John Howard’s victory in Australia gives Bush a much-needed boost

Let’s call a spade a spade – or, as the late Manila Mayor "Arsenic" Lacson put it, "a damn dirty shovel".

The Sydney Morning Herald rang me up from overseas yesterday to ask this writer how Filipinos are reacting to Australia’s Prime Minister John Howard’s being re-elected to a fourth term, trouncing his Labor Party challenger, Mark Latham, with an unexpectedly big majority.

In sum, Howard, 65, licked Latham, 43, despite the Aussies, in recent poll surveys, expressing themselves strongly against Oz’s participation in the Iraq War. Indeed, US President George W. Bush had even been angrily accused of "meddling" when he praised Howard as an ally in the "coalition" and verbally rubbished Latham’s stand as incredible.

I guess Australians decided to vote for the devil they know – perhaps much more confident in Howard and his experience. After all, for all their griping, Australians see their economy growing (an upswing of 13 years, much of it attributable to Howard and his Liberals), inflation low, interest rates comfortable, and unemployment at an all-time low. When all is said and done, how can you argue with that?

Howard, a "Westie", was a lackluster politician until just three to four years ago when he showed his mettle; the ability to make hard, unpolitical decisions. If going into Iraq, and being assailed as Bush’s "poodle" was one of those decisions, Howard grit his teeth, stayed on course – and this paid off.

Of course, both Howard and Latham made extravagant promises to the voters, and Howard, presumably, will now have to deliver on some of them. Latham had vowed he would, if elected, bring Australia’s 800 troops "home from Iraq by Christmas". Let’s see what Howard does.

He didn’t waffle and never said he’d bring the Diggers home, nor did he – unlike Latham – pledge to "apologize" to the Aborigines for the abominable way the Whites had treated them during the early years. "What’s there to apologize for" has been Howard’s theme.

The Abo’s, alas, will have to remain in the Dream Time, with the Didgeridoo men sounding off mournfully beside the Boree log – but, after all, from what I’ve seen as one who’s covered Down Under off and on for 25 years, they’re getting a square deal today, in contrast to the bad old half-century. Australia has also long ago junked the "White Australia" policy, and, wow, the Chinese-Australian immigrants have begun talking over!

But I exaggerate a bit, perhaps.

The fact is that Howard’s triumph has given his crony, Dubya Bush, a much-needed boost.

In the second debate, which many of us watched with great interest last Friday morning (carried "live" on CNN), Bush – emerging from his blue funk of the previous encounter – fought John Kerry to a draw. Kerry was smooth and did well, reinforcing his "presidentiable" image, and courageously saying "I’m a former Altar boy" (until JFK it used to be a liability to declare oneself a Roman Catholic). In the meantime, though, Bush had recovered his balance, argued forcefully and even compellingly – and, obviously, had regained his sense of humor. (He even got himself a better tailor for the second debate.)

Now, with the surveys calling it a draw, Dubya and Kerry are running neck-and-neck. The final debate in St. Louis, Missouri will be a make-or-break one.

Bush, moreover, enjoys the equity of the incumbent. Unless he stumbles badly, and manages to finesse that final face-off, he’s headed for four more years in the White House. the caveat remains: There’s many a slip twixt cup and lip.

"Read my lips," Dubya’s father, George the Original, once said about taxes. Dubya was careful not to use that fatal line.

Howard beat Latham, probably, because he hammered away successfully at his rival’s youth and inexperience. Will Bush manage to do the same?

To return to the question of the Sydney Morning Herald, I reported yesterday that Filipino had no reaction, because it was a lazy Sunday afternoon, everybody was out in the malls, or at the beach, or playing golf, and hadn’t heard the news. But we’ve no quarrel with neither Howard nor even his nasty-tongued Foreign Secretary Alexander Downer who called us "marshmallows" for having brought our ridiculously small contingent of 51 Filipino soldiers and policemen home, abandoning the "coalition" in Iraq to "save" Angelo de la Cruz.

