Will the ‘Barkada of Seven’ plus Ronnie Puno ‘re-elect’ GMA in 2004?

It’s disquieting: When the new Chairman of the Commission on Elections, veteran TRAPO Ben Abalos, was asked by reporters whether there is still a "Gang of Four" in the poll body, it was Comelec Commissioner Mehol Sadain who was quick to reply to that question. He asserted that there is no "Gang of Four" — instead, there is a "Barkada of Seven". He declared that they have now one big happy family managing the Comelec.

From "Gang of Four" to a unanimous "Gang of Seven"? This does not bode well for the coming Year 2004 elections — except, of course, as concerns the reigning La Presidenta.

The members of the commission who had opposed the frenzied efforts to run things by a plurality of numbers of the "Gang of Four" (sometimes called the "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse") used to be the bypassed Chairman Alfredo Benipayo, with the support of two other Commissioners, Resureccion Borra and Florentino Tuason, Jr. (The Gang was led by controversial Commissioner Luzviminda Tancangco, and composed of Sadain, Rufino Javier and Ralph Lantion.) Now that Benipayo is gone, and has been replaced by former Metro Manila Development Authority Chairman Abalos, also a former mayor of Mandaluyong, it’s apparent that the two "orphans" left behind – Borra and Tuason, Jr. – find themselves hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned.

If Sadain is accurate in his remark, then, the new Chairman Abalos has joined the "Gang" or Barkada. Why don’t we simply call that bunch then, The Magnificent Seven? Some, it’s true, might not see this as a reference to that old bang-bang movie starring the late Steve McQueen and Telly Savalas, but more in connotation with a group of seven sleazy judges of the buy-and-sell variety who once gained notoriety in Metro Manila.

It’s not to the public interest, nor is it reassuring to our democratic way of life to hear that the Comelec has become "one big happy family". What? No dissenters or fiscalizers in that vital poll body? And if, indeed, there has been an accommodation with the "Gang of Four", is this a case of the President, as segurista, making sure her votes are counted and tabulated . . . uh, favorably in 2004?

Then there’s the sudden emergence in the midst of GMA’s circle of that ballot computer wizard, Ronnie Puno, who rode high, wide, and "handsome" during the days of FVR and Erap Estrada. When Ronnie was former President Estrada’s Interior and Local Government top honcho didn’t he acquire, like instant coffee, that fantastic palace in Greenmeadows subdivision? It was guarded night and day by platoons of policemen, and was the talk of the town. And now, here comes Puno again — resurrected, with all his well-known techno skills. Mind you, I didn’t say magic.

If there’s anything more damaging to the President’s image, it’s all these strange goings-on – inevitably linked, in the suspicious public mind, to her hunger for reelection.

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It’s also time for the President to stop flirting with the idea, even if it’s only mischievous titillation, of recruiting Senator Blas Ople as the next Secretary of Foreign Affairs.

It’s incredible. After pompously saying that he wouldn’t even consider such an offer from the Chief Executive until after he had cast his vote when the Senate convenes its new session on July 22, Ople let slip, on the other hand, that he was definitely tickled by the prospect of becoming the new DFA Secretary. Sanamagan. Columnist Amando Doronilla was absolutely right yesterday when he said that "the arrival statement on Friday of Sen. Blas Ople stamps him as a political opportunist masquerading as an elder statesman."

"Elder" is also a word which hits the nail on the head.

Ka Blas may be only 75, a year older than Tito Guingona, but already — owing to chronic illness and, I won’t add, incessant cigarette-puffing and booze — he looks far more geriatric. Despite these drawbacks, though, he loves to travel. If our revolutionary nation’s first foreign affairs minister, the great Apolinario Mabini, was dubbed "The Sublime Paralytic", would our Kulog ng Hagonoy, Ka Blas, become known as The Sublime Geriatric? I’m not even worried about his use of his limbs; I’m afraid his reflexes and mind-processes have grown less nimble.

Since Ople has already served notice that GMA and her administration senators won’t get his "vote" in the Senate, when it meets on the 22nd of this month (a Monday), then what’s the use of her "courting" Ople? To begin with, if she had succeeded in "bribing" Ople to change his vote, or even to simply abandon his comrades on the Opposition (who’ve been calling themselves the "new majority"), this would be an act of obvious and shameless politicking. Yet, Ople clearly relishes the thought of assuming power in the DFA. In exchange for what? He’s got nothing left with which to bargain. Why on earth then is he setting "conditions" for his accepting a post which, if the Palace apologists are accurate in their bleating, still hasn’t been offered? This silly situation is enough to make your head spin.

