Still hitting a blank wall - BY THE WAY by Max V. Soliven

The Equitable PCIBank’s Clarissa Ocampo sailed through intense grilling at yesterday’s resumption of the Senate impeachment trial – unruffled and unshaken. The face of Presidential defense counsel Estelito "Titong" Mendoza, as the relentless television camera eye panned back and forth, was seen to grow longer and longer. He was especially glum when the lady’s testimony alleged that one of the "signings" by Jaime Dichaves and Bank Chairman George Go had even been held in Mendoza’s own office.

Don’t you think that was careless? The word hubris comes to mind.

What wasn’t amusing about yesterday’s Senate trial was the grandstanding of some senators who just couldn’t help trying to display their expertise at cross-examination and bombarded the witness with unnecessary questions, nitpicking "for effect." At the rate our solons are wasting time by such self-serving antics, I don’t think Senate President Aquilino "Nene" Pimentel will achieve his avowed goal of completing the impeachment process by the end of this month. The way things are going, we’ll still be agonizing over this painful issue a year from now, at the same time next year.

Therefore, may I respectfully suggest a belated New Year’s resolution for our senator-judges? Each one should pledge: "If I’ve nothing sensible to say or something important to clear up by throwing a question, I’ll SHADDUP!"

On the other hand, a politician and the microphone are not easily parted.

Then there are those would-be senatorial candidates and political "hopefuls" who’re eager to run in the coming May 2001 elections cleverly – they think – positioning themselves in the impeachment "listeners" gallery right in the line of "sight" of the TV cameras. They frown, they purse their lips, they nod sagely, or turn their heads to present the TV lens with their "best profile" from time to time, imagining that their features are being flashed to their political advantage all over the country. They’re only managing to look like silly eager-beavers, if you ask me.

But that’s human nature.

And, of course, I could be wrong. Our voters might, owing to these guys’ sheer kapalmuks visibility, really remember them at election time. This is the reason we elect, time and again, such blockheads and dunderheads to high position. We’re careless, too, in our choices – only to realize, when it’s too late, that we’ve condemned ourselves to living with them.

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The incoming Executive Secretary, to be announced by the President, will be Agriculture Secretary Edgardo Angara.

When it was clear that "former" Executive Secretary Ronnie Zamora was leaving the Cabinet to prepare for a run for the congressional seat in San Juan (his former constituency), Edong made all the right public noises about being reluctant to leave "agriculture", but Alikabok tells me that he’ll be very happy to get that job.

It’s unfortunate for Senior Deputy Executive Secretary and ever-faithful head of the Presidential Management Staff (PMS) Ramon "Eki" Cardenas, who would equally have been excellent in the position, that Edong Angara "wanted" it and thus Eki was nudged out of the running.

The next Agriculture Secretary, when Angara vacates the DA, will be career Undersecretary Domingo Panganiban who, at least, is experienced since he seems to have worked in almost every division in that ministry. The way I see it, but this is only an educated guess, is that the deal with Erap is for Angara – who admittedly has been doing very well in boosting agricultural and food production – to continue "supervising" Agriculture from his new office in Malacañang.

In fact, President Estrada will soon reveal a "master plan" for food production and agricultural development under which one million hectares will be set aside throughout the archipelago for such a purpose, and provided with a multibillion-peso fund which will include farm-to-market subsidies as well. My Palace sources say that, in this manner, one million new "jobs" will be provided. This "plan" doesn’t seem to jibe with the impression that an embattled Estrada might be "convinced" to resign.

As for Ambassador Ernie Maceda who came home from his assignment as envoy to Washington DC to assume the task of being the "Presidential Spokesman" on the impeachment trial, he says he never vied for the post of Executive Secretary. "After the President is acquitted," Maceda breezily says, "probably I’ll retire." But that’s what Maceda, a former Senate President, said when he left the Senate. After declaring he would "retire" and take a rest, Ernie ran for mayor of Manila, but lost to Lito Atienza. Then, he became a columnist of The Philippine STAR, a job he left when he was named Ambassador to the United States.

No, sir. Erning is not the "retiring" kind.

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In the wake of the bleakest Christmas and New Year in recent memory (punctuated by the five horrible bomb blasts which rocked Metro Manila), the peso plummeted to its very lowest – P52 to the US dollar yesterday morning – while recovering partially to P51 at the close of trading. This means that the peso dropped by 99 centavos from its rate of P50.01 to the dollar last Friday afternoon, last week’s final trading day.

The stock market, too, was three percent down, the biggest single-day drop in seven months.

In this doleful season, aggravated by a spreading global slowdown (and with even the powerful US heading into a recession), I guess there’s nothing much more to do than grit our teeth, beseech Almighty God for His help and blessings, then put our shoulders to the wheel. No use whining and groaning: We’ll have to make do with what we’ve got. It’s not the end of the world.

When we’re feeling discouraged and depressed, my suggestion is to pick up a good book (there are many) and scan it for stories about how men and women coped with hardship and fought their way to success through tough times. (I must be a fossil, since I find reading a book still more rewarding than key-punching and CD-Rom).

