The gripes of wrath

President Erap is in a defiant mood these days -- which scares the heck out of his subordinates. You can see them sheepishly avoiding comment nowadays, lest they go the way of the unfortunately loquacious Prod Laquian.

The Bossman is obviously pissed off at the intellectuals, the snobs who "didn't vote for him" and he believes are trying to pull him down, the upper, and upper-middle classes, and those whom he perceives to be taking potshots at him.

Even Vice President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who made some remarks about the PCSO brouhaha and the BW Resources and stock market scandal, almost got bumped off the Jeep ni Erap, but she smartly made almost abrupt amends by delivering a pro-Estrada speech at the Greenhills Walking Corporation weekly forum before scooting off for the airport for a trip to China, Hong Kong, Israel -- and possibly San Francisco, California.

When the excitement broke out about the President's testy remarks while being interviewed by mini-skirted Lisa Barron of the Cable News Network (CNN) in which the Chief Executive remarked that if La Gloria wished to begin politicking she could quit the Cabinet, the Vice-President -- already in Beijing -- wisely declined to say anything. She didn't even say "no comment" as she flew off to Shanghai yesterday morning. She just -- went.

As for the President, he also backpedaled from his initially angry stance on the subject of GMA, telling this writer that she was "okay", and was never in danger of being kicked off the team. What he meant, he explained, was that if she wanted to begin campaigning she was welcome to resign since her Social Welfare task was essential to the people and ought to be a fulltime assignment, et cetera. However, as long as she does her job, he smiled, of course she was "all right."

Despite this softening of Erap's public stance, may I interject that the "Veep" had a narrow escape. Every time there's any hint of criticism of the First Lady and his family these days, Estrada starts to bristle, smoke begins coming out of his ears, and his moustache is aquiver with indignation. For instance, don't mention that hated name "Yasay" to him -- he launches into an immediate diatribe, although he no longer expresses the curse that he hurled in an impulsively furious "call in" to the Mare and Pare night talk-show on GMA-7 late Wednesday night, that he wishes "a lightning bolt" would strike Jun Yasay. (That wasn't presidential at all, but as our columnist Nelson Navarro remarked the other day, what can Erap do but be Erap?)

When he spoke in the Malacañang ceremonial hall at the signing of the contract between the Philippine Long Distance Telephone Company (PLDT) and Nihon Telephone and Telegraph (NTT) of Japan, the President pointedly declared that he "had been elected by a massive vote of the masses" and that he was pursuing his duty of helping the poor. The message was that it was only the masa who cared for him, and not those nasty uppity types.

And at the small dinner which followed in another Palace function room, the waiters only poured "red wine." Blue has been banished, quite obviously, from the Palace precincts.

We can understand the President's sulk, but Chief Executives leading a nation of 75 million don't have the luxury of sulking. Sir Erap will have to remember that the poor cannot be helped without enlisting the goodwill and cooperation of the middle class and yes, the rich -- even the Makati Business Club. Only a nation working in unison, with all putting their shoulders to the collective wheel, can progress. I'm not even worried about that constantly harped-on "foreign investment" not flocking to our shores. If we can only get our act together, and put our native capital along with our talents and energy to work, we'll not just overcome our problems but surprise the world -- and even surprise ourselves.

In the meantime, I suggest that the President regain his cool. There will always be critics, enemies, and opportunists eager to discomfit him or try to take advantage of him. The President was perfectly right in firing Laquian, who spoke out of turn, but the manner in which he ranted and raved when he sacked Laquian seems to have terrified everybody else in Malacañang and in his Cabinet family. Everybody appears to be tip-toeing around.

People who are scared out of their wits at the possibility that they might say the wrong thing or take a wrong turn can never be efficient or effective at their jobs. Timidity will rob them of initiative and imagination, and those are what we need in these challenging and sometimes dispiriting times.

As for poor Prod, alas, he got what he deserved. When you're in the inner circle, you're not entitled to kiss and tell. What he did wasn't just disloyalty, but stupidity. I hesitate to say anything else, since, after all, Mr. Laquian apologized and has gone home to Canada. What puzzled me was, after being booted out, he still felt the need to virtually grovel, not merely eating his words and muttering apologies. Oh, well. Who are any of us to throw stones? In times of crisis, remorse, or despair, who knows how anybody dazed by the shock of events will act?

Our envoy to Washington, Ambassador Ernie Maceda is poised to resign his post after only several months in the United States. I was told he plans to make another run for the Senate, but I guess he'll make his own announcement tonight at the party he's throwing in the EDSA Plaza Shangri-La hotel.

