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Wednesday, July 13, 2005
Editorials: Not telling Glo to leave
Could President Arroyo and her allies be getting the wrong signal from sectors not asking for or demanding her resignation?
With the nation torn over the issue of whether the President accused of election fraud must be ousted, misinterpretation can be deceptive and ruinous.
Look again at the statement of the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP).
The bishops did not ask for or demand her resignation, but did they ask her to stay or not to leave?
The bishops said, "We don't demand her resignation. Yet we don't encourage her to simply dismiss such a call from others."
Quick reading of the line is most likely this: If the bishops don't tell her to leave, they must want her to stay.
There lies the probable cause of imprecision -- the thinking that if the bishops don't ask for or demand her resignation, they must want her to keep her seat.
Maybe yes, but no, not necessarily.
The bishops might want her to resign (as it would be the quicker fix, the theory espoused by former president Corazon Aquino). But the bishops might believe that it is not their right to tell her so or it is imprudent to make the call as it might set off street protests, coups, or other violent upheavals.
This isn't nitpicking. For an informed opinion on this crisis, the people must have a clear understanding of what the players and public sectors say and mean.
The bishops' stand is crucial, along with the sentiment of the military, as it definitely can tilt the balance in favor of one protagonist or the other.
The bishops could have been clearer, as other sectors that left it to the President to decide had been clear. Those sectors said the President's leaving would solve the crisis but it was up to her to decide about leaving or staying.
Apparently CBCP was not clear enough, judging from the reaction of the Palace (which not surprisingly gave the bishops' stand the spin favorable to the President), and from a glance at some news headlines (one of which read: "CBCP: GMA, don't leave").
The ambiguity favors the President. But she and her allies must not squeeze a lot more hope out of the bishops' opinion and similar manifestos than what they actually contain.
The manifestos don't ask for or demand her resignation but they may not exactly want her to stay. They may want her to leave, without being told.
(July 13, 2005 issue)
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