Mrs. Arroyo’s 5 Stages
One of the things we learn in school is that there are five stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. These are the same five stages that one undergoes upon learning that death is imminent.
Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is revealing to the Filipino people all these five signs as she faces the absolute certainty that her days in power are fast coming to an end.
A few months ago she was in total denial. She still believed that her hold on power was permanent and that a way would be found to let her stay in Malacanang beyond 2010.
We did not see the second stage but we didn’t have to. It was clear that she was angry at the thought that her term could not be extended. Something had to be done about it.
More recently, she has been bargaining behind our backs, particularly with her allies in the House of Representatives. Find a way to extend my stay and I will take care of you, she must have told them. In reply, the House majority concocted a ridiculous resolution that would allow them to convene as a constituent assembly without the Senate.
These days, she seems to be in a state of depression. How else can we explain these series of unnecessary trips to foreign countries? It’s as if she is trying to cheer herself up by going on junkets at the taxpayer’s expense.
I can only hope that she reaches the final stage of acceptance, sooner rather than later. She must accept that her days in power are numbered, that she is nothing more than a lameduck president, and that she totally wasted her stint as Philippine president.
Mrs. Arroyo has several courses of action. One, and this is the course I hope she takes, is to do everything possible to undo the damage she has done with her tolerance of wholesale graft and corruption perpetrated by her close circle. No need to expound, we all know what I’m talking about.
Her other choice is to prepare for her exit by doing everything possible to cover the tracks of her misdeeds. She is fully aware that the next president will probably come from the opposition, and that next president will at least call for an investigation of the numerous scams perpetrated by the Arroyo administration.
The one wrong choice that she might still make is to find a way to stay in power, such as running for congressman. This course of action is suspect. Yet she is still mulling it. Maybe she should listen to former President Fidel Ramos, who said Mrs. Arroyo should stop her titillations with con-ass, and accept the inevitable.
Her time is up.
JOEY III
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