Why does everybody, with Imeldific now included, want to be Mayor of Manila?

Ilocos Norte Rep. Imee R. Marcos made a usually dry and hot day more interesting when she suddenly announced in an impromptu statement that her mom might run for Mayor of Manila next year.

Did this declaration come directly from mama, Mrs. Imelda Romualdez Marcos? One reporter asked. "Well," Imee reportedly smiled and shrugged: "I’ll call her up now and tell her about it."

Imee’s contention is that her 76-year old mother, a former Metro Manila Governor (who built the Cultural Center, along with other buildings owing, they used to quip, to her Edifice Complex), would win hands down.

She is supposed to formally declare her candidacy in the next few months – if she decides to throw her shoes into the ring (normally, we say "hat," but Imelda is known all over the planet as The Shoe Lady). I remember Imee, who adored her dad, the late Dictator Ferdinand E. Marcos but was not as enthusiastic about her "Superma’am" mommy, wearing an eye-catching blouse a couple of years ago while being interviewed on television. When her interviewer called her attention to it, Imee laughed and remarked: "I call this my Imelda blouse."

The TV camera zoomed in for a closer look, and televiewers guffawed to see it imprinted with shoes all over the silky fabric.

If Imeldific gets into the race, the speculation is that money will flow. Despite her protestations of "poverty," it’s suspected that Madam has access to some, if not most of the Marcos wealth – which is definitely greater than Yamashita’s Treasure.

In any event, as I remarked in this corner only the other day, the contest for the Mayor’s chair in the Manila City Hall is getting more heated. Now, it’s even more interesting.

One of the main contenders is, of course, the son of incumbent Mayor Lito Atienza, namely Ali Atienza – unless Cha-Cha gets approved, then, with term limits abolished, Lito himself might run again. Since the Commission on Elections shot down the Cha-Cha fast-break scheme, unless Congress comes up with a more viable alternative, then Lito – after three terms – is definitely out. (Will he throw, in a pinch, his weight behind Imeldific? some wags are already asking).

The most serious challengers are Senator (and former Manila Mayor) Fred Lim, who wants an "avenging" comeback and vows to prioritize, as he did in the past, the fight against violent crime and the drug octopus. The other is former PNP Director General and Chief of Police, Senator Panfilo "Ping" Lacson – who’s also a heavyweight and heavy-puncher in the Law and Order issue.

Other wannabes are former Manila Rep. Mark Jimenez (back from jail in America); sitting Vice-Mayor Danny Lacuna and Councilor Joey Hizon. Others may be running for "the Funds of it."

Coming back to Imelda, even though she’s from Leyte, she was once the beautiful "Miss Manila" during the rule of the late Manila Mayor Arsenio H. Lacson.

Now, that was a real blood-and-guts Mayor! Hizzoner, a former sports and political columnist, not only had a double-barreled shotgun to blast criminals away, but a double-barreled mouth which was feared by both friend and foe. Once, when the going got rough, "Arsenic" growled: "I feel like a dope in shining armor!"

Lacson balanced the budget for the first time, got rid of deficits – and the corrupt bureaucrats and crooks who originally infested City Hall and created those deficits. Despite his picaresque ways, Lacson was so honest that when he died of a heart attack in the penthouse of the no longer existing Hotel Filipinas (it got burned to the ground three years later) it was discovered that Arsenic had no hidden nest egg, nor any savings in the bank. Certainly no bank accounts in San Francisco or Munich.

The late Mayor had not even managed to pay off the mortgage of his home on Earnshaw street in Sampaloc, just a bit away from the University of Sto. Tomas. Friends had to pitch in to pay the mortgage, so his widow and family wouldn’t be thrown out, roofless into the street.

Such a dope really by current political standards and practices. But, as he quipped in self-derision, with armor shining bright. Oh, Arsenic. In these cynical times, how much those of us who knew you – miss you! As one lady judge said of Lacson: "He was a good man, with a bad mouth." What better tribute could be paid a man when he’s laid to his rest.

There are too many whose mouths drip with honey, but whose hearts are black.

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Armed Forces Chief of Staff Hermogenes Esperon Jr., will be our Guest of Honor and Speaker on 9/11 – yes, next Monday, September 11 – the anniversary of the terrorist attacks on the Twin Towers in New York and the Pentagon – on the subject of how the Philippines is fighting terrorism and insurgency.

The occasion will be Armed Forces Night, sponsored by our Manila Overseas Press Club (MOPC) at 7:30 p.m. that evening in the Grand Ballroom of the Manila Inter-Continental Hotel in Makati.

Since our armed forces are in Sulu and Basilan in force, hunting for the Abu Sayyaf terrorist Chieftain Khadaffy Janjalani, the mastermind of the Bali Bombings, Jemaah Islamiyah bomb-master Dulmatin (with a price of $10 million on his head) and other JI terrorists, Esperon’s men are in the forefront of the struggle.

They are also battling the Communist terrorists-cum-extortionists of the New People’s Army, and have lately accused Communist Party of the Philippines and NPA (CPP/NPA) top honchos, from founder Joma Sison – living in and directing operations from his bolthole in Utrecht, Holland – and even a Party-List Congressman of having allegedly ordered the purges of "comrades" in our homegrown version of the Killing Fields.

