The hardworking wife

What can be said of the appearance of First Gentleman Mike Arroyo in the Senate yesterday is that it didn’t do poor Mike any good. His answers seemed to be confined to "I don’t remember", "I don’t know," and "my brother will answer that question when you ask him".

The inquiry is not a trial being conducted in a court of law but, instead owing to television and radio coverage a test of credibility before the bar of public opinion. The First Gent certainly lost yesterday’s round.

To be blunt, I don’t know what the Senate could possibly gain "in aid of legislation" by the current oversexed, high-profile, and very public investigation, but the Senators obviously love it – they hammed it up. After all, while members of the House of Representatives must fight for votes in their respective districts or constituencies, our 24 Senators have no constituency, it was once said, except the Media.

Indeed, yesterday’s inquiry, which many allege left poor (well, not exactly poor) Mike A. "twisting in the wind", was more of a media circus than anything else. The bloodthirsty public – listeners and viewers – simply lapped it up. Why, Senator John "Sonny O" Osmeña even prodded Attorney Arroyo to explain his entire lineage – from his mother, Mrs. Lourdes Tuason Arroyo (after whom the LTA Building is named) to his various aunts, uncles, cousins, etc. Since the Senate hearing wasn’t supposed to belong to the Book of Genesis, I wonder what Senator Osmeña wanted to accomplish by badgering Mike A. on the identity of his relatives (there wasn’t a single "Pidal" included by name in his enumeration, anyway).

It provided Senate Blue Ribbon Committee chairman (Sen.) Joker Arroyo a witty punchline, however. Joker "thanked" Mike for having named his closest kin, because this listing had cleared him (Joker). "People have been asking me whether I’m a relative."

Susmariosep. Was yesterday’s Laugh-In what we’re paying our Senators and the upkeep of the Senate so many billions of pesos for?

Mike was even able to deliver the teary-eyed line that among the things he most deplored about that nasty Senator Panfilo Lacson’s charges was that the attack hurt "my hardworking wife, whom I dearly love".

* * *

And what’s this? Mike’s kid brother Ignacio "Iggy" Arroyo has declared that he’s the real "Jose Pidal".

I don’t believe this development helps Mike’s case, because the admission by Iggy gives Ping Lacson’s accusations the ring of credibility.

Even if Lacson had aimed at Mike, but hit Iggy instead, the Arroyo family has now been lassoed into the firing line. Owning up to the "Jose Pidal" account is just the beginning of Iggy’s (or Ignacito’s) troubles. From a relatively quiet provincial life, he’s now thrown himself into the maelstrom. What’s strange is that, if we recall right, big brother Jose Miguel "Mike" Arroyo had earlier averred he didn’t know any "Jose Pidal", but now says that "Jose Pidal" is his brother Iggy. Which is which?

Thus far, Ping Lacson hasn’t "proven" that P460 million in 12 bank accounts exist in the name of "Jose Pidal". And yet, the public is ready to believe the worst. It’s a sad case of tit for tat. The GMA Administration, led by intelligence Chief, Brig. Gen. Victor Corpus, went for Lacson’s jugular by accusing him of having hundreds of millions of dollars stashed away in Hong Kong and US banks, alleged loot from criminal activities including narcotics. Neither Corpus, Rosebud nor Ador Mawanay was able to prove anything. And Ador, like Udong Mahusay yesterday, has flip-flopped.

The Kuratong Baleleng case was even dredged up anew to harass Lacson.

Now that Lacson is shooting back, he’s scoring hits. His presentations have the acute quality of "show biz" wizardry. He’s being sued for libel, but he has been inflicting maximum damage. He doesn’t even have to prove much, even the mere hint of more exciting photographs still in his possession has aroused the curiosity of a prurient public, and succeeded in sending the gossip-mills into overdrive and overtime.

And after the verbal nuke-attack of Chapter Two, there’s still Chapter Three to come. Lacson’s advance publicity about that is already in high-gear.

I grieve for the "hardworking wife", too. I worry about our country and our society. All those Television Specials and Radio Revelations are doing us no good. We’re a nation which seems bent on self-destruction by drowning ourselves in a whirlpool of criticism, cynicism and despair.

Even that futile, coming "political summit" won’t cure anything. It will, as always, be mostly talk with very little sincerity. Most of those who participate will be there just to make a splash, talk the President and everybody else to death, then go back to doing what they’ve been doing: Trying to claw their way upwards towards their own selfish goals while stoking the fires of their own vaulting ambition.

I’m afraid that only a change of heart on the part of our leaders and politicians – and our people themselves, too – will do. Alas, in this land, miracles are in short supply.

Yet, for all our foibles, I still believe the Filipino is like Ivory Soap. He floats. When I hear all that despondent talk in our coffee shops, I seem to remember similar doom-and-gloom expressions voiced in the coffee shops of our journalistic youth, the old Taza de Oro and the Country Bake Shop, or the Front Page (jointly owned by the late Ka Doroy and a bunch of us aspiring columnists), or, for the "elite", the overhanging coffee shop of the Botica Boie on The Escolta – when The Escolta was the main street of our still-less-polluted metropolis. The coffee wags wailed, then, that the country was going to the dogs, or worse, to the politicians.

