Thursday, November 13, 2008

Hallucinations (GMA)

E·N·Q·U·I·R·Y
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL

Hallucinations
Sunday, 09 28, 2003

Once in a while the soft-spoken Sen. Ed Angara can be sarcastic for a reason, as when he was quoted as saying: “When you talk to God, you are praying; when God talks to you, you are hallucinating.” A good bishop of the CBCP is a bit more gracious. Informed that God has talked to President Arroyo to reconsider her declaration not to seek the presidency in the May 2004 elections, he said: “Buti pa siya.”

Indeed, President Arroyo is lucky that God, sans the intercession of a retired cardinal, has talked her into running for president. But she could be hallucinating, worn-out and weary as she is by the pressures of the presidency.

When she made her “supreme sacrifice” by declaring last Dec. 30 she would no longer be running for president, she said then that she had arrived at the stunning decision under divine guidance, meaning God had talked her into it. Unsurprisingly, not a few believed her then, and the number of skeptics grew by her every utterance. But then it must be true that God’s ways, specially in relation to presidents, are unfathomable to man, because notwithstanding her disavowal of a new quest for the presidency, everything she did henceforth, from giving away certificates of title to dubious settlers to talking a banca jaunt in faraway Sulu, pointed to the contrary: She was reneging on her word.

What followed was a succession of manifestations of poor governance, very much like the plagues that befell Egypt. It was as if God, in keeping with the technology of the times, sent her repeatedly this text message: “B tru 2 ur word nat 2 run, els I wl whip a siris of playgs to kip u in layn.” And verily, the following scourges descended upon the “strong republic.”

Galloping unemployment. There are now 4.35 million jobless Filipinos, a big jump from the 3.81 million unemployed last year. The unemployment record has never exceeded 11.4 percent, and this year’s unemployment rate of 12.7 percent in the highest so far. The increase in unemployment was a direct result of the loss of more than 760,000 jobs in the agriculture sector alone.

Astronomical fiscal deficit. With its P210.7-million budgetary shortfall, this government has recorded the highest fiscal deficit ever. During the administration of non-economist President Estrada, the deficit was pegged at P132 million. What a disgrace to find this country sinking even deeper into a financial quagmire, when it was supposed to have pulled itself up by the bootstraps of a self-acknowledged economist.

Abysmal foreign debt. This government has been the most eager to secure loans, that it now holds the twin record of posting the highest borrowings and paying the highest interest expenses. As Angara explains it, a full one-third of the proposed P864-billion budget for 2004 is allocated to debt service payments, the highest since 1997. That’s a whopping P271 billion out of the national Treasury that is further looted by presidential relatives and hangers-on.

Grinding poverty.
Angara is not hallucinating either when he notes misery is widespread in the countryside, and is expected to get worse, what with the cut in allocation for rural development in the 2004 budget. Remember the famine in Egypt? We are not yet close to that, but the days are not far off when our cries and sighs of misery shall storm the gates of heaven. Do we have to endure seven more years of misery (of biblical proportions) under President Arroyo?

Endemic corruption. This government now has the ignominious distinction of being the third most corrupt in Asia, and 11th worldwide. Corruption, it seems, has become the principal job description of a number of public officials, whether incumbent, separated or recycled, who are close to the President. Today, it has grown into a huge revenue-raising industry, which rewards the looters with impunity, from mind-boggling amounts deposited in fictitious accounts to million-dollar payoffs abroad. Jose Pidal was let loose and is still out there, making no effort to explain the millions that went into his bank accounts. The blinding dust he has stirred in his wake has sullied the image of an already damaged presidency.

All these afflictions should have steeled President Arroyo’s resolve to transform the country into a strong republic, to focus on governance for which the nation applauded her when she made that Dec. 30 declaration. But her actions since then have steadily belied that promise. So now she is finding out that the applause has died down: It has become the ominous silence of one hand clapping. That silence pervades the acceptance rating she is getting, and it speaks out a message: Do not run.

God has a design every time He talks. If God did talk to President Arroyo in December, and she articulated that conversation with her disavowal of the presidency, then that is His design. Sadly, her intransigence has transformed me these days into a man of little faith. That is why – and may God forgive me for this – I could not believe that He will change his mind on Oct. 7, when the President’s party is to choose its standard-bearer, and tell President Arroyo to accept the draft that Speaker De Venecia has cooked up for her.

Just like the Pharaoh of Egypt who would not listen, President Arroyo will continue to wreak havoc on this country, until the gravest calamity will befall us for her intransigence. It took the sword of the angel of death to descend upon the Pharaoh’s youngest son to set free the Israelites of their journey to the promised land. May there never come the day when it is the unruly clamor of discord and the compulsive discipline of the sword, rather than God’s Word, that shall convince Gloria to forsake her quest for the presidency.

Last night I had a dream. I dreamed this plague was on the way, and its harbingers were men in uniform whose numbers were increasingly growing, and they were marching to the strident beat of a restive drummer who was summoning them to a clandestine meeting that led to much wrangling, until one of them set off a bomb whose terrible explosion resulted in reverberations that shook the country, and an evil cloud covered everything that transformed noon to darkness. I woke up in a dry sweat, to the taste of cordite on my tongue, and uttered a silent prayer: May the dream that has poisoned my sleep never turn into a nightmare that shall pollute the rest of our days.

Otherwise, that would be a hallucination too terrible to come true!


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