Building a railroad through vision – and relentless verbosity

It’s never a dull moment when you speak with JDV, the twice and now-returned Speaker of the House. Joe de Venecia’s strength – which at times is his weakness – is that he never loses steam, whether in victory or defeat. Even in the darkest hours, he’s around babbling about good times ahead, a relentless dispenser of bottled sunshine.

I must say it’s a relief to have a chat with the pilot of "747", as they tweak his latest "7 years growth for 7 years" takeoff program. In these depressing times, what we most need is such an organizer of enthusiasm.

JDV, from big ears to never-fading smile unflappable, is an idea whose time has come. Dubbed early on as the Maharajah of Hyperbole, defeated in the 1998 presidential race by a humiliating margin by Erap Estrada despite the "too-late" backing of the incumbent FVR (he would have been swamped anyway, by the Erap para sa mahirap tidal wave), De Venecia took his downfall like a man, going off to lick his wounds but never bitching or complaining that he "wuz robbed." Now, after three years in the pale, during which he was literally counted down and out, JDV has bounced back as "The Comeback Kid" of this dispirited era. Better than that, where others seem to have run out of ideas, wacky or otherwise, JDV is brimming over with them.

He reels off statistics with the virtuosity of a sleight-of-hand salamankero to buttress his points. Is it all blah-blah, or is there logic and serious intent behind all that verbosity? One hopes. But even when you factor in Joe’s breezy nature and reputation as a "snake oil salesman," somehow JDV is convincing. He knows that behind the dark clouds is a silver lining, not just another dark cloud. And for me, in a nation of breast-beaters and woe-is-me hypochondriacs, that’s enough.

* * *

I was in the hospital a few weeks before JDV launched his successful bid for Speakership, steamrollering his almost token opponents (184 to a pitiful 17, plus one abstention) to clinch his resurrection as undisputed leader of the 12th Congress. Joe and his attractive wife, Gina (Vera-Perez), who has obviously re-invented herself during the period of adversity and obscurity into drop-dead gorgeous, barged into my hospital room past the "No Visitors" sign.

"Professor," JDV chirped, "Get out of bed and get going, that’s the best cure!" Gina, for her part, made a remark that contained a kernel of what they had gone through during the period of dejection and disappointment, when many "friends" had deserted then: "Do you know what? Our house on Magnolia street is full of people again!" That said it all. It was then I realized that JDV was on his way back from the 4th district of Pangasinan to his third term in the Speakership. There must be some secret in the bagoong they manufacture out there.

Of cource, Joe is a TRAPO. He doesn’t deny that a country’s leadership, though, needs "traditional politicians" who mobilize legislation and "progress" by being deft in the art of politics. JDV, on the other hand, maintains no warlord army. Perhaps he didn’t even have to arm-twist too hard to get former Rep. Benjie Lim to vacate his slot and run another race, to become Mayor of Dagupan City.

But JDV, as he never lets you forget, goes far beyond the "traditional" local politician. He’s out there, continually, in the big wide world, hatching international agreements and deal-making globally. He’s a conference junkie and collector of celebrities. You might have been inclined to call him a social-climbing "name-dropper" but he’s got the photographs to document his peregrinations in the realms of power. Here’s a photo of him chatting with Japan’s Emperor Akihito in the Imperial Palace (1997), another shaking hands with South Africa’s Nelson Mandela, still another posing with former British Prime Minister Maggie Thatcher. He’s in a picture sharing a conspiratorial smile with former US President Bill Clinton (now a "citizen" of Harlem). Another portrays him sharing a joke with King Juan Carlos of Spain, conversing with Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo, or in sober dialogue with Iraq’s dictator, Saddam Hussein (he was probably trying to collect his "bill" on his now-defunct Land Oil contract).

Whether in diplomatic razzle-dazzle or in shenanigans, even his critics admit, JDV’s got flair – even if his drooping, sleepy eyebrows sometimes make him look like Garfield.

* * *

Which brings me to the scheme, unveiled to me over lunch the other day which I’d like to belabor.

Joe pledges as the final great endeavor of his career to push the railroad all the way to the north, to Ilocos Norte. Another line, he promised, would be built northwest through Nueva Ecija, Nueva Vizcaya, up to Cagayan, then eventually have its tracks veer west to link up with the Ilocos Norte "Express."

Now a caveat. Everybody in politics talks grandly of building railroads, extending the rails from Aparri to Jolo, so to speak, like the "national highway." Everybody, like ex-President Ramos did at the beginning of his term, glowingly describes a "plan" such as promising to modernize and enlarge our maritime industry, bringing down the cost of inter-island freight and ensuring more safety and comfort for inter-island passengers in this archipelago of 7,100 islands. This didn’t happen by the time FVR left. Nothing has happened. It’s the stuff of dreams, beckoning us from some distant future, while we continue to live in a nightmare of traffic, congestion, kotong-kotong along the highways, and pollution-spewing old buses. Not for this backward country a super-fast French T.G.V. or a Japanese "bullet train" or Shinkansen: We’ve even regressed from the "Jeep ni Erap" to the lowly pedicab, "The Tricycle of Gloria." President GMA, in her fervor to "out-Erap" Erap as the champion of the masa, even welcomes such clumsy non-starters as laundry soap called "Gloria Labandera." The idea, dear Madam President, is to uplift the masses, and give them a jumpstart towards becoming an educated middle class, not descend to their level (which they’d greatly love to ascend from, really).

