So now it seems like the Bandwagon is finally playing the Philippine National Anthem signaling the END of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s reign and the beginning of another ambiguous chapter in our nation’s melancholic history. The newspapers have been consistently trumpeting the people’s clamor for her ouster or resignation, and the general consensus has been gradually established that she should, indeed, step down because of the general perception, gleaned from that controversial but inconclusive ‘Hello Garci’ tape, that she MUST’VE cheated in the 2004 Presidential Elections!

Erstwhile popular actor Fernando Poe, Jr. was really a shoo-in for the Presidency! We even used to joke that only an Act of God would prevent him from entering The Palace! If his buddy, Axed Pres. Joseph ‘Erap’ Estrada, won the Presidency by a landslide, Ronnie Poe, being more well-known, could’ve rode a Human Tsunami all the way up to Malacanang! Not that it would still matter now, but even the sweet-talking, two-faced patronizes hesitatingly agreed, then, that F.P.J. would be the next Philippine President! Unfortunately, the gods in Mt. Olympus just didn’t want it that way. They tried disqualifying him, using every legal trick in the book. They dug deep into his beginnings hoping to come up with something that would pop his balloon of invincibility but they just couldn’t believe that, aside from his self-confessed extramarital kids, he was clean as a bagpipe! He was so charismatic I would’ve also voted for him had my love of country not gotten the better of me!

Being the strongest, but not necessarily the better, alternative, then, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo got my vote. It was really a matter of who could prevent an enigmatic movie actor, who had no political, economic, and international background from making acting practice out of the Presidency! F.P.J. was, in my opinion, an International Incident just waiting to happen! I made a conscience vote and hoped for the best, since I really thought it would really be hard to beat a living icon, if not a Legend, whose time had come! Of course we had some, more intelligent and better choices, but they were all so pre-occupied with just merely trying to survive the grueling marathon run up to the gates of Malacanang that getting through the sitting President and her well-oiled machinery and, finally, toppling-down the People’s Hero, was like trying to win a high-stakes poker game and bluffing your way through it all, with just 10 DOLLARS on the table!

So now we are told that Gloria won the COUNTING but not the Presidency and she is given 3 OPTIONS: 1) Resign, and accept that she really didn’t win the Presidency fair and square. 2) Face Impeachment and its legal consequences, but through it all, BUY TIME, and hope to be absolved while praying that the drama diffuses the people’s pent-up feelings and makes them accept this absolution. 3) Wait for all hell to brake loose and a Military Junta, led by people you wouldn’t want to bring home to mama, installed somewhere else, superseding the leadership of The Palace. Through all these options we seem to be so hot in replacing P.G.M.A. that we have lost sight of just WHO WE WANT TO REPLACE HER WITH!

Noli De Castro, for all intents and purposes, being P.G.M.A.’s running mate, must’ve also benefited from whatever alleged electoral manipulations that took place! Taking the Vice-President out of the running, who do you think should replace him too? Whatever rules of succession that we may want to be followed, it really is obvious that the people who have been spending millions for these rallies, media blitzes, and the whole destabilizing action, have their OWN separate agenda and chosen people just waiting to execute their orders!

Puppets on strings could be what will be happening to most of us if we don’t wake up quick and try to see where this bandwagon mentality is taking us! Of course P.G.M.A. did something terribly wrong but must we allow these Political Pied Pipers to drown us all in a Sea of Hatred while our ECONOMY agonizes through echoes of dogmatic, self-righteous assertions, creating a lot of Sound and Fury… and nothing else?