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William J. Bennet, who was Secretary of Education and Chairman of the National Endowment for the Humanities under US President Ronald Reagan, and Director of the Office of National Drug Control Policy under President George Bush (the elder), wrote three bestsellers, The Book of Virtues, The Moral Compass, and, his latest, Our Sacred Honor, containing words of advice from the Founding Fathers of the US in stories, letters, poems and speeches. His books, perhaps because of (not in spite of) their "corny" titles, sold millions of copies.

And the following tale explains why they appealed to Americans searching for answers to the problems of life. One of Bennet’s favorite subjects was Benjamin Franklin, one of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, who started out as a penniless boy. When Ben Franklin was only 26, he wrote his famous Poor Richard’s Almanack which he filled with "proverbial sentences", speaking of how people could inculcate in themselves "industry" and "frugality" as a means of gaining wealth, and "thereby securing virtue." (In Franklin’s time, I suppose, wealth was equated with virtue, unlike today when behind every great fortune there lies a great crime.)

When you visit Philadelphia in Pennsylvania, you’ll find still in operation a trust fund created by Ben Franklin. Franklin had run away as a boy from his home in Boston with only a few coins in his pocket, arriving in Philadelphia in 1723. When he died in 1790, he was a very wealthy man. His estate was worth more than $250,000; by today’s dollars this would tag him as a multimillionaire many times over, even a billionaire. He owned many properties in Philadelphia itself, a home in Boston, pasture lands in Pennsylvania as well as in Georgia and even Nova Scotia (Canada).

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As a young man, struggling to establish his business in Philadelphia, Franklin organized a club for "mutual improvement", naming it the Junto. Its members were mainly poor tradesmen and artisans striving to get ahead. Franklin limited the club’s membership to 12, after the 12 Apostles of Jesus. The aim of the group was that each should help the others succeed in every way possible. They shared tips and information on any prospects that seemed promising, as well as "warnings" about failure, and they also took an interest in assisting "any deserving strangers" who came to town and needed a helping hand. The Junto, in fact, took on many projects to serve the community and put up the first subscription library in North America. The club – which met every Friday night – lasted for thirty years and inspired many similar clubs.

What made Franklin outstanding is that he never forgot the "kind loans" two friends had given him when he was starting out and to which he attributed the "foundation" of his fortune.

Determined "to be useful even after my death, if possible," Franklin inserted a codicil in his will. In this, he bequeathed trust funds of 1,000 pounds each to his hometown, Boston, and his adopted Philadelphia. Out of the fund, he instructed, loans should be made "to such young married artificers under the age of 25 years, as have served an apprenticeship in the said town, and faithfully fulfilled the duties required... so as to obtain a good moral character..." The loans were to be given at only five percent interest. In 1990, two hundred years after Franklin’s death, the two trust funds amounted to $6.5 million dollars!

How many Ben Franklins have we got in our own country? On the answer to that question depends the building of a nation, strong and great.

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The police and the military have advanced a lot of theories and voiced suspicions as to the identity of the vicious terrorists who exploded those bombs in the LRT train, the bus in Cubao, in Makati, near the international airport’s gasoline storage facilities and "symbolically" in Plaza Ferguson across the wide Roxas Boulevard from the US Embassy.

The PNP and the armed forces intelligence men, despite all their hints, have hit a blank wall. They’ve still, at this writing, no idea as to the affiliation of the bombers. In short, all that finger-pointing going on remains in the realm of wild speculation.

The "hottest" suspects, of course, are the Abu Sayyaf and Moro insurgents (thanks to their having been trained by the Kuwaiti-born Islamic terrorist Ramzi Yousef, who "bombed" the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York on February 26, 1993). In short, Yousef trained scores of Abus in Basilan in bomb-making as well as establishing Muslim terrorist cells in Manila. (He conducted classes in a rented beach house here, also in the vicinity of the Golden Mosque in Quiapo, and elsewhere in our metropolis, before he fled to Pakistan and was subsequently captured.)

Then there’s the opposition-fed conjecture that rightwing military elements had triggered the blasts so as to give the Estrada administration an excuse to declare martial law while, at the same time, distracting the public’s attention from the impeachment trial.

The pro-Palace analysts, on the other hand, blame rightwing plotters too – this time connected with the disgruntled retired generals’, cabal, although they don’t go so far as to allege that those "around" former President and former AFP Chief of Staff (General) Fidel V. Ramos were the perpetrators.

Other possible culprits are the New People’s Army, the Alex Boncayao Brigade, the NDF and the Communists. Who knows, really? I don’t buy the silly argument that it couldn’t have been the Communists, the Radical Leftists or the Leftwing lunatic fringe who committed those grisly acts because kuno the bombs had targetted the "poor" and the common folk who ride LRT trains and buses, and victimized helpless children and women, too. Excuse me. Terrorists don’t distinguish between social classes. Their bombs are designed to provoke maximum terror and widespread confusion, and are addressed: "To whom it may concern."

The explosive devices were sophisticated, quite obviously. That bomb in Makati which shredded the two brave policemen who tried to defuse it (they were well-trained, we hear, but lacked the proper equipment) was apparently booby-trapped to foil any attempt to disarm it.

It’s good that two American forensic experts, dispatched straight from Washington, DC, have been cleared by Malacañang to work hand-in-hand with General Panfilo Lacson and the PNP. We need all the help we can get in this grim hour.