2001: Another year of living dangerously

A second people power in 15 years, followed months later by the storming of Malacañang. A marauding band of kidnappers staging a second daring strike in little over a year. These were the top stories in this country in 2001, one of the most tumultuous in recent history.

For the second time since 1986, Filipinos, through the sheer power of the people, kicked out a president. The January changeover, what was to be known as EDSA Dos or people power II, influenced other developments through the year in a lingering psy-war between the administration and opposition, which suddenly found themselves exchanging roles.

In May, the Abu Sayyaf struck again, ensuring the terrorist group of several more months in the limelight after a fruitful 2000, both in publicity and reported ransom.

The year had its share of political assassinations, with leftist leader Felimon Lagman and outgoing congressman Rodolfo Aguinaldo among those unable to escape death’s dragnet.

And there were scandals galore too, ranging from the incredulous (Ador Ma-wanay) to cloak-and-dagger improvisation (Rosebud et al.), to telecom scams and other mind-boggling implications of graft and corruption in high places.

There were tragedies too in real time, such as Nida Blanca’s murder, hundreds dead in flashfloods in Camiguin, and scores of born-again Christians perishing by fire in a Quezon City budget hotel.

Not to forget either Nur Misuari’s war and the final ruling on the coco levy, out after more than a decade of discussions and festering debates.

The power suppliers also weighed in when their lines tripped, causing island-wide blackouts as rumors of coups, power grabs and similar unsavory happenings were in hot circulation.

On the other hand, as the countdown to year 2002 drew close to zero, fuel prices continued to plunge, a likely result of the fallout from the Sept. 11 terror attacks in the US, which led to massive military strikes in Afghanistan and the devaluing of world crude per barrel. The year’s top stories, as voted on by STAR editors:

• At noon of Jan. 20, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo took her oath of office as the 14th president of the Republic, in effect ousting the scandal-ridden Joseph Estrada whose 31 months in Malacañang were marked by ill omens and rounds with the "midnight Cabinet." On Erap’s last night at the Palace, The STAR was also busy putting together an extra edition, with the banner, "Why don’t you just shoot me?"

The assumption of Mrs. Arroyo to the presidency was the natural course of things after the aborted impeachment trial of Estrada triggered the massing at EDSA, of equal parts indignation and nostalgia at how the sheer power of numbers could change the head of government.

Foreign observers were unimpressed, saying it was more like Makati mob rule, but the faithful said the critics just didn’t get it, would never know what it was like to be "virgined" a second time.

• As in any legal case, the necessary wranglings would follow such a change of power. On April 3, the Supreme Court ruled, 13-0, that Estrada was indeed no longer president. By leaving Malacañang via a back-door river exit he had effectively given up power, the justices said as they affirmed their March 2 ruling that Mrs. Arroyo’s presidency is legal.

The following day, the Ombudsman lost no time in filing eight cases against Estrada and his alleged partners in crime, one of the cases being plunder which is punishable by death if not the slow burn of infamy.

• The May 1 riots were the offshoot of the five-day counter-revolt at the EDSA Shrine in Mandaluyong City by Estrada loyalists. They were upset by the arrest of their idol on April 25 by an impressive contingent of policemen deployed at his Greenhills residence, an overkill not to be duplicated until the US-led strikes to get Osama bin Laden.

As the loyalists stormed and almost broke down the Palace gates, the President declared a state of rebellion in Metro Manila, and orders for the arrest of suspected instigators Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile, Sen. Gregorio Honasan, Panfilo Lacson and former Ambassador to Washington Ernesto Maceda were sent out. Erap himself was transferred to a jail in Sta. Rosa, Laguna.

• Early in the morning of May 27, the Abu Sayyaf raided the upscale Dos Palmas island resort off Palawan, taking with them 20 hostages, including three Americans.

This would be the beginning of the military’s long drawn-out chase of the bandits through mountain fastness and treacherous jungle trails of Basilan island, specifically the aptly named Sampinit complex, which would entail quite a few beheadings, raids and counter-raids, congressional investigations on suspected ransom payments and the possible collusion between the pursuers and the pursued.

It had gotten so that our own war against terror got overtaken by the Sept. 11 attacks, so much so that Abu Sayyaf leader Khaddafy Janjalani appeared in the blacklist of America’s who’s who of modern terrorism.

• On June 5, or almost a month after the May 11 congressional and local elections, 13 new senators of the republic were proclaimed by the Commission on Elections. It was 8-4-1 for the shakily assembled administration People Power Coalition, which had boldly predicted a 13-0 shutout of the opposition.

• The media’s version of a midyear storm was the exposé in the months of June and July on First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo, who was accused of taking a P50-million bribe for the recall of his wife’s veto of a franchise for telecom firms. His principal accusers Bing Rodrigo and Malou Nuñez later said they had heard of the bribe through text messaging, making the charge a double, even triple hearsay. Subsequent opinion polls would reveal that Mr. Arroyo is the "weakest link" in the present administration.

• The real monsoon storm would occur in August-September when military intelligence chief Col. Victor Corpus charged that Sen. Panfilo Lacson laundered millions of dollars in the United States and Hong Kong.

Corpus’ principal witness Mary "Rosebud" Ong testified that Lacson had links to the drug trade, saying Camp Crame became a trade center for illegal drugs during the early months of the Estrada administration. The testimony also had a touch of melodrama as one of the accused was a former lover of Rosebud.

• In the dead of night of Aug. 18, 74 people, most of them transients who were in town to attend a religious gathering of the Texas-based Don Clowers Ministries, died in a fire that hit the five-story Manor Hotel along Kamias Road in Quezon City. The tragedy had analysts saying that the building was a firetrap and had not passed safety tests, all in hindsight, and stoked memories of the Ozone disco disaster more than five years ago.

• Philippine showbiz lost one of its best loved stars when on Nov. 7 actress Nida Blanca was found dead in her car in a parking lot of a high-rise in Greenhills, San Juan. The complicated whodunit has had as suspects the American husband as well as a manic self-confessed killer-for-hire, who in sheer gumption earlier claimed to have hidden the murder weapon in his apartment. He later retracted while thrashing on the floor before the cameras.

The investigative capabilities of the police, not least the specially formed Task Force Marsha, were placed under severe public scrutiny because of the rather tentative findings.

• Nur Misuari completed his fall from grace with the administration when he led a pocket rebellion in Sulu Nov. 19, a week before the elections in the Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao that would choose his eventual successor, Parouk Hussin. Over a hundred died in that bloody fiasco, accented by hostage-taking and the granting of safe conduct, as well as the mauling to death of a Misuari straggler or two by irate villagers.

Misuari’s fate is still being decided by authorities in Manila in conjunction with Kuala Lumpur and Jakarta, while he languishes in jail in Malaysia where he fled after the failed revolt.

• On Dec. 14, the Supreme Court ruled that the coco levy funds are "public in nature" and thus belong to the government. The decision was reached after 15 years weaving in and out of legal labyrinths, three or four administrations, during which the coconut industry itself neared rock-bottom. Eduardo "Danding" Cojuangco Jr. remained chairman of food and beverage giant San Miguel Corp. even as his company entered into a tie-up with Japanese firm Kirin Brewery Inc.