Theres The Rub Huge

By Conrado de Quiros
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 05:04:00 11/08/2010

“APPROXIMATELY 100 days into office, it appears that the bubble of expectations around Mr. Aquino is beginning to burst,” says Pacific Strategies and Assessments. “The dynamics are not too dissimilar to the shared doubt being cast on US President Barack Obama because he simply has not lived up to the hype and soaring-oratory expectations of those who voted for him…”
PSA director Pete Troilo cites two specific thorns in P-Noy’s side. One is the bungling of the hostage crisis some months ago, which raises questions about his leadership. Two is the continuing hold on power by a few powerful families and trapos—“the reality remains that Philippine democracy is actually the institutionalization of powerful families who have long controlled the nation’s incestuous political economy”—which raises questions about P-Noy’s ability, or desire, to push for genuine change.
Well, I wrote about it myself a couple of weeks ago, saying what P-Noy should heed are not the batty threats of fringe groups like the “ARMS” but the perfectly serious threats of mainstream groups like the voters, as shown by the elections in the US. Two weeks ago, all the signs were already pointing to a rout of the Democrats as a result of public disaffection over Barack Obama. Sublimely ironically, the one president who won two years ago because the Americans wanted change was losing—or his party would—because the Americans wanted change. I said if P-Noy doesn’t watch out, the same thing could happen to him.
The question however is what exactly could cause such epic public disaffection over P-Noy. Our situation is not the same as America’s. While it is true that the dynamics in public perception of P-Noy are not too dissimilar to the doubt cast on Obama, they are not too similar to it either.
I agree of course that the bungling of the hostage crisis will hurt him. That’s not because it has embarrassed us before the world. I don’t know that “loss of face” particularly bothers us. It’s certainly not a new sensation, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo having caused it routinely for us. Can anything be more face-losing than “Hello Garci?”
It will hurt P-Noy because we have a very macho culture. That was patent in the investigation itself, which pointed out not the folly of the shoot-’em-up approach to hostage-taking, or indeed terrorism in general, but the folly of the lack of it. P-Noy himself was at pains later to demonstrate that he was knowledgeable about firearms and had ordered the police and military to hone up on its SWAT-type, quick-response, capabilities.
Indeed, what will hurt P-Noy is a bigger problem that surfaced with that crisis. That is the presence of two warring factions in his government, the so-called Balay and Samar groups, demonstrated by the Communications Department and the DILG. The Communications Department has since earned for itself the title of “Miscommunications Department,” driven home more recently by the faux pas of Ricky Carandang’s group in Vietnam. The DILG meanwhile remains two departments, Interior and Local Governments. Will it become one with P-Noy announcing he was relocating Jesse Robredo elsewhere? Not if his successor is another member of the Balay—Mar Roxas’—group. You know what happens when someone is pulled by horses going in opposite directions. That used to be a form of torture in ancient Rome.
The bungling of the hostage-taking will be forgotten in time. This is not a country that deeply remembers its hurts. But the bungling of policymaking that the fractious groups in P-Noy’s camp will continue to do will not. There will be constant reminders of it.
I do believe P-Noy should exert himself mightily to loosen the stranglehold of a few powerful families on this country. That is so as a matter of justice, that is so as a matter of being in a position to. He is his country’s second chance. His mother had the chance to make sweeping changes in her time, being the one president who had the people behind her courtesy of Edsa. She did not. By the end of her term, democracy became only, as it was before she restored it, “the institutionalization of powerful families who control the nation’s incestuous politics.” To this day, many of her supporters continue to rue the wasted opportunity.
But I don’t believe his lack of progress, or even failure, in that respect will make an Obama of him. The “social volcano,” which is the graphic depiction of the control of a few powerful families on the economy and politics, has been there since well before Independence. P-Noy’s own father, Ninoy, was talking of the “spectacular divide” between rich and poor back in the 1960s. That divide isn’t going to disappear anytime soon, even with P-Noy’s strenuous efforts.
None of this is to say that the public does not have huge expectations of P-Noy. I’ve been saying it again and again: To whom much is given, much is expected. But “huge” is a relative term and depends as much on where you’re coming from as on what you think your leader can do. What felled Obama in great part was that the Americans wanted out of the recession. That was the change they wanted from him. Americans are not used to recession, we are. We’ve been in recession for most of our lives. Americans are not used to not being well-off, we are. Being well-off is not an expectation for us, it is a surprise. P-Noy curbs corruption, eliminates oppression and lessens poverty, that will be huge. Or put more positively, P-Noy puts food on the table, gives jobs to the jobless and scraps E-Vat in favor of taxing the rich rather than rich and poor alike, that will be huge.
To see what can make an Obama of P-Noy, let’s first look at what made an Obama of Obama. And see if that applies to him.