Before Blas begins running things at DFA and parleying with Powell, maybe he should ‘check out’ his status

Our brand-new Secretary of Foreign Affairs, ex-Senator Blas Ople, formally took over at the DFA yesterday morning. He met with his undersecretaries, ranking staff members and other dignitaries in the 11th floor Carlos P. Garcia hall, and even "tele-conferenced" with our ambassadors in Beijing, Riyadh, Madrid, Mexico, and the heads of our missions to the United Nations in New York and Geneva.

Among the matters he discussed with our overseas diplomats – aside from the plight of the OFWs ("how many of our countrymen are in jail"? et cetera) — was the problem of our embassies conducting the official ballot count should the "absentee voting" bill be enacted into law by Congress. Ople told our diplomats that it was expected this bill would be passed "very soon", and tried to sound them out on how it could be implemented by their embassies and missions.

He was greeted by quite a bit of stammering and expressions of polite dismay. To begin with, one lady diplomat quite candidly asked Secretary Ople, "How do we determine who are the legitimate voters?"

Yes, Ka Blas — and President GMA — that is the question. If our limping and inefficient (did someone whisper "somewhat crooked"?) Commission on Elections botched the recent Barangay elections and can’t even clean up its list of registered voters in the Philippines, how can the Comelec and our embassies, consulates and missions possibly do so among the eight million Filipinos living and working abroad?

Aha, the opposition and critics will exclaim: "Madam President, we smell something cooking somewhere!" What used to be deplored as lutong Macao, as somebody quipped, might acquire a new label: lutong DFA. Indeed, how will we count those overseas "absentee ballots"? Even if only two or three million OFWs and Filipinos residing abroad . . . er, "voted", their tabulated ballots could decide a Presidential election.

If you want to know, there’s already an official designated to supervise those "absentee" voters, a longtime Ople former assistant, Undersecretary of Labor Arturo Brion. I’m not insinuating anything. It’s early days yet. Who knows, this "absentee voting" thing might not be hammered together in time for the Year 2004 elections – but why not? If prayers can move mountains, can’t determined Administrations produce "miracles"?

I’m not even implying that it now makes sense that an "old pro" like Ka Blas was named DFA Secretary – and potential "overseer" of the absentee ballot gathering and counting – lest I suffer the fate of our esteemed colleague and crackerjack journalist, Amando Doronilla. Ka Blas, of course, can no longer deliver "privilege speeches", but he can still dish out privilege diatribes.

I’m not inggit, either, I hasten to add. Sus, I used to be a Boy Scout – with the emphasis on "used to be". Certainly, we kids were proud to be Scouts and learn self-reliance, discipline, helpfulness, reverence for God and His commandments, and trekking and camping skills. (In those days, the dream of every Tenderfoot was to ascend, through dint of effort, grit and endurance to "Eagle" Scout.)

However, just as Doro denied it, I never got a job from good old Blas. The only thing I really envied, when he was a senior deskman at our sister rag, The Daily Mirror, and I was a young journalist in the old Manila Times was Ople’s capacity for hard likker. In those days, we juniors could only afford beer, Syhoktong (that Chinese rot-gut which gave you a kick) and local "White Castle" whisky. Blas, on the other hand, could polish off a bottle of real Scotch whisky. He was a true Scotchman. (I won’t say he was the "Last Man Standing", because he frequently ended up in a less than upright position.) Those were the good old days – our Golden Yesterday – on Florentino Torres street in Santa Cruz, Manila.

I thought Blas had sobered up until he shot from the lip in his valedictory address to lambast and insult Doronilla, whose only "offense" was to do his job as a newsman and honestly say what he thought of the exiting Senator and his record. It was unbecoming of a solon with so many years of experience to hit below the belt in such a low-life fashion, and in a bitter ad hominem manner.

When you’re a public man, of course, like everyone else you hurt and you bleed: but you’ve got to smile even when it hurts. That’s the nature of the profession you’ve already chosen. Even more so when you’re scheduled to be the Chief of Diplomats.

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The new DFA Secretary, we’re informed, is scheduled to confer with US Secretary of State Colin Powell when the latter arrives for a one-day visit. Talking’s all right, but, until he checks out his legal status, I submit that Secretary Ople shouldn’t sign anything.

This is because he and the President might have forgotten one technicality. If I’m not mistaken, when Congress is not in session, the Chief Executive can appoint Cabinet members – and these can serve in her Cabinet and head their departments in an "acting" capacity until they are confirmed, or expected by being bypassed by the Commission on Appointments. On the other hand, once Congress has convened its regular session, no Cabinet appointee can sit and act in the Executive Branch until he or she is confirmed by the Commission on Appointments. If you look at the legislative calendar, the President swore Ople as DFA Secretary only last Tuesday, more than a week after she had addressed the opening session of the current Congress.

