There seems to be no doubt that Joe de V will get back his old job, with the possible acquiescence of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo who remains perched on a quivering dome and still imploring the heavens to come to her rescue. So we never learned any lesson from People Power II.
Once during a one-on-one with GMA, while she was still in the cabinet of President Joseph Estrada, I asked her to bolt and assert herself as the uncontested leader of the opposition. If she did – and that was about two years ago – she could have changed the course of this country’s history. But no, she was bidding her time, and the time was not yet. And so history passed her by. At the time, I had proposed the establishment of a "Third Force" in Philippine politics, my model being that of General Charles de Gaulle. He had set up Le Ralliement du Peuple Francais (Rally of the French People) as a battering ram against the corrupt, inept, and irretrievably debauched Third Republic. He succeeded.
Gloria told me what she preferred was not a Third Force, but "New Politics" which blended to her other project "New Economics" would transform the Philippines overnight if she ever acceded to Malacañang.
She’s been six months into power after People Power II and I do not see any "New Politics" and her "New Economics" remains in the realm of hallucination. Gloria is Little Red Riding Hood tracing the same steps leading to the Big Bad Wolf. There is now supposed to be a "grand alliance" for the country’s top economists and social scientists armed with a Yellow Paper II turning thumbs down on GMA because she has no vision and no agenda: "The potential for change made possible by EDSA Dos is close to being squandered," this new elite group of "socio-economic" experts contend.
I submit that this group has also fallen into the fallacy of concluding their brain-power, if only GMA would ride their chariot, would eventually bring the Philippines to Valhalla. They are a dime a dozen, these groups, which emerge like mushrooms during national crises, beating their breasts, pawing the ground like bulls at a corrida, brandishing their banderillas. Over a span of more than 50 years as journalist, I have seen them, sometimes met them, with all the good intentions in the world, but scurrying for cover when the bombs start exploding. And refusing to enter and abide the whale’s belly like Jonah did.
Now for Joe de V.
He’s all over TV these days, the pitchman par excellence, and you have to be impressed. Joe goes rat-tat-tat like a machinegun, brings coal to Newcastle, refrigerators and electric fans to Alaska, cigarette lighters to Hades. And now he brandishes his latest, his 747, which he carries like the Code of Hammurabi. Yep, as Speaker, he will link up with GMA. Together, they will attach our economy to a rocket booster, and produce seven percent GNP growth per year, for seven consecutive years. 747. Get it?
Joe, we are good friends, but I don’t get it. This is the worst time for your 747. It’s like trying to stuff the brains of Albert Einstein into a crumbum who’s had one too many. And the energy of a shooting star into a paramecium.
As we have often said, our economy today is a busted and broken-down guitar, our peso a kite deserted by wind, our poverty a dark and dismal mass of lichens covering the entire archipelago, peace and order a complete travesty because there is no peace, no order, and our justice a fugitive in hobo clothes seeking sanctuary in another planet.
747 doesn’t have the chance of an ice-cream cone in hell.
347 would be more like it. India and other neighbor countries in East Asia are progressing because they have long put together a critical educated mass in math, science and engineering. Our educational system, by all counts, is in shambles, and where once upon a time diplomas had pride of place in village homes, they have now disappeared. We have the unlettered, the semi-literate, the shallow and irresponsible yokelry whose idol is Erap Estrada. Catch?
And so with a "Sunshine Coalition" emerging in Congress, there is a mad, hell-for-leather scramble for committee chairmanships and other choice House positions. New politics? C’mon. This is the same pigsty whoever gets the Speakership, the same stampede of political swine, because the system remains the same as before.
We are all waiting for Gloria to get her act together. But she is in a kitchen full of victuals and casseroles, not knowing what dish to cook. Of course, she’s a lot better than Erap Estrada, hooray for that. But what we need is Superma’am, and she doesn’t fill the bill.
But for Erap’s unredeemed masa that elected him to the Senate, Lacson strikes many in civil society as the "greatest obstacle" to peace and order. There is even the allusion by a highly-circulated broadsheet’s editorial that he could be the "kidnap king" in the rash of kidnaps during and after the Estrada presidency. New witnesses have emerged to testify that Lacson was the principal actor in the Kuratong Baleleng massacre in 1995. The killing of Bubby Dacer is laid at his door and so is that of Edgar Bentain. There are a number of letters-to-the-editor that the nation can never unite so long as Lacson and his co-senator Gregorio (Gringo) Honasan are in the Senate.
It seems every administration has its Black and Forbidding Merlin.
Gen. Joe Almonte filled this role during the FVR presidency. The popular imagination was that Joe Almonte met with a dozen witches every night plotting fire and brimstone for the enemies of FVR. Joe-Al was the psywar expert par excellence. His occasional foray into the public limelight even rendered his image more ominous as Joe-Al was dark-skinned and swarthy, his voice sourced from some deep lagoon, his very appearance cause for heartburn, high blood, partial fainting and dizzy spells.
This same role was filled by Gen. Fabian Ver during the Marcos dictatorship. Almost billiard-ball bald. Ver had besides a tank’s metal side for a face, and wherever he stalked, the man was feared. They said he could kill without blinking, and that the late Primitivo Mijares died at the hands of his men as Ver directed the manner of death, allegedly slow death in a pigpen. Yes, I did fear General Ver and his blackguard worthies, principally Col. Rolando Abadilla of the Metrocom, who harassed me and my reporters at the Agence France-Presse with the omnipresence around our offices in Ermita of armed gorillas with kerchiefs around their foreheads and guns bulging in their pockets.
Did I say, feared him? Yes, I did. But I stood my ground, challenged Abadilla and his men and even Ver to do their worse. Once they placed suntan wreaths on the iron gate of my garage, a warning I would die if I continued my critical reporting on the Marcos dictatorship. I didn’t relent and I am still alive.
It seems Ping Lacson fills the same role today. If Lacson had appeared at the EDSA Shrine during the height of the People Power II, he would have been hooted at, stoned, and probably set upon like a pack of avenging wolves. Gringo Honasan knew better than Robert Jaworski. He stayed away, although in a nearby mall, a group of ladies stormed at him, and he had to flee. Jaworski, escorted by Tingting Cojuangco, sought penitent entry into huge crowds at the EDSA Shrine. He was insulted, and every kind of missile rained on him, and he received blows on his back. Jaworski had gall, and regretted his phony penitence.
Why is Ping Lacson so regarded by civil society today?
Maybe because his reputation is unraveling. My police contacts tell me even in the PNP he was reviled and hated because they knew exactly who he was and what he was doing and yet they couldn’t protest because he was the darling of Erap Estrada.