GMA – veteran power grabber

With congressional allies like ex-President and incumbent Pampanga representative Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, President Rodrigo Duterte does not need the political opposition.

The past several days saw intense preparations for President Duterte’s annual State of the Nation Address (SoNA) at the Batasang Pambansa in Quezon City. To call the event an important occasion is an understatement. The SoNA is the rare occasion when all top officials of the government — from the president and vice president and the members of the cabinet, to the politicians of both houses of Congress, and to the justices of the Supreme Court — are present under one roof. It is the assembly where the president informs the Filipino people about what happened to the country the past year, and what he expects to happen to the country under his watch in the predictable future.

On SoNA Day, the president alone is supposed to be the focus of attention by everyone — the president’s allies, the political opposition, the media, the radicals, and the rest of the Filipino people.

The SoNA yesterday almost proved to be an exception.

While the SoNA was announced to begin at precisely 4 o’clock in the afternoon, it had to be delayed even if President Duterte had already arrived at the Batasan complex. After an hour of anticipation, the president delivered his SoNA.

Unlike on past occasions when President Duterte punctuated his prepared speech with side remarks and commentaries which almost everybody looked forward to hearing, yesterday’s speech was rather brief and lacked the usual Duterte flavor.

The reason for the unexpected change from the usual was politics, or more specifically, the political power grab orchestrated by Representative Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. Prior to the SONA, Arroyo and her allies had engineered the ouster of Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez and his replacement by Arroyo. In what appears to be an irregular, separate assembly of the House, Arroyo and her allies used the force of their numbers and installed Arroyo as house speaker.

Arroyo is said to have taken her oath after getting installed.

Apparently, that power grab did not sit well with President Duterte, who was received at the Batasan complex earlier by Alvarez. In a close-door meeting, Duterte said that he will deliver the SoNA only with Alvarez by his side at the podium, and that if it were otherwise, he will walk out of the SoNA.

The president was particularly upset that the SoNA was going to be mired in a side controversy, and its importance reduced by a political power grab by another supposed ally of the president.

At first, the Arroyo camp refused to budge. It was only when the president’s blue guards began pulling out of the Batasan that the Arroyo power grabbers realized that the president was serious about walking out. Withal, the Arroyo camp yielded, and President Duterte delivered his SoNA with Alvarez and Senate President Vicente Sotto III beside him at the podium.

Right after the SoNA and with the president having left the Batasan, the Arroyo camp re-assembled and 184 representatives installed Arroyo anew as the new house speaker, vice Alvarez. Arroyo took her oath a second time around, to the delight of her allies.

Observers doubt the validity of the Arroyo proceedings because the official house mace was not present in the plenary session. Sources disclosed that the Arroyo camp used an old mace for the activity.

As this column goes to the press, the public can only speculate on how President Duterte will react to this development.

Hours after the Arroyo power grab, political analysts were recalling Arroyo’s reputation for seizing power, and for feigning illness.

In 2002, then Vice President Arroyo took the oath of office as Acting President before the then equally controversial Supreme Court Chief Justice Hilario Davide, Jr. The lame excuse given by Davide was that the incumbent President, Joseph Estrada, had “constructively resigned” the presidency by leaving the palace, albeit under temporary circumstances.

Even the basis of the so-called “constructive resignation” of President Estrada was unfounded. The Supreme Court based its ruling on hearsay evidence — excerpts taken from the purported diary of then Executive Secretary Edgardo Angara.

Anyway, Acting President Arroyo eventually came to be president, to the prejudice of Estrada.

In 2004, Arroyo ran for re-election and allegedly won against box office king Fernando Poe, Jr. Her victory is seriously doubted by many after it was revealed, and after Arroyo herself admitted on national television, that she got in touch with a commissioner of the Commission on Elections with a view towards securing her electoral victory.

That incident is now known as the infamous “Hello Garci” scandal.

People will readily recall that when Arroyo apologized to the nation on live television for the “Hello Garci” scandal, she displayed absolutely no remorse or contrition.

The scandal prompted Poe’s widow, film actress Susan Roces, to accuse Arroyo of stealing the presidency not once but twice.

Numerous allegations of scandals haunted Arroyo after she stepped down from office in 2010. Plunder cases were filed against her and her minions. At any rate, Arroyo got herself elected representative of Pampanga, apparently on the mistaken assumption that she will be immune from all forms of arrest while she is a member of Congress.

For humanitarian considerations, Arroyo was detained under hospital arrest in view of an alleged neck injury which she accentuated by wearing a neck brace in public. She claimed she was so ill that she needed to be treated abroad. That request was denied by then President Benigno Aquino III.

When the Supreme Court eventually ordered Arroyo’s release, Arroyo’s neck brace was suddenly gone from public sight, and the infirm ex-president was able to perform her duties as a member of Congress.

Arroyo’s medical recovery was so miraculous that she was able to seize power as house speaker yesterday. Her new post is her third power grab, and is nothing new to a veteran power grabber.

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