Sanamagan. We’ve called ourselves worse names than that.

The next time Howard and Downer come here, we’ll invite them to a Marshmallow Roast.

What we resent about Australia really, I told the Herald correspondent, is that their government thinks up all sorts of ridiculous excuses for not importing our mangoes, bananas and other agricultural products, while selling us cattle, beef, and lots of other stuff.

As for Howard and Downer uttering those bad things about us, it’s only what’s to be expected of those larrikins and Ockers from the Antipodes. They’re quick to insult each other, too – it’s part of their everyday conversation.

Many of them, as we do, suffer from diarrhea of the mouth.

Sus, if we have the "crab mentality", they’ve got the same defect, couched in different terms. They call it the "tall poppies" syndrome. It goes this way: Once a poppy flower raises its head above the rest, it gets quickly scythed down.

As Rudyard Kipling once remarked about "the colonel’s Lady and Judy O’Grady," we’re brothers under the skin.

* * *

It looks like "Rambo" Rafa Ortigas (despite his oxygen mask) is going the macho route, and, backed up by the real boss of the complex, Rex Drilon, Jr. II, is determined to inaugurate that Muslim "Mosque" in the Greenhills Shopping Center this Friday – ramming through that date in order to present angry Greenhills residents and those of the surrounding condominiums with a fait accompli.

The Ortigas Gang will bleat that it’s coming to Ramadan, and Friday – the holy day of the Muslims – will be the "perfect" date for the big inaugural.

As for Mr. Warner Manning, president of the Hongkong Shanghai Banking Corporation, which owns and presumably has a say about 38 percent of the Greenhills Shopping Center (bigger than Rafa’s 28 percent), is he – as his fellow Brits put it – doing a bunk? Manning cancelled a September 19th luncheon appointment with me – originally scheduled not for the purpose of discussing the current explosive controversy but for matters pertaining to the HSBC, his bank, and The STAR. The word we got from his Vice President is that Mr. Manning is leaving for abroad, and not coming back till November. Aha! Is it possible Manning, who’s also a Manila Polo Club director, by the way, is trying to avoid the controversy, washing his hands of the deal, and trying to say: "Who, me?"

Yesterday afternoon, the Presidents and leaders of the Federation of Greenhills met again in Club Filipino. Let’s see what move they make to head off the fast-break stab at giving the Moros a "base" disguised as a Mosque or Muslim Prayer Room in the new Parking Building being rushed, working all-night-long at warp-speed in the Shopping Center.

The question is: Do Rafael Ortigas, Rex Drilon, the Hongkong Shanghai Bank, and the Ortigas Gang have the clout to defy San Juan Mayor JV Ejercito?

Last Wednesday (October 6), the heads of Northeast Greenhills, North Greenhills, West Greenhills, and other leaders of the residents, led by Mr. Carlos B. Yam, Atty. Don Alviar, Mr. Crisanto Sy, Mr. George Barcelon, Mr. Ed Carrascoso, Atty. Jess Disini and others met with the San Juan Mayor in City Hall, along with Vice Mayor Leonardo G. Celles, Municipal Administrator Atty. Ranulfo BA Dacalos and Councilors Domingo M. Sese and Dante E. Santiago.

Mayor Ejercito assured the group he would always take the concerns of San Juan residents, especially those in Greenhills over those of "transients" (for example, the Moro vendors and shop-owners). After consulting with the city hall’s building officials, Mayor Ejercito confirmed:

(1) That there is no building permit issued for a mosque nor a prayer room in the Greenhills Shopping Center (GSC); (2) That the permit issued to the GSC was for the construction of a parking building only; and (3) That the plans which were submitted by the GSC (as pointed out by Architect Romeo B. Gonzales) merely stated that the area obviously "intended" by Ortigas and Company for the Mosque) is just described as "rentable space".