C’mon, Madam President. Forget Blas. What sort of dignity or gravitas would he bring to your Cabinet — or to our foreign affairs? He collaborated wholeheartedly with the deposed Apo Ferdinand Marcos during the martial law era, then he leaped blithely (he was more blithe in those days) into the Cory camp, and next he smilingly went with FVR, and was in the full flush of glory during the Estrada regime. One thing can be said of him: He’s a successful survivor. What may not survive is our conduct of foreign affairs. It’s been pretty bad thus far, but it can get very much worse.

I wish that GMA, whose latest cute costume is a rain-coat, would desist from welcoming survivors, opportunists and turncoats into her pangkat. In such instances, contrary to what the late Senate President Eulogio "Amang" Rodriguez used to say, politics is not "addition". Every balimbing or turncoat President Macapagal-Arroyo recruits subtracts from her credibility and her capability to turn this nation around, from its current depths of disappointment and despair to progress and self-confidence.

For, after all, what’s she President of this Republic for? So she can tirelessly campaign for reelection? Or fulfill the noble mission of saving the Filipino people – even from themselves?

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I was a friend and supporter of her late father, President Diosdado "Cong Dadong" Macapagal. As she knows, I was among the first to whom he had offered a Cabinet post, which I declined. (I’ve declined such offers from Apo Marcos – before and after the late dictator put me in jail.) Dadong was a sincere and earnest leader – but his glaring defect was that he believed that recruiting turncoats was necessary to make his administration a success.

When he was voted into office in 1961, overturning the incumbent President Carlos P. Garcia, DM – a Liberal – found himself saddled with a predominantly Nacionalista Congress. He felt that to get his legislative program approved, he had to seduce those NP congressmen and senators into his Liberal Party. He did so by every means possible, combining the carrot and the stick.

Even Benigno "Ninoy" Aquino, then the young Governor of Tarlac, was literally coerced by Macapagal into abandoning his beloved Nacionalistta Party and swearing in as an LP, right in Malacañang. He rang me up two days before, a tear in his voice: "Brod, you’ll curse me for being such a turncoat, or abandoning my personal convictions and ideals, but tomorrow I’ll kiss my innocence goodbye. I have no choice."

No choice, indeed. Cong Dadong had issued an ultimatum to Ninoy, in no uncertain terms, summed up in the old Spanish expression, somos o no somos? Ninoy had been warned by the President that the payroll of his public school teachers would be cut off by the Palace, and no DPWH or puericulture, or social welfare services would be allotted Tarlac, et cetera, unless Ninoy shucked his NP affiliation and joined DM’s and the LP’s bandwagon. Ninoy, in the years which followed, as was his genius and talent, became a very effective and dynamic LP leader – this must be said. If martial law had not been imposed by a desperate Marcos, Ninoy might have been elected President on the LP ticket!

Do you remember what the late Cong Dadong called the turncoats and balimbings he sweet-talked into scrapping the NP and becoming LPs? He lauded them as "patriots"! Their turncoatism was glorified as "patriotism". If you walk down memory lane, on the other hand, you’ll see that this didn’t get him reelected in 1965. One of the top LP stalwarts, the party president in fact, Ferdinand E. Marcos jumped into the Nacionalista Party at the zero hour – and… well, licked Cong Dadong in the elections.

As for the so-called "patriots", many of them had turned balimbing, as had become habitual, and junked Dadong for Ferdinand (and his fabulous super-ma’am, Imeldific). Those who had not exhibited their balik-uh-patriotism pre-election, did so post-election.

In sum, GMA: If you "buy" somebody, one way or another, don’t be surprised if he doesn’t stay bought.

These are times, to risk the almost hackneyed but still pertinent expression, that try men’s souls. Our lady President must remember that she herself is on trial– in the judgement of history. How she discharges the God-given moment in history so suddenly awarded her a year and a half ago is what will be written in the hearts of her people, more indelibly than what might possibly be written on that scrap of paper called the ballot. Let her choose now.