Gloria was never a leader

FRONTLINEManuel F. Martinez

If you study Gloria's past, you will find that Gloria has never occupied a position that tested her leadership qualities, if any. From the time she was born, grew up, lived as a student, worked as a classroom teacher, became undersec-retary of Trade, then senator and later vice president, the only position that offered her the real opportunity to prove great executive leadership abilities was when she was Department of Social Welfare and Development secretary under President Joseph Estrada.

As secretary of DSWD, she did not show any great leadership vision. She had no proven executive skills that had a great impact for good, or executive achievements that were memorable. A leader impresses or inspires, but she depresses and disgusts.

Her most memorable act as DSWD secretary was to immediately desert President Erap at the very first signs of EDSA Dos, knowing that she had the most to benefit from it.

She never had a good executive record like the proven, visionary leadership of Haydee Yorac in the Commission on Elections. Or of Richard Gordon whose executive leadership as shown in Olongapo, in Subic, in the Tourism department, in rescue missions, was clear, definite, solid and impressive.

I do not think there is anyone in the Senate, indeed in the whole public service today, who has had a proven executive leadership performance like that of Dick Gordon. And yet, many people voted for Gloria as President. They forgot that in terms of executive ability, she was untested — or if tested, was found wanting, mediocre, vestibulous or pipsqueak.

And so after four years of her as President, the masses are in tatters, the citizenry and the Congress are hopelessly in turmoil, and the national scene a compendium of the most dreadful, the most shameful, and the most shameless scandals. I have observed her weak performance as President.

I see that she is not a presidential leader, she is only a glorified public works capataz during Spanish times.

She gives orders here and there and becomes mataray if things don't go her way.

In addition, she is also a classroom teacher disguised as President working hard, arriving on time, giving lectures, staring, ululating canticles and oscillating shibboleths. That's all.

So, it's now understandable why she said that she did not wish to be a great President, only a good President.

From the looks of it now, she has become neither a good President nor a great President, but an accursed President of this accursed land. She does not lead, she merely maneuvers and manipulates.

Wala nang ginagawa kundi magmani-obra at magmanipula. She could not even earn the trust of her people. More than one half of those surveyed have openly said they do not trust her — and she deserves to be distrusted.

She has run the country to the ground — economically, politically, psychologically, morally — and for this it is felt by innumerable disappointed citizens that she has to resign or be legally brought down to her knees in contrition and squalor.

She may well survive for a long time, maybe many months more or two years more.

But it is the Filipino people who are paying for her horrible, disastrous, cataclysmic, catastrophic record — and will continue to suffer the longer she craves and claims and clams and concatenates and clings to power.

Those who benefit from her presidency are aware that she must make a choice between remaining as President, thus exposing the nation for more excruciations, or resigning and thus liberating the nation from the pain and strain of her presence.

They say silently to themselves, "The Filipino people be damned." There is a very big portion of the populace who will never stop their efforts to dispel the dishonor and infamies of her presidency and work to rid our homeland of her shadow.

Resign, Gloria, have mercy on your people, and your people will have mercy on you.