Will JV Ejercito stick to the agreement of last Wednesday then (it was tape-recorded) – or will he do a surprising U-turn? Abangan ang susunod na kabanata.

* * *

The aggressive Muslim Imams and leaders have been meeting every few days in their "headquarters" on the third floor of Virramall, determined to push through their plan of securing a "base" in the form of a prayer room cum Mosque. Incidentally, do you know what Osama bin Laden’s terrorist organization’s name means: "Al-Qaeda" in Arabic means "The Base".

Will the new Muslim "base" in the North Greenhills Shopping Center – if they successfully implant it there with the wholehearted cooperation of Rafa Ortigas, Rex "Datu" Drilon II (and the Hongkong Shanghai Bank?) – amount to the same thing, or something similar? Perish the thought. But there’s the danger. There may be bigger forces at work here.

One alibi being discreetly trotted out is that the Ortigas Company bunch (Datu Rex once let it clip) must appease the Muslim blackmarket vendors and peddlers of "fakes" because they are being serenaded kuno by the competing Ayala Corporation wallahs who operate Makati to desert the Greenhills shopping center and move over to the "market-market" supermall being planned by the Ayalas in their portion of Fort Bonifacio.

The Ortigas group allegedly thinks that the Muslim peddlers – whom I’ve earlier said gross P1 million per day (they’re flush with cash) – have made their Tiangge a big tourist attraction. Busloads of "tourists" – even, they brag, the Queen of Spain (Her Majesty Queen Sophia) once visited to shop – come to the Greenhills "Tiangge" and Virramall to buy pirated and counterfeit items like Louis Vuitton bags, Burberry, Christian Dior, Prada, and other imitation name-brands, etc., as well as smuggled pearls, jewelry, "Schwaroski" adornments, gems, zircons, etc., and, of course, those ubiquitous "pirate" DVDs.

Sure, those fakes may be attractive to tourists and local blackmarket shoppers. But are commerce and greed the end-all and be-all of existence? Then why not rename the complex the "Greed-hill shopping center"? Or the Maranao Shopping Center? They’ll say "Merry Christmas" and sing "Christmas Carols" after all, if it means making a buck.

A complete "boycott" by Christian residents of Greenhills and the surrounding area of the entire Shopping Center and all its shops, restaurants and facilities, including banks, was, I hear, discussed last night. But it’s early days yet.

* * *

The influx of Moro toughs has already been noted during the past year and a half.

Residents who’ve been kicked around recently remark that the Muslim bullies seem to have an instant means of communication: when one is confronted, within minutes dozens of them "appear", rough and ready to fight.

Didn’t the public notice? Every time former Videogram Regulatory Board Chairman (now Senator) Bong Revilla – yep, Captain Bar Bell himself – and more recently, former VRB chief Edu Manzano – "raided" Virramall to confiscate pirated DVDs and other illegal video stuff from the Muslim vendors, they had to be accompanied by fully-uniformed, Armalite-toting policemen in full combat gear. Going to Virramall to confront the "peaceful" Maranao traders in DVDs was, it seemed, like going to war.

And this is what Greenhillers and other residents have been saying they fear. The "war", disguised as religious worship, might be coming to them. It’s not "The Golden Mosque" of Quiapo or the Taguig situation yet – but already the GSC is beginning to look like a sub-province of Mindanao.

Rafa Ortigas, by the way, is snarling that the Greenhillers are sore because we wanted the controversial creek "covered" but this expansion should be used to widen Eisenhower and Annapolis streets so the terrible traffic situation could be eased. That would have made sense, Rafa, but instead the Ortigas Company covered the creek so the company could erect a new shopping complex (the Promenade) and Parking buildings on top of it. Those pillars are anchored in the creek – blocking the passage of water. Isn’t that illegal? That’s the next question.

Oh, well. We’ll have to wait and see how this imbroglio develops.

There are other headaches facing this fractured nation.