No Senate sessions till October 6, so where will Ping go?

Last Saturday night, I had the opportunity to talk to Senators Edgardo Angara and Rodolfo Biazon, and they told me it wasn’t likely anybody would be able to deliver a privilege speech in the Senate until the Senators come back from their recess and reconvene on October 6th.

Nor, they surmised, will there be enough Senators on hand to mobilize a Senate "hearing".

In this case, where on earth is the just-returned Senator Panfilo Lacson going to explode his threatened third "bombshell"? In the media? In a speech before a civic club? Since the Sphinx has not yet spoken, I’m just like you and Jose Pidal: Still in the dark about Ping Lacson’s intentions – and about what documents he claims to have fished out of the murky waters of his USA connections.

As I’ve said, Lacson is racing against the clock and the calendar. There’s a potential "warrant of arrest" hanging over his head like a Sword of Damocles in connection with the revived Kuratong Baleleng case, and an early date might be put by a lower court on its implementation. Lacson, when pressed, might yet have to do a Houdini.

Whatever ensues and whatever his personal fate in the end, Lacson is ahead on psy-war points and has already inflicted heavy damage. The public is conditioned to believe the worst of this administration – true or false. And if President GMA, as already seems probable rather than merely possible, reneges on her pledge not to run for re-election in 2004, she’ll be regarded as somebody who can’t keep such an important promise. What more lesser promises?

And if Lacson is arrested, you can be certain he won’t be put in the same kind of cell they provided for the likes of terrorist al-Ghozi. You know, a cell with a jail door you can lift out by its hinges. Political terrorists are viewed by this dispensation with far less leniency than merely murderous Jemaah Islamiyah terrorists.

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Governor Rafael Buenaventura of the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas left Saturday for Dubai City, in the United Arab Emirates, to take part in the mammoth annual meeting of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) there.

This conclave of the globe’s banking elite is the financial cum social event of the year in the oil-rich Middle East, hosted by Dubai’s ruling Al Maktoum family, which owns everything there including the splendiferous and towering Burj Al Arab hotel, a palace like Xanadu really, which is taller than Paris’s Eiffel Tower and just 60 meters shorter than the Empire State building in New York. (We won’t mention the Twin Towers, since those exist no longer.)

When we were there last year, we had to stay some kilometers out of town in the excellent Sheraton Jumeirah Beach resort, which was a blessing in disguise, for it abutted the azure waters of the Bay. Why so far off? Because all the downtown hotels, including the two inland Sheratons, were undergoing modernization and facelift, while four other 5-star deluxe hotels were being rushed to completion (to join more than a dozen existing elite hostelries) so Dubai could dazzle the incoming glitterati of the banking world this week.

Indeed, Dubai, which a British captain in 1822 once described as "an assemblage of mud hovels surrounded by a low mud wall", has become the sparkling jewel of the Middle East (replacing civil war ruined Beirut, which is earnestly trying to make a comeback but still falling short of the mark).What I fear is that Paeng Buenaventura, when he attends his first meeting there, might be greeted by foreign central bankers and bank executives with the question: "Aren’t you suspended as Central Bank governor?" What can he say?

Our Court of Appeals Fifth Division, by its weird decision promulgated last August 13 has already embarrassed him and this country worldwide.

In fact, when the CA’s ruling, penned by Appellate Court Justice Eugenio S. Labitoria, was published in all the newspapers and telecast globally by the cable news networks, Governor Buenaventura was attending an important session in Aspen, Colorado – not for skiing, but for a conference of the Institute of Economic Leaders. Wash SyCip can attest to this because he was there. Paul Volcker, the former Fed Chairman (before Alan Greenspan), former Ambassador Steve Bosworth, now Dean of Tufts University for US-Japan/ US-Korean concerns, Jerry Corrigan, managing director of Goldman Sachs and a former Director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and Guillermo Ortiz, Governor of the Central Bank of Mexico were all aghast at the information.

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The Aspen group asked such questions as, "Who is trying to destabilize the government?" and "Who wants to get you out?"

Many believe the second query may be the more pertinent. Is the GMA government, or its favorite "lawyers", attempting to squeeze Buenaventura by foisting on him the disgrace and monetary privation of a one-year "suspension" without pay stemming from the BSP’s decision in the Urban Bank case, so as to induce him to "resign" more than a year before his six-year fixed tenure expires? The suspicious claim that if Buenaventura quits, President Macapagal-Arroyo will be able to appoint a new Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas Governor, whose-six year guaranteed tenure will extend long after the current Presidency of the tenant in Malacañang.

What’s so essential about being Governor of the BSP? The "paranoid" explanation is that the Governor is, in addition, ex officio Chairman of the Anti-Money Laundering Committee, with the Securities and Exchange Chairperson (Lilia Bautista) and the Insurance Commission (Malinis) as its members. You know the rest. Those with "interesting" and unexplained bank accounts would then be "protected". I don’t go, of course, with this sort of paranoia – but the idea gives one pause, doesn’t it?

To restore stability to our banking system and regain our international repute, I hope the Court of Appeals reverses itself – otherwise, we can only trust the Supreme Court will slap this strange "decision" down. Once and for all, let’s stop fiddling with the disciplining of our banks, and our peso’s reliability.

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I don’t know why the government keeps on hoping for that ephemeral $1 billion "aid package" from Washington, DC, touted by its spin doctors as being brought along with him by President George W. Bush when he comes visiting on October 18. To begin with, we didn’t bother to lobby with US Congress, which is the real source of the budget and other goodies, for that aid package to be programmed. Dubya can’t just reach into his Santa Claus sack and come up with lollipops and doles – especially when he’s finding it tough enough to get funding for his other, more urgent concerns.

To begin with, the Iraq "war of attrition" is costing Mr. Bush more than just financial headaches. More Americans have been killed in that "occupied" country than during the actual war, which Bush had declared over in a triumphant announcement from aboard a homebound aircraft carrier last May 1. It took America’s mighty forces only 21 days to punch through to "victory" sweeping – with their British allies – the 350 miles from the Kuwaiti border to downtown Baghdad, and effectively toppling the Saddam Hussein regime which had ruled for over three decades. Now, to their consternation, the American servicemen find themselves still being attacked 15 times daily, losing a man or two each day in the quicksands of Iraq, a grim reminder of their former agony in the quagmire of Vietnam. The Brits, too, have already lost 11 men during the "peacetime" phase of their occupation – bringing to 51 the fatalities they suffered in that country. The government of Tony Blair, in the wake of this and the BBC scandal, has already suffered its first setback in some constituencies.

As for President Bush, a CNN poll released yesterday found that 49 percent of Americans surveyed disapproved of his actions in Iraq, while 47 percent approved – indicating a serious drop in his approval ratings on the issue. With the American President facing elections in a few months, you can literally see the creases on his furrowed brow deepening. Bush, in my estimate, will tough it out – but, in the end, it will be "the economy" thing – the same albatross around the neck which had weighed his dad, George Herbert Walker Bush, down, and plunged him into the pond of Despond. Dubya has nightmares about Papa Bush’s having been a one-term President, and having lost to an upstart Governor from Arkansas, randy Bill Clinton. Will the Bush "curse" be repeated? At this stage, the Democratic line-up of challengers, despite the entry of a general into the lists (Mark is no Ike) doesn’t seem inspiring.

Yet what can we expect from a harried Dubya Bush? As the weeks go by, and domestic problems take the forefront, we may be relegated to the back burner. So let’s not count on too much. Uncle Sam is usually synonymous with Uncle Scrooge, even in the best of times – even more so with the Iraq boondoggle weighing him down.

When all is said and done, self-reliance is always the best policy.