IN these trying times, politically speaking, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is acting less than presidential, which is very unfortunate, let alone uncalled for. She has correctly ignored incessant calls for her resignation; leaving her fate, instead, to the constitutional process of removal from elective office.

Why then is she pushing the panic button?
First, there was the disastrous makeover bid to transform her steely persona into Miss Congeniality, which she is not, nor should she be.

Now, she is kissing up with former friends like ex-President Cory Aquino, et al, who have demanded that she step aside on unsubstantiated allegations she cheated in the last presidential election.

Electoral fraud is nothing new in the Philippines. What is new and startling is that President Arroyo admitted that it was she who was talking to an election official about protecting her lead in the presidential poll.

She compounded her predicament by apologizing to the Filipino people for her “lapse in judgement.” The unwarranted and impromptu apology was in itself a monumental slip of the tongue.

Since then, she has been running scared stiff. She is cozying up to the military and the Catholic Church, which helped pull off two “people power” uprisings against two elected presidents.

And, to cover all bases, she made a beeline to the birthday party of the charismatic El Shaddai leader Mike Velarde, a bosom buddy of detained President Joseph Estrada and who supported her chief presidential rival, the late actor Fernando Poe Jr.

Politics, truly, make strange bedfellows. But President Arroyo does not need to curry favors from anyone. After all, she is a one-term president who should do as she pleases with only one goal in mind: to provide a better future for all Filipinos. That is her covenant.