It’s become a fad, of late, to compare and contrast our two female Presidents Cory and Gloria, although it strikes me as more than a little sad that it was only after she died that Cory clearly gained the upper hand in that contest. Lost and politically discarded in the years after her term ended, Cory was often openly dismissed. It was only after her death that we were forced to remember her legacy, and it’s ironic that one of her greatest contributions (after being, y’know, the symbol of EDSA) to Philippine Democracy is the very same reason she was rendered politically impotent: her desire and belief in the peaceful transition of power.
She never pushed to stay in Malacañang past her term; it wasn’t even an issue. Instead, she passed the baton so gracefully that it was probably the only time that an incumbent President’s blessing wasn’t a political kiss of death. But because she gave up power, she was rewarded by being discarded, while those who hungrily sought it still remain (somewhat) relevant.
Go figure.
Someone said to me that it was rather sexist to compare just the two women Presidents, and that it was ultimately unfair to GMA to compare her to someone who just died. Certainly, a GMA-Erap comparison would be a closer race; why set gender as a parameter? But the thing is, at least in my mind, gender was never an issue. I compare Gloria to Cory not because they’re both female, but because the comparison illustrates the two ends of a post-Marcos political spectrum: Cory represents the best in our system, and Gloria, the worst. Where Cory chose to to step down after doing her job, Gloria chose to call Garci. Cory faced a seemingly endless number of coups with real honest-to-gosh bullets flying, but never gave in the the temptation of Martial Law. Gloria, faced with protest marches and scrutiny, issues Executive Order 464 and Proclamation 1017, and has a professor arrested. Where Cory was often portrayed as a simple, humble woman, Gloria dines in style to the tune of a cool $20,000 (or roughly a MILLION PESOS), not to mention her husband Jose Pidal err Mike Arroyo regularly attends Paquiao fights, with courtside seats and rooms at the MGM Grand. At Cory’s funeral, people lined up and walked for hours to pay respects, depsite the bad weather. At Gloria’s? There’s an SMS joke circulating that people will line up to see her casket, but only to make sure that she’s really in it.
On the bright side (for PGMA), there is one area where she has the opportunity to one-up Cory: Agrarian Reform. She recently signed on Friday, August 7 2009, the law extending the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP) began by Cory, extending it until 2014. But while Cory never pressed for true reforms vis-a-vis her family’s ancestral holdings vis-a-vis Hacienda Luisita, Gloria has the opporunity to do so on her own lands. Tribune reports:
Akbayan party-list Rep. Riza Hontiveros said the sincerity of the President would not be measured by the signing but by the immediate distribution of the Arroyo lands in Negros. “We challenge her to order the distribution of the 1,000-hectare properties of the Arroyos in Negros. The program has been resuscitated, it has been reformed, and the government has no excuses anymore,” she stressed.
“That will be the real barometer of her sincerity. She has to distribute the lands of her own family, and pave the way for the redistribution of more than one million hectares of private landholdings,” Hontiveros said.
So do it, Madam President. Don’t pussyfoot. Prove us wrong; show us that there are some things you can do better than Cory. Show us that you can do more for your country than a dead woman.