* * *

When I was in Tokyo a few months ago, what struck me most was that Japan’s pace was so fast and efficient because the Japanese are a nation on wheels. Bullet trains zip them from city to city. Within Tokyo alone, Japan Rail plus nine swift chikatetsu (subway lines) speed commuters, from students to sararimen and office "tea ladies", between domicile and school or office. There’s a train pulling into a station or leaving it, fully-packed, almost every minute from dawn to midnight. In contrast, what have we got? Why, we have EDSA – which is not merely a pockmarked and cracked highway, either mired in smoke-belching gridlock, or bottled up by marching and chanting "People Power" demonstrators. And when it rains, several sections turn into muddy, miniature lakes, fordable only by amphibians.

And so, JDV’s grand vision of a Railway to the North, a Saluyot Express, sounds wonderful. However, in this land, the gap between promise and delivery is so vast, the chasm between pledge and fulfillment so yawning, that one is inclined to be skeptical. Yet, Joe has the verbosity, and perhaps the stick-to-itiveness to finally make that "vision" come true.

Every progressive nation has built its success on its railway network, linking farm to city or urban center to urban center. Vegetables, rice and other commodities which move by rail arrive in far better condition (and will in our context be cheaper at the market because their handlers don’t have to run the expensive hurdle of mulcting cops at innumerable checkpoints).

And so, we’re counting on JDV to do something out of the ordinary for a TRAPO; really get that railway system into operation, those tracks laid, those wheels of progress rolling.

"I have no ambition to become President," Joe told me as we parted. "I just want to do the best I can." Do it then, JDV, just do it.

As we left the dining room, I noticed that Joe switched off the air-conditioner, like a frugal Ilocano. That’s what he’d like to do, he grinned when I mentioned it, with the bloated national budget and the worrisome budget deficit. Just do it, Joe, I repeat. Goad, inspire, cajole, shove into action your fellow congressmen.

This nation has run out of options – and, worse, may be running out of time.

* * *

THE ROVING EYE . . . Is it true that finally Intelligence Chief Col. Victor Corpus, who’s become an everyday "accusing" figure on radio, television and the print media, has been instructed by Malacañang to clam up – and Armed Forces spokesman Brig. Gen. Edilberto Adan has been assigned to speak for the Intelligence Service led by Corpus? It’s high time, I’d say that military discipline and adherence to the chain of command, under the President as Commander-in-Chief, were restored. This does not mean that embattled Senator and former Police General Panfilo Lacson is off the hook, but the end of the savage "word war" will mean that any charges or evidence against him, if they exist, can be pursued in a legal manner, through the Ombudsman and the courts, not in the emotion-charged atmosphere of a media-covered kick-and-drag-out dogfight. Indeed, Col. Corpus has been the most media-exposed and talkative Intelligence Chief in history. Not a spook, he, but a public celebrity, stabbing with his finger at Lacson and other, sometimes unidentified, wrongdoers from unnamed judges and justices, and (hey, let’s not forget), media-men as "protectors" of the drug lords. Why, he even displayed a photograph of the wrong Kim Wong, whom he accused of being a drug financier and buddy of Lacson. The "condemned" fellow in the TV-propagated photographs with his features splashed all over the newspapers, turned out to be not only the wrong Wong, but no Wong at all. When Corpus exhibited that photo, I was besieged with phone calls telling me he was dead wrong (about Wong’s photo) but I decided to wait for the matter to be clarified without accusatory finger which could destroy reputations. How many "honest mistakes" are you allowed? That wasn’t intelligent but sloppy on the part of the Chief of Intelligence. . . Indeed, can we imagine the director of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), or the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) going on a media blitz like that? (The last publicity hound was the FBI’s founder, J. Edgar Hoover, who merrily announced that his G-men had "got their man", but only after the types of John Dillinger had been gunned down, or Al Capone caught for tax evasion). Does the chief of Israel’s Mossad or the domestic Shinbet ever speak out? Even the heroes and heroines of the Mossad are honored in secret where they lie buried in the walled-off secret service compound outside Tel Aviv. Markus Wolf, Communism’s greatest spymaster as head of East Germany’s dreaded STASI, was a figure of such secrecy that he was dubbed "the man without a face" and it took twenty years before Western intelligence had any idea what he looked like. Can you picture Vladimir Putin, when he was a spook of the K.G.B. in Western Europe, giving a press conference about his findings and discoveries? Richard Dearlove, the director of MI-6, the British Secret Intelligence Service (in contrast to 007, Hollywood’s and Ian Fleming’s flamboyant "James Bond") remained throughout his career virtually unknown – in fact, a contemporary photograph of him has never appeared in the press. Then there’s the French Secret Services, whose major goof resulted in unwanted publicity when two "frogmen" agents (one was a woman) blew up the Greenpeace ship, "Rainbow Warrior", in the harbor of Auckland, New Zealand – and were caught. The French settled the matter quietly with the angry New Zealand government. Since then, there ’s not been a peep, either from the Service de Documentation Exterieure et de Contre-espionage (SDECE) or the Direction Generale de la Securité Exterieure (DGSE), whose agents figured in the 1985 "Rainbow Warrior" debacle, or even the Direction de Surveillance du Terretoire (DST), whose agents cooperated with the New Zealand authorities by sheepishly handing over information on the DGSE operatives involved in that unfortunate affair. After all, when you say "intelligence", this means FYO (For Your Eyes Only) or Top Secret, or Classified. Not so in the Philippines, I supposed we let it all hang out. Is this wise? Is it fair? Is it legal? In your own conscience, Dear Reader, you must provide the answer.