SONA is the State of the Nation Address made by the president of the Republic on what gives in the nation today - by reviewing what happened last year. Being an annual report, like those of business corporations, it also foretells of the shape of things to come the next 12 months.

In that sense the SONA delivered by the President yesterday was strictly not a SONA.

It was a detailed economic blueprint for the next three years which could have been read by the Director of the NEDA, since many of the details of the SONA were lifted from the Medium-Term Economic Development Plan. Why did the President take pains to appear gung-ho on nationwide television on a SONA that was "strictly economics, nothing personal" with apologies to Pia Hontiveros of ANC Channel of ABS CBN?

It was a masterful speech in brinksmanship - a political speech (in reality) garbed in economic jargon and statistics. Chairman Emeritus Sergeo Ortiz-Luis of the Philippine Chamber of Commerce (after hearing the SONA) concluded either the President is a master politician or a good economist. Take heed, Serge, President GMA is both.

Her Machiavellian strategy was to appear unfazed over the fact that 65% of the people wanted GMA out of office but will be unable to do so if the three pillars of her allied forces back her in toto, namely, the Congressmen (Lower House), the local governors and the military. The canine devotees in the Military will ensure no coup will decapitate her from power; the mellow kittens in Congress will block any impeachment move and the local governments will be the juggernaut in the People's Initiative for constitutional change through a new Charter.

The Church has enough problems being turn asunder by diametrically opposed views of her individual church leaders on major political controversies like the election fraud and corruption within government power circles as to be a serious threat today. So GMA kept a distant indifference to the Church in her SONA.

Even if the Cha-Cha train gets derailed and is rerouted to Satan's Lair, GMA will rely on local governments that the elections of 2007 (which will inevitably follow with Cha'Cha's gradual demise) - if it indeed will be held as it should - will be an informal referendum on the legitimacy of the Arroyo government. Succinctly, a resounding defeat for GMA's surrogate candidates nationwide could as well be the Big Voice that rejects in no uncertain terms the usurped mandate of GMA of the presidency.

That is why GMA appeared to have used Webster's dictionary to the hilt merely to acknowledge with her thanks these major political allies.

For how long will GMA remain a tenable head of a flawed democracy whose new wings of freedom are tested by the day? Already there are serious doubts that Government can carry out the programs in the Super-Regions to be built along the lines of a decentralized, devolved local governance since this will cost half a stupendous trillion pesos - this one coming from a former Budget Secretary Ben Diokno.

This year, Congress has not even passed yet the 2006 Budget and only P10-billion (maximum) is expected to be poured in directly to the Super-Regions through infrastructures. North Luzon and part of Mindanao are expected to form the Agricultral quadrangles, with Manila as the Industrial Urban Beltway and the Central Visayas as Tourism Hub.

The economic blueprint covers completion dates that are in the period of three years.

How much will these mega infrastructure projects directly benefit the locales with employment (no matter how temporary the relief) and shorten the lag time before these infrastructure benefits filter down directly to the local constituents? Is GMA merely weaving the magic wand over the eyes of the public so that they will accept the SONA without the questioning minds?

The problem is that the main reason for the instability of GMA's regime resting on the resolution of the electoral fraud in 2004 do not seem to have a solution in sight, with the president digging in her heels in an apparent fight to the finish stance. The other problem is that the main deterrent to social equity which is the high 24% annual population growth, La Gloria conveniently ignored in her speech, in yet another of her brilliant circus acrobatic foray so as not to risk the ire of the powerful Catholic Church.

Very dramatically GMA had pointed to charter infirmities in the presidential system that have been the bitter hurdles to full recovery. Yet while she was specific about the geographical nuances of the economic blueprint, she was not as candid as to how she will clean the pigsty stable called the Comelec and ensure a transparent computerization before the May 2007 polls.

Despite that, GMA remains the luckiest though most unpopular president of the republic to date. Despite her no-kidding bad popularity, she does her tour of duty at the time when contemporary history observed worldwide the slow death of mass appeal of rallies, of toppling regimes and orange revolutions. What is in store for GMA then in spite of the SONA?

Let's take some notes from political analyst David Brooks who traced the three stages of transformation of countries coming out from despotic, cruel leaders like the Dictator Ferdinand Marcos. The first stage is liberation, for instance, with the forced exile of the strongman Marcos. In nations where authoritarianism was strongest and civil society most brutalized, chaos followed as in nine coup upheavals and a resignation of a president in Estrada.

The third stage is called conservative restoration. This gives birth to modern-day autocrats who create a society that is not under totalitarianism but is not free. On the one hand the autocrats and their civilian cohorts strive to stifle liberty in order to secure their grip on power. Democractic activists are arrested or killed and media sways to government by favors or veiled coercion.

But the people (more than bread) will yearn for freedom. This creates severe contradictions and pressure within society. Eventually the conservative autocrats are forced to a choice to rule by terror which is untenable in the long run or institute gradual but radical reforms or perish.

The Philippines is probably at this stage. The survival of the government of GMA, a leader with the mind of an economist and a heart of a politician, will be determined how sincerely she makes a fist and forces her reforms - political and economic - into play.

Forge the recent SONA, it was just a praise hymn played in the Cathedral of converts, a program of hope anchored on economic blueprints of medium terms (not immediate) benefits and a spin master's ploy to depict that his Patroness is over the hump who even now can taunt her worst critics to a rematch.