapons in her arsenal. She has
therefore been forced to be pragmatic, conceding to the
inordinate demands of Estrada for extraordinary privileges on his
detention in order to calm restiveness among the benighted poor
he has betrayed.

She realizes that leadership is about compromise, about
reducing exposure to threats from many fronts, and about when to
do battle.

The crises have forced her to make crucial decisions with but
little time for contemplation. To use a metaphor, her crises in
the presidency during the past four months have forced her to
lose her political adolescence and to leap into adulthood.

After her setback on the power bill, Arroyo can still try
again to have it passed during the regular session of the 11th
Congress after ironing out the kinks that appeared in the last
special session, and apply the weight of the presidency for the
passage of the legislation.

Her father, president Diosdado Arroyo, working with a hostile
opposition-controlled Congress, called the legislature seven
times to a special session to push through his land reform act.
If the power bill goes to the 12th Congress, it is likely to be
riddled with new amendments from new members of Congress eager to
have a piece of the cake.

Despite the constraints on the presidency in the system of
checks and balances, the President sits on a reservoir of
tradition and presidential power which she can tap to defend the
state, stabilize her administration and push reform initiatives.
I cite the valedictory of Claro M. Recto, president of the 1935
Constitutional Convention on the powers and mystique of the
presidency. He said:

"During the debate on Executive Power it was the almost
unanimous opinion that we have invested the Executive with rather
extraordinary prerogatives. There is much truth in this
assertion. But it is because we cannot be insensible to the
events that are transpiring around ... we have seen how
dictatorships have served as the last refuge of peoples when
their parliaments fail and they are already powerless to save
themselves from misgovernment and chaos.

"Learning our lessons from this truth and history, and
determined to spare our people the evils of dictatorship and
anarchy, we have thought it prudent to establish an executive
power, which, subject to the fiscalization of the Assembly, and
of public opinion, will not only know how to govern, but will
actually govern with a firm and steady hand, unembarrassed by
vexatious interference by other departments, or by holy alliances
with this and that social group.

Thus, possessed with the necessary gifts of honesty and
competence, this Executive will be able to give his people an
orderly and progressive government, without need of usurping or
abdicating powers, and cunning subterfuge will not avail to
extenuate his failure before the bar of public opinion."

The 1935, the 1973 and the 1987 Constitutions incorporated and
implicitly recognized the latent authoritarian tendencies of
Filipino society. The caudillo, Manuel Quezon, drew inspiration
from these tradition and tendencies. Quezon incarnated the
activist presidency envisaged by the Constitution. In the
exercise of his agenda-setting powers, he was the source of 98
percent of laws enacted by the Commonwealth government.

President Arroyo is fortified by an armory of powers and
strongman tradition of the presidency. She has only scratched the
surface of these powers. In the defense of her administration and
of her capacity to mount reform initiatives, she has weapons. She
should not hesitate to use them.

-- Philippine Daily Inquirer/Asia News Network