BAD MEMORY. The P200 bill reminds Filipinos of how installing Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as president via people power was a big mistake.
Heave no sighs of relief.
Although Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo shall cease to be president of the Republic of the Philippines, it will be long before the vile reminders of her administration are filtered out of our derelict government.
The title “President” or “Her Excellency” may no longer precede her name, but Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo remains to be a woman with many titles.
With reverence rivaling that afforded strongman Ferdinand Marcos, future generations shall remember Arroyo as the longest-sitting president since the restoration of democracy, the most disliked president since Marcos and the first president to seek a lower elective post after her extended term.
But notoriety is not enough of a punishment, if is punishment at all, to one as callused as Arroyo.
“I would rather be right than popular,” she once said in a speech before Congress. Indeed, we may not question her willingness to give up her reputation but we wonder if it was sacrificed in an attempt to do right. It would have been easier to believe if she said, “I would rather be rich than popular.”
Despite our passive cursing, she shall snigger in a corner with the wealth she has stolen while victoriously bathing in the blood of the courageous who dared challenge the legitimacy of her administration and the innocent who got in the way.
Arroyo has planned her graceful exit by strategically securing minions to appease possible attacks against her once she leaves Malacañang. With a Supreme Court consisted fully of her appointees and a legislative body hell-bent on bowing before her as the doyen, the first among the equally corrupt and unaccountable, she wishes to evade law when it strikes.
But her hope lies more on the culture of impunity she has nurtured throughout her administration—that perhaps in the same manner that Filipinos were fine by the fact that those responsible for human rights violations are left unpunished, she too shall be spared from justice.
As we say goodbye to Gloria today we also must say goodbye to impunity—to crimes unpunished, questions unanswered and accusations eluded.
For nine long years, we have endured under the rule of a president whose legitimacy was retroactively lost the moment she insincerely apologized for her “lapse in judgment”—a president whose incumbency was marked by crimes committed in the shadows.
Today this nation shall rise from kneeling for nine years, as if in a novena mourning this ailing democracy.
But let us heave no sighs of relief.
“Say goodbye to bondage but say goodbye also to ease,” said Fëanor, the greatest of the Elves in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Silmarillon.
Indeed, holding Arroyo accountable would be a difficult feat. But it is one we must try.
Heave no sighs of relief.
It is painful to take an honest look at the country one loves and realize what has been done to it. Haldir once said, "In all lands love is now mingled with grief." The ache, though, is preferable to apathy, which is a rejection not only of sorrow but also of hope.
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