Even an irenical judgment of Gloria Arroyo’s vaunted "gloriano-mics" last year, with the remarkable strengthening of the Philippine peso versus the once mighty American dollar, will fail to paint a rosy picture for our country this year.

There will surely be more of the shocking orgy of corruption, blatant criminality in high places, the lies and deceptions, the cheatings and the conspiracies, the betrayal of the public trust, et cetera, which all pockmarked the national landscape after she unlawfully wrested the presidency from Joseph "Erap" Estrada in 2001.

Despite all the frenetic efforts of Gloria’s image-makers year after year after year to present her in a glorious light, she remains to this very day as unpopular as ever in the eyes of the great majority of Filipinos, except for her rabidly loyal kith and kin, political cronies and other followers. Public surveys after public surveys have clearly proved it all. In fact, in late last year’s survey she was rated as the "most corrupt" president of all time!

Indeed, a cursory review of Gloria’s record in the last seven years of her governance will prove beyond cavil the people’s perception that it was dismal, despicable and disastrous, a record of shameless scandals, frauds, and broken promises. She was ridiculed as the "most promising" of all predecessors that occupied the seat of power in Malacañang, the Palace along the stinking Pasig River.

Let’s start from the time when she was still a senator in 1994. Then she promised more jobs and sustained economic growth under the rule of the World trade Organization. What happened? Massive unemployment, loss of jobs of millions of workers, devastation of the agricultural sector up to this very day.

Then, as vice president imbued with fantasies of power, she conspired in the ouster of the constitutionally-elected Estrada in 2001, and promised once more to adopt a pro-poor economic programs and a new brand of politics. What happened? She pursued economic policies that favored not the millions of the underprivileged of society, but only the well-privileged business sector and foreign investors. And she pushed for an electricity law that resulted in the escalation of electric power rates!

Since then, she and her administration merrily went on a borrowing spree, resulting in increased indebtedness far, far more than that of past administrations. Up to a third of the total debts today were incurred under her government, as confirmed by no less than the Bangko Sentral, the central bank of the Philippines.

Then in 2004, after cheating Fernando Poe, Jr. of the presidency, she pursued what she called her "anti-poor policies" by prioritizing debts payments over social and economic services, allocating almost 80 per cent of tax revenues to debt service. And in that same year, she practically emptied the government treasury to insure her fraud-stricken victory in that year’s presidential elections.

That’s Gloria’s "glorianomics"! All the things that should go up, such as corporate profits, real income productivity, the stock market, went down, and all the things that should go up, such as employment, prices of fuel, food, interest rates, went up!

In other words, Gloria’s kind of economics brought nothing but stagnant economic growth, unrelenting inflation and high unemployment, not to mention a bankrupt government. The only saving grace was the rise in the value of the peso against the dollar, not to the credit of her economic policies but to the constant foreign remittances of OFWs.

Every year since 2001 Gloria’s mouthpieces and minions have tried but failed to distract the people away from all her unfulfilled promises, blunders, misdeeds, failures, and charges of rampant corruption by blaming what they called "deterioration of the political system." But the people knew better. They were completely aware of the fact that she and administration have been mangling the Constitution, and will predictably continue to do so this new year, to suit their insidious plan to allow her to remain in power beyond 2010 when her tainted term in office ends.

Alas, most unfortunately this year, we shall all bear witness to more lawless behavior which has become standard official practice in her regime, the twisting of the Constitution and other laws, the continued violations of the people’s civil rights and liberties, and other abuses made in the name of her kind of phony democracy.

Gloria Arroyo has been masquerading as a fake defender of democratic institutions in the last seven years of her morally bankrupt government.

How long will all of us Filipinos stand silent in the face of the grave crimes committed by her corrupt regime and, predictably, will continue to carry out in this Year of the Rat?