WHILE SHE ponders how to deal with poverty, Arroyo has to tangle with the Estrada question. The Cabinet is split down the middle on the issue of whether Erap should be placed under house arrest or remain in jail. Those who came from civil society want him to stay in jail to demonstrate due process, justice and equity. The politicians and the military want him back at Polk Street, if only to avoid turning the former president into a martyr of the poor and igniting pity, protest or passion on the scale of the May Day mess on Mendiola. Arroyo herself has made known her preference for house arrest, although the Cabinet's decision was to default on the issue and let the Sandiganbayan decide.

Sociology Professor Randy David says its is bad enough that Estrada's arrest has so driven the poverty question. What is worse is that passions could run loose again once the ousted president faces arraignment. David also rues the fact that the issue of house arrest is being decided not so much as a legal question for the court to assess but as a political issue, "a barometer of public opinion" for or against the two presidents. "The Sandigan, the courts are still at the margins [of the decision-making process] and that's very dangerous."

PulseAsia's Felipe 'Pepe' Miranda says that recent public opinion polls show a five to one ratio in Metro Manila, and a 10 to one ratio across the nation, in favor of house arrest for Estrada. A third of the capital's residents belong to the ABC (higher-income) groups who remain largely opposed to lenient treatment.

"The majority of the public will go from hard to soft on the issue," observes Miranda. "They are saying that Estrada is probably guilty of some things but the guy was really shortchanged" when the Edsa forces ousted him from the presidency even if he won by a record mandate of 11 million votes. Miranda asks: "Who are the people who are likely to be partial to Estrada but those who in their everyday lives are being shortchanged?"

Miranda says the polls show that Metro Manila is a simmering political pot that could boil over if the Estrada saga turns for the worse. Tiglao acknowledges as much. The Erap issue could still be used by government foes to stir up resistance against Arroyo, he says. Almost the entire E class (17 to 20 percent of 11.4 million households) and most of the D class (70 to 75 percent) remain sympathetic to, or identify with, Estrada, the polls show.

Arroyo's dilemma is serious: She can ill-afford to dissociate the problem of poverty from the question of how to deal with her predecessor. The ousted president, who was propelled to power by the poor in open defiance of the choices of the rich, has his name etched all over the poverty question.

"Poverty has been so politicized," says David. "This is not the first time but [this time], it is being harnessed by a brand of political adventurism." The tragedy, he says, is that the poor have resurrected people power without any ideology or vision and have allowed it to be used by opportunists like Estrada and his allies.

"To a certain extent, it is a class struggle," acknowledges David. "It has always been with us but certain institutions have managed to paper it over." For the longest time, he says, the political and business elite "have always managed to work it out, not to fire up the masa on the assumption that when they wake up, they will overtake us." But not anymore.

In the meantime, the week-long protest that culminated at Mendiola has placed Arroyo's original bases of support - the Catholic Church, business and civil society - on the defensive. Church leaders have had to apologize for their omissions against the poor, while some militant groups have had to rethink where they failed in organizing the most needy.

A THIRD pattern emerging in the political mosaic has to do with the just concluded and largely controversial May 14 elections. The poll results were mixed and the elections themselves were another test of Arroyo's political management skills. Both David and Miranda think the president should have campaigned more for the credibility of the elections rather than getting the numbers in Congress. If the elections were credible, her government could boost its legitimacy, they say.

The numerous election contests and the charges of fraud being traded by various parties worry David. "You see it everywhere. People power is the vocabulary of people," he says. "If you cannot have credible elections from Palawan to Caloocan, and you have even the administration crying fraud, this is going to boomerang on the administration."

The tragic result, says David, is this: "Everything is being questioned - the law, the constitution, the Comelec…Everything is up for grabs. The courts, civil society, the media, all are so fragile. The business community is in disarray, on the defensive. The Church is on the defensive."

If Hacienda Luisita was the defining test of leadership for Corazon Aquino, the May 14 elections were the test for Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, says Miranda. "She (Arroyo) needed the elections desperately in terms of the credibility of the process itself but it was so terribly flawed."

In Miranda's view, Aquino failed the test of leadership when she spared her family's Hacienda Luisita from agrarian reform. He says Arroyo isn't getting good marks for May 14 either. The fact is, Miranda argues, people know that Arroyo came to power on the wings of the Catholic Church and big business and that she remains in power because the military and police command continue to prop her. Credible elections would have doused all doubts about her presidency that not even a Supreme Court ruling could settle.

After the elections, the next battle is for the administration to consolidate its support base in the new Congress. The People Power Coalition has a slim majority in the 24-member Senate, but if the government gets broadcaster Noli de Castro and four oppositionists - returning senator Edgardo Angara and incumbents Robert Jaworski, Ramon Revilla and John Osmeña - on its side, then it is assured Arroyo's anointed will be elected Senate president.

As for the House of Representatives, the return of pork-barrel politics, the time-honored consensus-building tool of Arroyo's Lakas-NUCD party, is imminent. Jose de Venecia, the Lakas party whip and chief dispenser of pork barrel funds, has made a comeback as Pangasinan representative. He has made no secret of his desire to be Speaker again, something that could serve Arroyo well if she wants the much delayed 2001 budget, the mangled power privatization bill, and other pet legislation to go swiftly past the Congress wringer.

Tiglao denies that 2004, the year of the next presidential elections, drives Arroyo's work, but concedes it is a major concern. She has assigned the project this early to a committee of her trusted aides, including the one she is said to trust the most, her brother Diosdado 'Buboy' Macapagal Jr.

Until then, however, Arroyo's presidency of a few months must fight off various threats to its survival. To both Miranda and David, the future looks grim. In David's view, "Arroyo is fighting for political survival and right now the only thing going for her is the unity of the military, the professionalism of the officer corps." His concern is how long the uniformed services will stand idly by. "The future is dark," he says curtly, adding that its unwanted offspring could be "a homegrown fascist."

In Miranda's mind, "when you paint the canvas of the next three years, unless we have another people power uprising, the administration must show its greatest political skill in dealing with people exhibiting some volatility…the danger is here in Metro Manila." Unless the lingering shadow of Estrada on the poor is extinguished, he says, Arroyo might always have to resort to strong-arm tactics and call in the military to quell protest. A military junta "is still a possibility," he warns, given that some officers, for ambition or greed or even a twisted sense of patriotism, might see in the impasse or muddling through a chance to repeat Edsa 1 and 2.

In the 1986 and 2000 uprisings, Arroyo's Church backers had served as "the usual collaborators" of military putschists, says Miranda, who maintains that, "you do not build democracy on medieval grounds."