WITHOUT A DOUBT, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is afraid of a new "People Power" that would yank her out of the corridors of power and restore true democracy in this country, once more!

This is the real reason she warned against such an uprising by Filipinos, similar to the first one that threw out the dictatorship through non-violent means and replaced it with a constitutional government.

"The world," Arroyo intoned arrogantly, "will not forgive an EDSA 3 (referring to that first one and the second that, alas, mistakenly installed her in power for eight lawless years now!), but will condemn the Philippines as a country whose political system is hopelessly unstable."

She’s wrong, absolutely wrong. On the contrary, the democratic world will unhesitatingly applaud when and if the Filipino people clearly demonstrate that they want to restore an honest-to-goodness democracy back in this country.

That is to say, just like the first one, through non-violent civic resistance that was the pivotal force that backed those idealistic officers and soldiers who started the revolt to put an end to the oppressive ruler’s regime in the mid-80s.

Concerned Filipinos did it then, and they can do it once more, this time even without the support of a military establishment that has been corrupted by an illegitimate presidency since 2001 to this day.

Yes, they can. They can do it through united civic groups, like the "moral renewal force" now in the making by no less than the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court Reynato Puno, which along with other groups should build a movement that instigates non-violent strikes, boycotts, mass protests, and civic disobedience.

It is most urgent, even at this late hour with the presidential elections looming ahead, that such a movement, composed of civic groups united by the noble goal of restoring the democracy that has been mangled by eight years of lawless rule, be launched before the powers-that-be can succeed in their scheme to overhaul the Constitution and perpetuate Gloria Arroyo in power well beyond 2010.

Through such a united movement the majority of Filipinos would be able to express their desire to regain all their rights denied them for over eight long years, particularly to fight for their right to choose the leader they want, not a fake one that they abhor, and to do it all through non-violent action.

Non-violent action, as one civil rights activist once said, is "fighting back, but fighting back with other weapons" in dislodging a seemingly unmovable oppressive ruler. What he meant was the use of civic resistance as "a force for change" to pick a leader who will govern with the consent of all the people.

To achieve such a noble goal through a non-violent struggle, the various concerned civic groups or organizations need an engine of strategy called Unity. The movement for change cannot succeed if there’s only one, like Puno’s "moral renewal force." It must encompass a wide spectrum of political groups and social communities, and other sectors in academe, labor, farmers and fishers, and the unfettered media, and operate with a consensus about their goals and methods.

This evolving movement is what Gloria and her political minions, frenetic image makers and mealy-mouthpieces are really afraid of – a united civic movement that can genuinely represent the aspirations of the Filipino people.

And so, if I may say it again, it’s only through a united civic action that we can end up with a lasting democracy!

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Democracy and People Power … We have been talking and writing here about these subjects time and time again in this column. I used to tell my students in political science at the University of Santo Tomas, the word "Democracy" is from the Greek for "rule of the people." That means that citizens, like here in the Philippines and in other democratic countries of the world, have the right to choose the kind of leader they want to govern them and live in a society where freedom and justice prevail.

Filipinos used to be proud that our country was a democratic oasis in Asia where authoritarianism/ dictatorial regimes prevailed, until that time when we were ruled with an iron hand by a man who started as a democratically-elected leader but was transformed into a so-called "constitutional dictator." Eventually, the people woke up and toppled the dictatorship through "people power."

Actually, that term did not originate in the Philippines. It used to be known as the affirmation by citizens of their sacred right to self-determination and right to choose the leader they want through a constitutionally-mandated electoral process.

Long, long before 1986, the so-called EDSA People that installed as the wife of the martyred Ninoy Aquino as a democratic leader in place of the dictator Marcos, no less than Abraham Lincoln, the greatest of all American presidents, said that "any people anywhere, being inclined and having the power, have the right to rise up, and shake off the existing government, and form a new one that suits them better…"

On that day he spoke those words in Washington, D.C., the streets of Italy were jammed with people crying out their desire for a constitutional government in lieu of a repressive king. Soon, the people power-like movement erupted in France, in Germany, and in other European countries. But, sadly, the surge toward democracy there failed in less than three years as the old regimes retook control.

We Filipinos are headed to suffer the same fate. Unless we once more assert our sacred right to liberate ourselves from eight years of misrule by the illegitimate squatter in Malacañang.

So, if we just idly stand by, helplessly watching and do nothing to stop Gloria and her fawning political cohorts from remaining in power, then we shall all be witnesses to the death of democracy in the Philippines!

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Painting is Poetry, Poetry is Painting… This thought flashed through my mind while viewing the paintings of Marivic Rufino and reading the poems of Rio Alma at the Upper Lobby of the Manila Peninsula in Makati City last Monday evening.

The occasion was the rare joint opening of the 15th art exhibit of the beauteous painter’s "Dreamscapes" and launching of "Romanza," a book of selected short poems in Tagalog by Virgilio Almario, National Artist in Literature, also known as "Rio Alma."

One, indeed, couldn’t help but catch glimpses of the blending of poetry and painting while looking at the splendidly executed multicolored artworks and leafing through pages of the book of selected short poems. One poem after another is paired by one painting after another in its pages.

Take, for example, one page that contains a poem paired with a painting on the opposite page. Both carry the same subject matter, as in Rio Alma’s "Sa Dalampasigan" and Marivic Rufino’s "La Mer."

That poem, consisting of only four lines, reads: "Umiinog ang dagat/ Sa tagpuan ng oras/ Sinag, bagwis at layag/ Binura mo pagkurap." (The sea turns/ At the meeting of the hours/ Sun, wind and sail,/ You erase all in a blink." It’s printed on one page, while on the opposite page is the painting depicting the seashore awash with foamy waves.

The pairing of the poem and the painting is, as art critic Ruben Defeo so aptly put it, "a perfect match in that they cohere in dramatizing the mystery of the sea."

All you have to do, really, is leaf through all the pages of the little book and you’ll most surely feel the dynamic relation between the poems and the paintings.

Indeed, as I said, poetry is painting and poetry is painting.