EASTER is Christendom’s greatest and most important feast. For Easter is Ressurection. It is re-birth. It is renewal. It gives a deeper meaning to Good Friday’s Crucifixion culminating in Easter Sunday’s Resurrection. It is awakening!

In the ritual of Nature, Easter comes in Spring time. And in Nature’s symbolism of life’s cycle, from the harshness of Winter, plants come back to life in the first sunshine of Spring. And animals end their hibernation.

This must be the message of Easter 2008. The President must bring about a resurrection, a re-birth, a renewal from a crisis of corruption to the triumph of transparency. Funds must be used where they are intended to be for the people and the corrupt must be dealt with.

Let us move from the winter of our discontent to the spring time of satisfaction.

And only the President can do this. Let us help her finish her term, save her from the humiliation, from charges, and the curse of history. The rice crisis is a more dangerous crisis than the ZTE-NBN deal and the Spratly issues. This hits the bread basket, the stomach, where it pains most.

* * *

A little brush up on history shows wealthy and powerful nations today had their crises at one period of their struggle. But a leader emerged and turned the country around to become what they are today.

They were the leaders who were honest and strong and their private life was a model for their people to follow.

The U.S. was to be ripped asunder by the quarrels among the states. This led to a Civil War, 1860-65. The leadership of President Abraham Lincoln preserved the Union, making it today’s wealthiest and the greatest world economic, naval, and military power.

The cost was staggering. Of all the wars the U.S. fought, the Civil War had the greatest casualties at 503,636 in a country of 31 million population. In World War II, 1942-45 or 82 years after 407,716 Americans died in a population of 132 million.

In the Civil War 1.5 percent of the population died. In World War II, casualties were only .38 percent. There is always a price to pay.

And the Americans paid.

* * *

Japan had a big crisis when it was under the shogunate or military rule that usurped the power of the Emperor and rural areas were ruled by war lords.

Prince Matsuhito, son of Emperor Komei took over power as Emperor Meiji, ended the last Tokogawa Shogunate and instituted reforms.

Emperor Meiji restored power to the people, abolished the caste system, established schools and restructured education, reformed the civil service, adopted the Western calendar and other doable Western ideas, established conscription and educated the people on the values of honesty and patriotism. Thieves, fingers were cut to be ostracized and shunned.

This was in 1860 when the U.S. went into a Civil War. Emperor Meiji made Japan Asia’s wealthiest nation and a naval and military power too.

Like in the U.S. it was from a crisis that a new nation was born.

I would like to believe that, as a brilliant leader, President Arroyo is aware of those historical vignettes but her fawning minions, afraid to lose their borrowed power, their perks and privileges, might blind her not to see these. Sad indeed!

* * *

I can go on citing endless examples of how a leader turned his country during crisis to what it is today. I am citing contemporary cases.

In South Korea, Park Chung-hee turned his country from a severely war-ravaged nation and under a threat of a neighbor’s attack into an economic giant today.

In Egypt, Anwar Sadat redirected his country from continuous war with Israel to a mutual cooperation that earned for him and Israel’s Menachim Begin a shared Nobel Peace Prize. Today Egypt is booming without the threat of war with Israel.

Indira Gandhi also turned around her vast country of India with reforms. The change was not dramatic but the changes were there.

But the four I mentioned, Lincoln, Park, Sadat, and Gandhi suffered the same fate. After they succeeded in their mission, they were killed by extremists who could not stand progress. President GMA does not have to fear these problems. The military is with her.

While critical of some of her actions, I have been, in general, supportive of President Arroyo. Given the political will, she can do it. And she must do it. Now!

A famous Roman poet Horace had a very good advice to leaders to be decisive. “Seize the day,” he said and in Latin it’s “Carpe diem!”

Carpe diem quam minimum credula postero. It means “Seize the day and put no trust in the morrow.”

Time is running fast. 2010 is just around the corner. Only a strong and decisive action in fighting corruption can do it.

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