What can be done to remedy the situation, naturally, is for Secretary Ople’s "confirmation" be rushed through to approval in the CA. Otherwise, there will be those who’ll question what he’s doing in the DFA. Can this be accomplished with dispatch?

The problem is, even after more than a year of meetings, the same Commission on Appointments can’t seem to act on the case of acting DENR Secretary Heherson "Sonny" Alvarez. Sonny, admittedly, may sometimes be abrasive in manner – it’s amazing that, for somebody who used to be a member of the House of Representatives as well as a Senator, he’s getting flak from certain virulently hostile members of the two former chambers.

But I don’t believe most of the B.S. being ladled out about his being "corrupt" or soliciting "bribes" kuno. These allegations seem to be mouthed by persons who have an axe to grind, or are protecting favorite vested interests.

Frankly, I can’t understand why Alvarez or anybody who can find alternative employment (unless one villainously intends to "make hay", rain or shine) should be so obsessed with getting confirmed as Secretary of the Environment and Natural Resources. It’s a suicidal job. You’ll find yourself fighting or having to mollify the illegal loggers, the gold and other mineral exploiters and smugglers, and – sanamagan — those pesky Greenpeace busybodies who’ve anointed themselves worldwide as the only defenders of the environment, clean living, and the nemeses of greenhouse gases. Salamabit, that greedy bunch slugging it out for supremacy over the gold mountain of Diwalwal are "vested interests" galore.

Poor Sonny. His besetting headache now is the strange signal sent from the Palace the other day when freshly-minted Press Secretary Toting Bunye let it be known that La Gloria might be willing to junk Alvarez. Come again, Toting? If GMA really wants to scrap Sonny, let her come out and say so and have done with it. If that’s not so, then Bunye was way out of line.

Neither should Alvarez derive comfort from the announcement by Speaker Joe de Venecia yesterday that he (Sonny) would surely be confirmed by the Commission on Appointments. He doesn’t know that it was Joe de V who telephoned Vice President and former Foreign Affairs Secretary Teofisto Guingona last June 7, when Guingona was in Madrid (Spain), to inform Tito that the President was offering him the position of DENR Secretary!

When Guingona indignantly reacted to this "offer", recognizing it as a ploy to get him out of the DFA, Joe had laughingly exclaimed to his fellow Atenean: "Hey, Tito! I’m just the messenger – don’t shoot the messenger!"

Later on, Guingona had to reassure Alvarez and his wife, Cecile Guidote, that he (Tito) had no intention of grabbing Sonny’s job.

Susmariosep. Machiavelli might have gotten hopelessly outclassed and confused if ever he had to live in the Philippines. In Venice, he had only to please or outwit the Doges. Here, he would have been twisted and turned by the Artful Dodgers at the top of our hierarchical pyramid.

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Incidentally, Vice President Guingona is keeping his end of the bargain. He’s staying quiet while others, including the late Apo Marcos’s daughter, Ilocos Norte Rep. Imee Marcos, are voicing similar objections to the proposed Fil-American Mutual Logistics Support Agreement (MLSA) to those he expressed while DFA chief.

Guingona had voiced "very strong reservations" about the original draft of the projected MLSA, and even complained that certain provisions in it could "make the entire Philippines practically an American military base". Anyway, that’s the way he saw it.

Has the present "draft" really been amended or revised to do away with Guingona’s objections, so strongly upheld by him that this difference of opinion inevitably led to a break with GMA? How can we tell, if the TRULY FINAL draft of this MLSA is not duly published and thrown open to public discussion? Does the President intend to have Gen. Roy Cimatu, the armed forces Chief of Staff, and Admiral Thomas Fargo, the Commander-in-Chief of the US Forces in the Pacific (CINCPAC), who’s due to arrive, simply and sneakily sign it into effect – without letting anybody take a peek at what we’re agreeing to? Sure, Admiral Fargo was an Annapolis classmate of our National Security Adviser Roilo Golez (who, by the way, has just completed a crash-course in anti-terrorism in Scotland Yard). But that should make us even more wary. When those old Navy chums start belting out, Anchors Aweigh, we’d better find out whose anchor is being yanked.

In the meantime, the President has been trying to get the Vice President back into the Cabinet. She has offered him the post of "Mindanao Czar". If Tito accepts, this means – he was told – that he’ll be in charge of practically everything going on in Mindanao — from the peace talks, to Mindanao development, to the executive branch’s dealings with the Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao. (Not including, though, I’m sure, the conduct of Philippine-US military cooperation.)

This is an interesting challenge for the Veep, who comes from Mindanao — from Misamis Oriental province. But he’d better get his "authority" and "job description", and the logistical support it entails, down in writing — signed, sealed and delivered by the President — before he even thinks of accepting.