More than intrigues made Cruz resign

Two peeves crossed Nonong Cruz’s mind before resigning as defense secretary. He hates leaving work unfinished. Even more, he hates lingering where he’s uncomfortable. When the latter prevailed, the questions floated: Wasn’t Cruz always considered one of President Gloria Arroyo’s closest trusted confidantes as long-time personal lawyer and first presidential chief legal counsel? So how come he suddenly felt unwanted in her cabinet?

The "official unofficial" explanation, from voluble Malacañang chief of staff Mike Defensor, is that Cruz simply got fed up with intrigues. The two chatted after Cruz’s tête-à-tête with Arroyo Sunday afternoon, and Defensor tried to talk him out of resigning. But "he had made up his mind," marking his resignation letter "irrevocable" because, Defensor said, "he can no longer stand the situation."

Then again, intrigues are common in Malacañang, as in any office big or small. Cabinet members are expected to get used to it. Newcomers invariably are warned not only about the low pay and high stress of the job, but also the deep bites from the snake pit that is the Palace. Management books counsel how to play along, or else lose by default. Cruz, although used to being boss in the law firm he had founded in the ’80s with Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio and Pancho Villaraza, can only be sufficiently inured. After all, he has been with the cabinet since Jan. 2001.

So, if it’s not the intrigues per se, what was the situation that Cruz found unbearable? He gave a hint to The STAR days before the surprise departure. Three cabinet colleagues wanted him out, he confided, because of his stand against the People’s Initiative to switch to parliamentary form. He declined to name the trio, but implied they were pissed with his public remark, after the Supreme Court had junked the petition, that it was from the start a "legally harebrained idea ... designed to suit a particular agenda."

Two Cabinet big shots immediately reacted to that, in a way sparing Cruz from having to identify them. Presidential Legislative Liaison Gabriel Claudio acknowledged having had differences with Cruz about the agenda, but that he thought all along they would go on exchanging views. Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez tartly remarked that Cruz was seeing ghosts, and that he never had a tiff with him about anything. Yet, from reports, Cruz as defense chief often was at loggerheads with Gonzalez who heads the cabinet cluster on security. The latter supposedly had wanted to declare martial law in Oct. 2005 at the height of the Hello Garci exposé, and again in Feb. 2006 upon the discovery of a coup plot against Arroyo. Both times Cruz prevented it from happening.

Going by his self-explanations, it would seem Gonzalez took such policy defeats in stride. But Malacañang insiders recall Cruz during those occasions smarting from gossip that he was about to be sacked for frailty in defending the President. Insinuations were that Gonzalez caused such talk to spread.

More recently Gonzalez reportedly blamed the Initiative’s defeat on Cruz and his law partners. It was another provocation. On record it was Justice Carpio who penned the majority decision to invalidate the 6.3 million signatures for the holding of a plebiscite on parliament shift. But from the cabinet also sprouted a rumor that Villaraza had exerted influence to make Justices Adolfo Azcuna and Consuelo Ynares Santiago go against the Initiative at the last minute, thus making it a slim but still decisive 8-7 vote. An irate Villaraza let it be known to the legal community that he never lobbied or disrespected the Tribunal, but that the President’s legal advisers were belittling the justices with whispers of tradeoffs. It was Villaraza’s turn this time to be hit in newspaper blind items.

Defeat in the High Court left Arroyo’s two parties, Lakas and Kampi, looking for scapegoats. Repercussions supposedly would lead to defeat in the 2007 mid-term elections. According to political observers, blame should be on the two leaders: Speaker Jose de Venecia of Lakas, supposedly for unbridled ambition to become prime minister in a new parliament; and Interior Sec. Ronaldo Puno, for secretly running the signature drive, then stating after the defeat that he was against the Initiative after all. But nobody does that to party bosses and gets away with it. Somebody else had to be lynched. And that was to be Cruz, for disowning the Initiative.

Persons close to Cruz say the third cabinet member he tussled with was Eduardo Ermita no less. The Executive Secretary is considered the Little President and general manager of the cabinet, and this may explain Cruz’s resignation. In the end, it was not the intrigues that did him in, but a run-in with his boss. And that is why he saw no other decent recourse but to leave. Cruz recognized the authority vested in the position; he had served several times as Arroyo’s acting Executive Secretary.

Ermita has said nothing so far about Cruz’s departure. It is uncharacteristic of somebody who, like Cruz, had served as defense chief and thus knows the political implications on a restive military of an unexplained resignation. Perhaps he will break his silence in the next few days.

Cruz seemed to have been up against a concerted campaign to oust him. Even before the Supreme Court decision and his unflattering remarks about the Initiative, nasty e-mails were circulating against him, Carpio, Villaraza and another law partner, the resigned Ombudsman Simeon Marcelo. It will be recalled that Cruz had just sat two months as defense chief when Marcelo as Ombudsman ordered the suspension of Armed Forces comptroller Maj. Gen. Carlos Garcia. The subsequent investigation for plunder of P302 million sped up the reforms that Cruz was planning for a military establishment in which generals tended to protect each other. But the recent e-mails made it look like the two, plus Carpio and Villaraza, were the vilest persons to serve Arroyo or the government. One item even alleged that Cruz was supposed to have joined the "Hyatt Ten" cabinet members in breaking from Arroyo in June 2005 – a rumor denied many times by then-presidential chief of staff Rigoberto Tiglao.

The e-mails had circulated several times over in Malacañang. One can only guess whether Cruz’s higher-ups believed the item about his supposed disloyalty at the height of the Garci controversy. If they did, then Cruz made the right decision that "the time has come" to leave. He was said to have persistently argued for institutional reforms in the cabinet, when the mood of colleagues was only for Arroyo’s survival after Garci. That clash of ideas is irreconcilable.

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