Ernie's coming departure from the Foreign Service was disclosed by no less than the President himself, and confirmed by Foreign Affairs Secretary Domingo "Jun" Siazon. In fact, the President was already wondering whether he should move Ambassador Philip Mabilangan over to Washington, DC. What I heard, however, is that Mabilangan is doing such an effective job in the United Nations in New York that Siazon doesn't want to move him. (This, naturally, gives rise to the speculation that Secretary Siazon plans to run for Secretary-General of the UN when the time comes).

It's true, as the rumor-mills go, that Presidential Spokesperson Jerry Barican wants to get appointed Ambassador to the UN, but he doesn't have the chance of a snowflake in hell of getting that plum assignment. Barican ought to beware of expressing a desire to be gifted with a diplomatic post. Why? Because Erap and Siazon are shopping around for somebody to be sent to East Timor as our diplomatic representative, later Ambassador. And there's the prospect of the Philippines opening diplomatic relations with North Korea. An ambassador dispatched to Pyongyang faces the prospect of starvation (there's a chronic famine) and of getting his butt frozen off in those super-cold North Korean winters.

Choosing somebody with enough clout and gravitas to send to Washington, DC is something which must be addressed with some urgency since the state visit of President Estrada is "on" again, and the target dates set are July or August. The planning is already so advanced that a "chance meeting" in Houston (Texas) with Republican presidential contender and Texas Governor George W. Bush is already being discussed. The President already knows the Democratic presidential candidate, Vice President Al Gore, very well (they were buddy-buddy in Kuala Lumpur, where Gore took his lumps and only Erap sided with him) as well as President Bill Clinton himself.

The Chief Executive's travel calendar is already firming up. On May 26, he's going to Beijing on a state visit to the People's Republic of China. Returning at the end of the month, he's scheduled to "go to London to visit the Queen" as the ditty goes. He will call on Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth II, on June 2. A few days later, he will be in Paris to meet President Jacques Chirac and other leaders and confer with leading industrialists, financiers and businessmen. Parlez-vous francais?

That temporary-restraining order (TRO) unilaterally issued by Court of Appeals Justice Eloy Bello, Jr., looks somewhat strange. But don't take my word for it. Bello's fellow Justices have already said what they think of it.

The Bello TRO enjoined the Securities and Exchange Commission from submitting its long-awaited fact-finding report about those allegedly involved in stock manipulation and insider trading to the Department of Justice. How can this be? Justice Bello's own colleagues in the 14th Division of the Court of Appeals, Associate Justice Delilah Vidallon-Magtolis and Mercedes Gozo-Dadole (whose reputations in legal circles are impeccable), gave Bello a piece of their mind in a memorandum they sent to him.

The opening paragraph of the memo asserted that "there is no justifiable reason for the issuance of an injunction." According to the same memo, "no copy of any judgment order or resolution which is the subject of the petition is attached thereto" -- in short, the two lady Justices pointed out that what were attached to the petition were only "photocopies of news clippings and an unsigned report which is not authenticated."

Can photocopies of news items and an unauthorized report be the bases of a TRO or writ of preliminary injunction? I recall that not too long ago a Manila Regional Trial Court judge was penalized by the Supreme Court for outrightly dismissing a dollar-salting case against the former First Lady, Mrs. Imelda R. Marcos, on the basis of a news item alleging that the Central Bank had already scrapped its rules and regulations on the remittance of dollars outside the country.

What's interesting about the current case is that the Chair of the Court of Appeals 14th Division is Justice Vidallon-Magtolis, while Justice Bello is only a member of the Division. Since obviously Chairperson Vidallon-Magtolis didn't do it (and in fact issued a memo critical of it), Justice Bello apparently issued the TRO by himself -- and, as it develops, over the objections of the Division's chairperson and its other member, Justice Gozo-Dadole. Given this background, what compelling reasons moved Bello to quickly issue that controversial TRO?

This writer has time and again assailed the unfortunate propensity of the judiciary to issue TROs for a variety of weird reasons. The general impression in the legal and business community is that the indiscriminate issuance of TROs is a lucrative source of revenue for some trigger-happy members of the judiciary. After all, did not Erap himself, during his campaign for the presidency, angrily condemn "hoodlums in robes"?

The Supreme Court, if such a negative perception did not exist, would not have prescribed strict guidelines for the proper issuance of TROs. In acting in this manner, the High Tribunal reacted to complaints from various sectors, specially the business community, which scored the issuance of TROs willy-nilly, particularly to block important public works projects financed by foreign lending institutions. (No wonder foreign funding has been drying up).

One politician who secured a TRO last January, for example, went around saying that he had spent P2 million -- although he did not identify the person or persons who had benefited from his largesse. Anyway, this TRO of the lower court was subsequently reversed by the Supreme Court.

I'm not saying that this applies to the recent injunction. Just giving an example of what happens when justice goes astray.