Coup conspiracies and chicken sandwiches

Something weird – something straight out of a movie, which turned out to be a gothic thriller, happened to my family this weekend. All of a sudden, I received text messages and calls from friends and media verifying if indeed my husband, Peping, and my daughter, Mikee, were involved in one big power grab or coup conspiracy. Lately, it has been on the newspapers and national television.

I just couldn’t believe it. To say the least, I was totally flabbergasted. A Time magazine article alleged that my house was used as the meeting place of coup plotters – both from the extreme left and extreme right of the political spectrum – to plan, plot and topple the present Administration.

It further insinuated that in the presence of Peping, evil machinations were concocted and cooked by coup plotters in a grand scale right in my home (I wasn’t home then and when I arrived, I chose the quiet study of my room) to replicate the triumphant entry into Paris of the Allied Forces and melodramatically stage a Cecil B. De Mille production on Friday – or was it on Saturday – during the EDSA anniversary celebration. EDSA? I’ve never been to EDSA since 2001 and that didn’t diminish my intense love of country.

* * *

After reading the Time article, a fertile mind could facetiously envision the following scenario: A humpty dumpty orchestrating the grand play with Morticia Adams to witness a star-studded cast of "power-mad plotters", composed of representatives from cross-sections of Philippine society transforming themselves into a rightist-leftist junta.

I declare that it is a virtual impossibility to put together in one collegial body a junta composed of communists and fascists. Their ideologies have opposite objectives and are so incompatible that after attaining power they will kill each other much faster than the Mensheviks and the Bolsheviks during the Russian revolution of 1917.

While these sinister planning sessions were surreptitiously deliberated at my own home, as the article goes, my daughter, Mikee supposedly busied herself piling chicken sandwiches and tossing macaroni salad to feed the fiendish cabal of coup plotters. What? When I asked Mikee, she said that the sandwiches were tuna and ham and simply China’s left-overs and Dodot fetched her to go home and spent more time on the phone at the garden where he was with my sons-in-law who were busy talking about golf.

The whole story is so ridiculous even with the chicken sandwiches, I could die laughing, being so untrue. Yet unfair that it can also be painfully irritating.

* * *

I hate explaining because it might make us look guilty but I guess I just have to share some sobering, straightforward facts to make known our position: Peping is a Presidential Adviser for Food Security. He is also the president of the Philippine Olympic Committee.

Barely three months ago, as POC chairman and CEO of the Philippine Southeast Asian Organizing Committee for the SEA Games, he steered our national team to victory and international recognition – all these with the full trust of the President of the Philippines, as such betrayal and ungratefulness and dragging people into frays are certainly not Peping’s traits.

I am an appointed DILG Undersecretary and concurrently the president of the Philippine Public Safety College. Like Peping, I should be loyal to my commander-in-chief. If I didn’t, I shouldn’t stay a second longer. My family and those who work with me know the time and energy I render to my sworn duty as educator and trainer of thousands of police, jail and fire personnel. I am likewise grateful to the President for giving me this golden opportunity to serve our uniformed men and women. Her recognition of a woman to head a male-dominated government school with only a sprinkling of women is laudable.

Aware of this fact, do you think that my family would be so indecent, calloused and insensitive that they would be fomenting dissent – much more plotting a coup against her? History has recorded that I, together with my family, and thousands of Filipinos, helped in catapulting her to office in 2001.

True, Peping’s sister has called for her resignation. But President Cory is not Peping. They may be siblings but their politics may be different.

* * *

On February 26, Sunday, incidentally also Mikee’s birthday, while munching our favorite popcorn, a favorite snack in the Cojuangco home, amid the news circulating like wildfire on Peping’s alleged involvement in a coup conspiracy, we were looking at each other asking ourselves, "What could have happened that these stories should come about…what went wrong kaya? "We have never been punished like this by people entering our home, uninvited or otherwise.

* * *

Many people don’t know my husband. He is a friend of everybody as people from all walks of life visit him. All political colors would see him, talk to him, and consult him on just about everything – especially politics. He could be a foe and an able strategist but he’s also astute and cautious. He may be reserved, distant and cold but he’s the type that would not deny anyone access to him.

That has always been the household environment that all my children have grown accustomed to, kindness and serving visitors since they were very small. "Welcome everyone!" Visitors from all persuasions come and go with my husband at the head of the table. "May popcorn pa ba? Castañas and ice cream, anyone?" That was my main task when the kids were still toddlers, which was to make sure that all these were available. Now, it would be their turn to be hospitable to the visitors of their father. It has evolved into a household norm.

* * *

As we continued contemplating and analyzing the events of the past days, while he munched on his popcorn (again), he admitted that he allowed entry to the writer who was a present the night he put forward a novel plan to include athletes in the grand 20th anniversary of EDSA event and the Gawad Kalinga housing program. Yes, EDSA is special to him and many among us for obvious reasons. As disappointing as this may be to many of Peping’s critics or enemies, he did not participate in the preparation of a coup. But for the sake of argument, granted that he did, do you think he would be so extremely cavalier or downright stupid to plan a coup in front of a journalist?

After conducting my own little interrogation, I realized that all this made for an exciting story – but we were actually deprived of so many details – left out by the writer – who was there less than one-fourth of the time. These details would have provided the whole truth, but the whole truth would never have been exciting enough to print, would it? Time magazine?

* * *

Shucks. Peping knew I felt bad about his having been used again and my daughter, who just dropped by the house, and was kind enough to serve the food, ended up tainted as someone who dabbled in coups! So Peping called Secretary Ronnie Puno and wrote him a letter to explain what really happened. And that was good because at that point, I wanted to know, too.

We stopped cracking our heads and pulling hairs trying to figure out the motives, reasons that resulted in articles, TV and radio commentaries. Was it greed and aggrandizement at others’ expense or to taste a bit of popcorn and kropek? After months of peace, this had to happen. Anyway, "Is there anything tastier than this popcorn’s brand?" Peping asks. "What time is the Gawad Kalinga affair?" "May sandwich pa ni China kagabi? Yung chicken… chicken ba yon?" "No Dad. Ham and cheese." We laughed.

An unprecedented call was made to Nellie Sindayen, the woman he well knew was a journalist and welcomed to the dining table. She promised to correct "something"… whatever that means we’re waiting… What an episode!