These and other exciting topics are on the table next Monday night. Abangan, the next announcement.

We must not forget that the Philippines has become a major "base" in the Asian operations of al-Qaeda.

As early as 1988, Osama bin Laden had dispatched his brother-in-law, Mohammed Jamal Khalifa to our country to recruit fighters for the war in Afghanistan. A university friend of bin Laden’s, Khalifa himself was engaged in radical politics and was a senior member of the Muslim Brotherhood in his native Lebanon. Indeed, records show that between 1985 and 1987, Khalifa had run the Peshawar (Pakistan) office of the Saudi Muslim World League, where he trained and sent off volunteers to fight against the occupying Russians in Afghanistan.

Moreover, Khalifa had close links to bin Laden’s top financiers, Wael Jalaidin and Yasin al Qadi, the latter "charity" later designated by both the Saudi and US governments as a "terrorist front." (I quote from the book of Zachary Abuza, entitled "Militant Islam in Southeast Asia: Crucible of Terror.")

Anyway, bin Laden saw the potential of jihad in the southern Philippines. He had Khalifa travel through the Moro region to recruit and "facilitate" the travel of would-be jihadis to Pakistan – then onwards by infiltration into Afghanistan. Leaving the Philippines briefly in 1990, he returned the following year to "establish a permanent al-Qaeda network."

Marrying a Filipino wife, Alice "Jameela" Yabo, the sister of a young Islamic student at Mindanao State University, Ahmad Al Hamwi (better known later as Abu Omar), he cemented ties with the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) and other Islamic fundamentalists. Marrying into the community was a tactic successfully employed by al-Qaeda in Southeast Asia. Osama’s brother-in-law then set up a rattan furniture import-export company as his business front, named Khalifa Trading Industries, procuring his products mostly from the Muslim areas. This enterprise provided the cover for bringing funds into the country. He expanded into other enterprises like Da’l Immam Al Shafee, Inc., E.T. Dizon Travel, Pyramid Trading and Manpower Services, a realty firm. The latter company was utilized to secure "visas" for recruits travelling to Pakistan and Afghanistan.

His major contribution, though, was to establish several Islamic "charities" used to channel funding to Muslim insurgents and terrorist cells.

In his remarkably well-researched book, Abuza revealed that Khalifa became the regional director of a wealthy Saudi-based charity, the Islamic International Relief Organization, "responsible not just for projects in the Philippines but also in Indonesia, Thailand and Taiwan."

Ironically, Abuza disclosed, the IIRO had actually been set up in 1978 but co-opted by Saudi Arabian intelligence in order to serve as a financial conduit for Saudi, US, and Gulf-state funding to the mujahidin in Afghanistan.

Mind you, the US was working, along with the SIS (intelligence) in Pakistan, to help the jihadis – including, no doubt, a younger Osama – in overthrowing the Soviet-run regime in Kabul. The Americans even provided the anti-Russian underground with Stinger Missiles. Sanamagan. How the worm turns. Yesterday’s allies are now today’s sworn enemies. (Saddam Hussein was once hailed as a buffer against "evil" Iran. Now he’s in the docket being "tried" for his crimes against the Iraqi people – and the world. As for Iran, in the eyes of the Americans and the "Allied" world, it has not become less evil.)

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Khalifa’s IIRO was registered in the Philippines’ Securities & Exchange Commission on September 20, 1991, with offices listed as in Makati, and in some cities in Mindanao like Cotabato and Zamboanga.

As the Hamas did in Palestine and the Hezbollah in Lebanon, the IIRO also did good community work, funded schools, medical clinics, helped the poor, and provided salutary services, so as to build up good will through real charity work, while converting certain segments of the Moro population into "agents." Massive funding was also provided the MILF, although the MILF now denies it.

Khalifa finally skipped, having completed his network. Among his and bin Laden’s achievements was that they were able to bring 200 undocumented Filipinos and 600 Islamic scholars to Pakistan. The Russians themselves complained that at least 50 Moros were trained in the 55 camps and bases maintained by bin Laden inside Afghanistan. Many of them fought in the Taliban’s 8th Division. As always Pakistan has remained a vital link in the fight against terror. With men who were recently rounded up by Britain’s Scotland Yard and M-I5 and face charges in the conspiracy to blow up 10 US commercial jets over the Atlantic happen to be of Pakistan descent, and some had recently visited Pakistan and Kashmir.

If you’ll recall, during the regime of the late Pakistani President Mohammed Zia al-Haq, in the year 2000, there were 10,000 madrassahs operating in Pakistan with about 1.5 million students. These strict religious schools devoted to Koranic studies, had, during the 1980s, as many as 100,000 foreigners (mainly Arabs) attending "classes," where they made contacts with jihad and established international Islamic networks.

Only lately, Pakistan’s President, Gen. Pervez Musharraff has cracked down at last – and banned and evicted all foreign students from his madrassahs. That tells you something.