Perhaps we’re not really in hell. As Harry S. Truman, the late US President who confounded the media, once remarked: "I don’t give them hell. I just tell the truth and they think it is hell."

In our land, Truth doesn’t set you free. Truth hurts.

The real question, and the real challenge: Having discovered the painful Truth, what are we going to do about it?

* * *

I can’t reveal his name until somebody else announces it, or we get scooped by another newspaper, since I was asked to keep it secret when President GMA told us at the lunch we had in Clark (the Diosdado Macapagal international airport building).

I was sitting beside the Chief Executive when she revealed her choice of the next National Defense Secretary, but what she said was directed to an entire table of six others, including the American and Japanese Ambassadors. Now, the chosen fellow’s name appears to be all over town.

How can you keep a secret in a town which has no secrets, and a whisper can be faster than a speeding bullet?

In any event, I’ll wait for somebody else to announce it. Let me just say that former President Fidel V. Ramos has already asserted that the gentleman concerned is his own (FVR’s) choice. This should remind GMA that the ex-general she mentioned is basically an FVR man. Is he hers? This remains to be seen.

Yes, in the end, GMA didn’t really look for a "civilian" to name to the top DND post, so that civilian authority over the military can be emphasized. That idea was a non-starter from its conception. This is because, quite clearly, GMA feels that her security of tenure depends on the support of the military.

I didn’t argue with her over her choice at the time, because there were two major diplomats and other VIPs at the table. This would have been unseemly. I did manage to whisper that my main caveat was that he belonged to the "Surrender Gang", dating back to being at the scene of the creation of the Tripoli Agreement. (Has his attitude changed?) I’ll say no more until the matter is clarified.

The President, of course, intends to continue holding the concurrent position of Defense Secretary until US President George W. Bush arrives on October 18th for his very brief State Visit. This will last only a few hours, but already the US government is spending millions of dollars to beef up its Chief Executive’s security and the infrastructure meant to bolster that security. (We’d better get Fathur Rohman al-Ghozi fast – but no press releases, please, about his impending arrest, or whatever.)

This paranoia isn’t confined to Dubya’s visit to the Philippines. They’re reportedly going bonkers in Bangkok over security concerns involving that big powwow of Chiefs of State to which Bush is headed: The Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) Summit. The arrest of Hambali (alias Riduan Isamuddin) last month in Thailand shows that the vicious Jemaah Islamiyah terrorist gang, a branch of al-Qaeda, has already been eyeballing the coming APEC conference. An attack on the APEC might be imminent.

Security concerns in the region haven’t been helped by the acquittal yesterday by an Indonesian Court of the fire-breathing Indonesian cleric, Abu Bakar Baasyir, accused of attempting to overthrow the Indonesian government by assassinating President Megawati Sukarnoputri and bombing Christian churches on Christmas Eve in the year 2000.

The court appears to have found the allegations against Abu Bakar Baasyir "circumstantial", and stated it hasn’t even demonstrated he is the chief of the Jemaah Islamiyah. The court further cleared the Islamic fundamentalist preacher of "treason".

This is a victory for the hardliners from the fanatical pesantren or Muslim schools in Java which preach intolerance and hatred of infidels, such as the Pesantren al Mukmin in Solo (Surakarta) in Central Java founded by Baasyir himself. Under its current director, Wahyuddin, the school continues to turn out 1,800 graduates annually. The other day, as reported by Timothy Mapes of The Asian Wall Street Journal in a piece datelined Ngruki, 15-year old students chanted, "God is great!" "Hang the Jews", and "America – terrorist!" The enthusiastic kids pounded their desks in delight as they chanted that mantra and swore the defense of their Islamic faith.

There you go.

* * *

What’s happening today? An elective official from Pampanga informed me that mayors from that province received "instructions" yesterday to bring thousands of people from their bailiwicks to stage a rally at the EDSA Shrine as an expression of support for GMA. It’s fine for Kapampangans to show support for their "native daughter", but it appears the main motive from mobilizing that snap rally is the fear that a large crowd of anti-GMA rallyists has been programmed to congregate at the same venue.

The pro-GMA demonstrators are scheduled to be transported to the EDSA Shrine on buses "borrowed" for the purpose by a Department of Transportation and Communications (DOTC) official. The bus operators who were "asked" to contribute their buses to this effort gratis et amore are, of course, not happy to have their buses commandeered.

This newest move simply adds fuel to the resentment simmering within the bus industry concerning recent high-handed moves by the Palace. Industry sources complain that decisions affecting them, such as the appointment of persons they don’t know to vital positions without previous consultation are being inexplicably made. Among the other sources of discontent is the volatile price of diesel which is a major cost item in transport operations. Now, commandeering buses for a political rally, without compensating the operators for the time and income lost, and the expense in employees’ pay and fuel, is another money-losing proposition.

Fair is fair. The government collects taxes and penalizes those who don’t pay them. Why shouldn’t the government, in turn, pay for the services it exacts from both citizens and corporations?