Lameduck president?
IT was apparent President Arroyo was deeply conscious of her having become a lame-duck when she delivered her State of the Nation Address (Sona) last Monday. She was hinting about it in many areas of her speech when she tried to project an image of strength and masculine bravado.The President, it seems, would rather be called by any other name than a presidential lame-duck, which she is.
When she said that a president can be as strong as she wants to be, she actually appeared to me to be giving due notice that she is free to do anything without fearing political repercussions, and that everyone with politics in mind should be very careful.
She clarified though that she would not stand in the way of one’s ambition but would not allow political jostling in the House and the Senate that would stymie her plans for national economic stability.
Sen. Manny Villar, the new Senate president who was once among her congressional “friends,” now feels Arroyo does not really want to be counted out of the political picture after her term runs out in 2010. Villar said the President sounded defensive in her Sona.
There is no doubting the fact that, in her Sona, the President projected a different kind of tact compared with her six other addresses. The previous ones, while carrying the same veneer of political visions and promises, did not have the forcefulness and bravado the latest one.
It was not reconciliatory but had instead a kind of assertiveness that seemed to lay aside political compromise that in the past she was prone to accept. That was why she appeared indecisive then.
I think it is still too early for the opposition to consider GMA a lame-duck president. A woman nourished in politics since her childhood and used to political intrigues, maneuvers, and horse-trading should know when to make a stand.
She had been playing politics in the past seven years that I think she now feels a sense of guilt. To the President, 2010 is political freedom.
And if I am correct, it would be bad for anyone in the Senate or the House to underestimate what she said in her Sona. More so if she truly meant what she said: that she would not stand in the way of anyone’s ambition.
But she could be a strong president if she wants to, and if pushed to doing so.
There is a touch of fair warning there. If one takes her vow to place the Philippines in a position of becoming a rich country in 20 years, then one should not be one to monkey with her national vision.
