WHO do not want power? Juan de la Cruz? Priests? Politicians?

Juan de la Cruz wants power desperately. He has suffered injustices for so long. He could not even eat three times a day much more send his children to school. With power, his woes would be over.

The hierarchy of power in the Catholic Church, and other religions are very elaborate. Subordinates are directed to observe blind obedience to the superiors. After all, the superiors are held to be the vicars of Christ. Power is wielded so the apostolate may be propagated.

Politicians occupy positions of power. They hold the reigns of the government. With millions of constituents under them, they need the awesome and vast state powers so the common good may be promoted.

Power per se is not wrong. Without it, there can be no control, no peace and order in the world, and even in the universe. Can you imagine what happens to the cosmos if the fallen angel Lucifer were as powerful as God?

The problem sets in when there is disconnect between the ideal and reality. This is particularly of strong significance in case of politicians because they wield the vast resources of the state. Corporations may fall; religious sects may fold up. But their effects are not as pernicious as the failure of politicians.

When politicians fall, and wield power in a manner diametrically opposed to its avowed purpose, the mayhem it will cause to the people multiplies a thousand fold; it is even exponential. The people suffer physically and spiritually. With wrong exercise of power, people get hungry and illiterate, and their freedoms curtailed.

By virtue of the command of politicians over the multitude of citizens, they can easily play god over the plight and fate of so many people. The trouble with this is that the more they exercise power, the more they think that they hold the destinies of people, and the more they delude themselves of being gods.

Politicians who go beyond the threshold of powerful leaders to being demigods do with delusions that they are already indestructible, that no opposition can stop their further ascent to power, and of perpetuating their grip over it. This is a psychological threshold that not only wreaks havoc over the nation but over the person himself.

We have witnessed in history men who have deluded themselves to be demigods that they led with seeming impunity. It is history too that proved that as long as these leaders are still made of flesh and bone, they too have to suffer the penalties of their abuse.

Adolf Hitler. Benito Mussolini. Saddam Hussein. Joseph Stalin. These are international figures that have fallen from the ivory tower of their delusions to the ashes of their destructions.

In the Philippines, Ferdinand Marcos is too recent in our memory. He usurped presidential and legislative powers, and ruled with seeming impunity for more than two decades. He too, like the rest of his breed, had to suffer the humility of defeat and destruction.

Despite the historical lessons, people do not seem to learn, and still insist on threading the path where others have fallen. Is it human nature to learn things when they experience personally the agony of failure? Or is it just like a child that has to burn his finger to learn that something is really hot which much be avoided?

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is a well-read person. She does not hold a graduate degree in economics without a good reading of history.

But despite the historical lessons, she is showing the symptoms of arrogance of power. Maybe her stay in the palace when her father was then president, and her own nine years stay there has pushed her to a psychological threshold when a leader thinks that whatever she does, nothing can stop her nor could she be held accountable for it.

History has shown that when this psychological threshold is reached, the leader is prone to commit stupendous blunders. These are blunders which the people could not anymore take, and therefore, they have no option but to punish the leader.

President Arroyo may have to meditate deep and long whether her charter change moves amount to a psychological threshold of arrogance of power. [email comments to tmpjr70@yahoo.com.ph]