Political capital

I do believe in miracles. I just wonder whether the "Lord" that placed her atop her throne would grant her the "miracle" she publicly prays for, after she has squandered the singular opportunity that the Lord of history has given her, which is to lead the nation even if she was not given that precise mandate by her people.

For she has squandered her political capital on the shoals of a regime she has led through lying, cheating and stealing.

Survey after survey has demonstrated this loss of political capital with appalling regularity. She was up there when she consolidated her power after taking over Malacañang in 2001. That political capital was gradually eroded by scandal after scandal of larceny so frequent coming from the stinking palace beside the stinking river. Such that she was forced into publicly disavowing election in 2004, in a pious declaration that made her then PSG chief, Hermogenes Esperon, cry. Nine months later, in a fiery speech delivered before her loyal cabalen in Pampanga, she broke that promise. She lied.

And then the biggest crime: In 2004, she stole the people’s mandate by conspiring with her appointed commissioner and likely her appointed Comelec chair, to cheat the people of the mandate they reposed not in her, but in a man who soon would die bearing the heartaches of treachery so vile to the grave. The public was skeptical about her "victory" but because her protagonist was not confrontational, they decided to grudgingly accept her, as shown by marginally better numbers in the surveys that followed the elections. But in the middle of 2005, the awful truth about chicanery so gross came out when the public heard her unmistakable voice in "lewd" conversations with her commissioner for election cheating. From that time on, she never recovered her leadership credibility.

From that time on, she lost her political capital. But she did not mind that. She had power over the nation’s purse, and she used it with a ruthlessness and single-minded purpose that would put even a Marcos to shame. She used that purse to buy congressmen to defeat an impeachment complaint that would have withered an ordinary person, as it did a Richard Nixon thirty years before. She got Congress after all to replenish that purse, and more, through E-VAT. She was to use that replenished purse all the more in the years to come.

Legislators like Mar Roxas and Manny Villar, who helped push her E-VAT before Congress, in the words of the latter, "to save the state" from financial collapse, would soon realize how she would use financial wherewithal to shore up her lost political capital. In the run-up to Hello Garci, where her election chairperson shamelessly and feloniously collected upon her political debt in 2004 by parlaying a broadband deal that was excessively greedy, the ZTE-NBN scandal, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo once more used, and continues to use, the financial wherewithal that Congress provided her in order to fortify her political survival despite lost political capital.

She unflinchingly uses that wherewithal to "buy" the votes of congressmen, "buy" the support of governors and mayors. "buy" the loyalty of her generals, "buy" the silence and now grudging praises of her media, and worst of all, "buy" the sanctimony of the bishops.

Now that lost political capital, aside from standing up to scandals of corruption, will have to come face to face with the politica del estomago, the politics of the stomach. But that is a topic we would rather discuss in the next article. The question is, how would lost political capital, or credibility so nil, stand up to the tempest ahead?

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For now, let us try to rewind to the good times. Ah, the good old days, when politics was not as "evil," when prices were yet affordable, when people did not have to queue at every government office and every embassy possible to leave the country.
If you were already around in the ’60s and the ’70s, you must be consumed by a wistful desire to revisit the era.

A tankful of gas at P20. No traffic jams. Lunch for P3. A movie for little more than a peso. Soft drinks at 15 centavos per bottle. A jeepney ride for the same amount. And no VAT, not even in its expanded form.

Okay guys, for one enchanting night, you could be transported back to that era.

Hotdog Productions, in cooperation with Harvest Aid Organization Foundation will present YEBA Combo Festival – a grand reunion of the superstar combos that dominated the local music scene during those magical years.
To be staged on May 2 at the NBC Tent in Fort Bonifacio, YEBA will feature the Electromaniacs, Moonstrucks, Dynasouls, Deltas, Cobras and Sundowners. The combos (as bands were called during that period) will perform the music of icons like The Ventures, The Beatles, Herman’s Hermits, The Temptations, Peter & Gordon, and The Dave Clark 5, among others.

Of course, no trip down memory lane will be complete without the presence of Steve O’Neal, the show’s host and designated "historian."

I will not spoil his anonymity by telling you that he and I went to the same school, when his name was something else.

You don’t need a time machine (or lots of cash like Leo San Miguel and Ben Abalos, and somebody else) to be part of this unforgettable event. Reserve your seat now to YEBA Combo Festival by calling 8170828 or 8151924. It’s the feel-good concert of the year!