FORMER President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in a stinging parting shot at President Benigno S. Aquino III from detention at the Veterans Memorial Medical Center in Quezon City, may well have tartly validated the VMMC chief physician’s statement that she has fully recovered from serial cervical spine surgery.

I do not recall reading the GMA turnover speech at Malacanang, if you will, her presidential valedictory, but here’s to make amends for the inadvertence with a postscript to the Gloria-P-Noy bequeathal speech.

Nine pages of it titled “It’s the economy, student,” a play on former US President Bill Clinton’s winning campaign slogan, GMA looked back with “sadness (to) the increasing vacuum of leadership, vision, energy, and execution in managing our economic affairs.”

As taray as it gets like old times, the now Congresswoman Gloria Arroyo of Pampanga, not on leave though in hospital arrest for alleged electoral fraud, is definitely after the proverbial 15 minutes of counter-slam to the President’s intermittent tirades versus the Garci phone pal suspect.

So, here’s from GMA and what could be memorable, possibly even quotable, lines.

“The gains achieved by previous administrations – mine included – are being squandered in an obsessive pursuit if political warfare to blacken the past and conceal the dark corners of the present dispensation.

“Rather than building on our nation’s achievements, this regime has extolled itself as the sole harbinger of all that is good. And the Filipino people are paying for this obsession – in slumping (economic) growth, under-achieving government …

“At the end of the day, it comes down to plain hardwork. A president must work harder than everyone else. And no matter what he thinks he was elected to do – even if that includes running after alleged offenders in the past – he must not neglect the bread and butter issues that preoccupy most of our people most of the time.”

Understandably, Ms. Arroyo, in whose college class the President worked for a degree in economics at the Ateneo de Manila University, would twist the knife, as it were, on the subject. Alright, indeed “it’s the economy, student!”

Yes, undeniably, parallel to the Tuwid na Daan toward graft-free and corruption-proof governance, is the track for “keeping prices down, creating more jobs, providing basic services, securing the peace, pursuing the high economic growth that is the only way to vault the country into the ranks of the developed economies.”

President Aquino’s response was as prompt as it was dismissive, devolved as it was to Communications Secretary Ricky Carandang, also known as Presidential Spokesman Edwin Lacierda’s echo.

Carandang shot down GMA’s economic boast for being “noninclusive … benefiting the top one percent of the economy, which was not fair, adding that if you look at recent history, noninclusive economic growth has become a recipe for social unrest.”

No, Jose, I’m not about to conclude that at the end of the day, what the late US President Lyndon Johnson was absolutely right about economic discourse as nothing but fresh warm piss.