I WAS still in school when citizen Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo joined politics as a senator. She ranked 13th in her first election and, under the Constitution, failing to make it in the first twelve, she’d have a three-year term. Determined to stay, she tried another shot at the Senate in 1995. That time, she used a photograph that made her look like Nora Aunor in her campaign posters.
I remember that one radio interview where she gloated over her Nora-look, “Eh, nagustuhan naman ng mga tao.” True, indeed, at that time, Noranians were probably an unbeatable fleet of 16 million all over the country. That was how much votes Arroyo hauled, making her top the senatorial race.
The glamour pose for a campaign poster was a fresh idea then—in the pre-Photoshop age of Philippine politics. You could tell how traditional politics was with the graininess of posters. You couldn’t even call them “pixels,” they were merely distortions on the theme of reality.
Around this time, someone else was trying to sneak his way into the public sphere. It was Manny Villar, in a binge of media ad placements for his real estate business. The ads, curiously, had to have side stories featuring the spectacular tale of his life. Little did people know then that it was just the beginning of a long and winding road that could lead him to the grand door along the Pasig River. Although, if you believe in surveys, he could have the river as a truer destiny. But let’s go back to Arroyo.
After two terms in the Senate, she gunned for the presidency. Believing she still had that Noranian aura in her, she thought, why not make another superstar pose as a ticket to Malacañang. Thinking there was no way to edge out Edgardo Angara, she along with an army of disgruntled hagibis bolted the Laban party.
A Free Press interview in 1997 asked her, “Given that you have a showbiz appeal, we can say that, unlike the presidential aspirants, you don’t find Vice-President Joseph Estrada much of a challenge?” Of, course, says Arroyo, he is a challenge, but said she believed in the intelligence of the electorate, “Otherwise, they wouldn’t find an economist as likable or even more likable than a movie star.” That was our president thirteen years ago as she poised herself quite doggedly for the presidency.
In that same interview, Free Press asked, “You mentioned four blocs that will more or less determine the president in 1998. The church, the media, the business sector and the pro-Ramos group. What exactly is that last group? Excluding President Ramos’s party and political allies, who or what group do you have in mind? Mrs. Aquino, for instance?”
To that Arroyo, replied, “She would be one. I also refer to the organizations made up of governors, mayors, village officials. The political parties are the overt players. The others are…”
Funny you could have guessed “covert players,” but the Free Press interview supplied a friendlier phrase, “Behind the scenes?”
She continues, “I look at the next administration as part of a continuum that started with President Aquino, who restored democracy and instituted political reforms, and started some economic reforms as well. President Ramos sustained her political reforms and also brought about critical economic reforms, which made us Asia’s new tiger economy. The next administration should sustain the political reforms that would (shall we say), spread the development that we have already achieved…Spreading the benefits of economic development is an end in itself.”
To cut the story short, she wasn’t able to run for president the following year, but she became the first woman vice-president. It was then president Fidel Ramos who talked her out of her presidential ambition and fielded instead Jose de Venecia Jr. But Estrada became president.
What survey organizations do you usually rely on, the Free Press asked. Arroyo replied, “The Social Weather Station. Asian Research Organizations. Newspapers. A group called the International Research Organization.”
This was 1997, in the age of innocence.
(januarinbox@yahoo.com)
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