Like a revival of the Rainbow

Former Speaker Joe de Venecia’s well-attended birthday December 26 was like a revival of his old Rainbow Coalition, with representatives from the Administration like presidential brother Buboy Macapagal and Deputy Speaker Simeon A. Datumanong and mostly those from the opposition including militants like former Defense Secretary Fortunato Abat, business, civil society, and foreign ambassadors. 

In an impromptu conference with several journalists, De Venecia said that while he and former President Fidel Ramos were fighting a rear-guard battle against the Lakas-Kampi merger and lost at the Comelec, he has now gone to the Supreme Court in a last-ditch effort to retrieve the Lakas Christian-Muslim Democrats (CMD) Party, which he co-founded with FVR and the late Foreign Secretary Raul Manglapus.

De Venecia remains chairman of CDI Asia-Pacific, Asian counterpart of Christian Democrats International (CDI), which includes French President Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel, and which has the majority in the European Parliament. JDV remains concurrently vice-president of CDI; FVR is still president-emeritus.

JDV’s great achievement this year, as founder-chairman of the International Conference of Asian Political Parties (ICAPP) with South Korean leader Chung Eui-yong, secretary general, and former Pakistan presidential candidate Sen. Mushahid Hussain Sayed was in finalizing the partnership between Asia’s ruling and opposition parties with the political parties of Latin America and the Caribbean, under COPPAL, headed by senior statesmen respectively from Argentina and Mexico, Antonio Cafiero and Gustavo Carvajal Moreno. The Asian parties include the Communist Party of China under President Hu Jin Tao, India’s ruling Congress Party under Sonia Gandhi, Japan’s new ruling Democratic Party under Premier Yukio Hatoyama, and the United Russia Party of Premier Putin.

The Asian and Latin American political parties represent 50 percent of the Earth’s total land area, 68 percent of its population, and 53 percent of its gross product.

Speaking in Buenos Aires with Argentine President Cristina Kirchner, a member of the G-20, and then in Astana, Kazakhstan in Central Asia, the Asian and Latin American political leaders further approved JDV’s proposal to establish a working partnership between the Asian and Latin American political parties with the political parties of Africa, under the aegis of the African Union, headed by Libya’s visionary Leader Col. Muammar Al-Gaddafi, who endorsed JDV’S ICAPP-COPPAL proposal for a tri-continental alliance.

The conference of the ruling and opposition political parties of Asia, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean including their standing committees will likely be held in April or June 2010 in Tripoli in North Africa.

 In Kazakhstan, in the heartland of Central Asia and Eurasia, JDV proposed a well-received central article of faith for the Asian political parties. His proposal rejected any resort to intimidation or violence as a means of settling disputes, opposed separatism and urged instead the negotiated political settlement of all problems within and between the states represented.

It sought reconciliation in all of Asia’s conflict zones — from the Koreas to the Taiwan Straits — from Mindanao through Southern Thailand to Nepal — from Kashmir and Afghanistan to Iraq and Palestine — and from Chechnya to the Caucasus.

“In unity, we seek to eradicate poverty and political corruption — speed up the political and economic integration of our Continent — and bring about the Asian Century.”

In the international system, he said “there is a great scope for ruling parties and multi-party coalitions to substitute for governments necessarily restrained by legalism and protocol — particularly in easing conflicts that have grave implications for war or peace well beyond their territorial limits.”

With the India and Pakistan governments continuously deadlocked over Kashmir, de Venecia proposed that the ruling and opposition parties of India and Pakistan revive and begin informal talks to assist their governments, availing of party-to-party and parliamentary diplomacy. He said the process could also help solve the problems in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

While anti-administration at home, de Venecia continues to earn credits and continues to bring prestige to the Philippines abroad. He said “partisan politics must stop at the ocean’s edge.” His interfaith dialogue, approved by the United Nations, has now become a model, to help reduce Christian-Muslim tensions and conflicts in various parts of the world. His large debt-swaps and debt-vs-climate change proposal are on the global agenda and endorsed by Germany and Italy, which are now ready to implement for the Philippines, reduce our foreign debt and help finance our anti-poverty, anti-climate change projects. Foreign leaders continuously ask him about his historic dollar-remittance program which he devised and implemented in 1968, became a model for Pakistan, Bangladesh, Turkey, India, Thailand, and Egypt which have large communities abroad. JDV’s dollar remittance program has earned more than $230 billion since 1968 and some $17 billion alone in 2009, continuously keeping the Philippine economy afloat, for which JDV received many decorations, following his pioneering projects in the Arab world.

Now, he is campaigning among bankers to help reduce the costs of remittances for our 10-million Filipinos abroad.

JDV, after an unprecedented five-time election as House Speaker, is not running for any office. His wife, Gina who initiated the “Haven for Women,” which has treated almost 20,000 raped women, and the “Haven for Drug-Dependent Street Children” is running in Pangasinan’s 4th District. She also built a Center for hundreds of thousands of mothers who lost a son or a daughter to help them through their bereavement, and to honor their daughter KC who perished in a fire, and helped build the new Home for Senior Citizens. His son Joey de Venecia III, has climbed from 20th to 16th to 14th to 12th place in the SWS, Pulse Asia and Stratpols surveys, on his own steam. He was the pioneer and launched the first call center in the Philippines.  

In a meeting with the European Union chief envoy on solutions for Burma, Peiro Fassino, who called on him last month, de Venecia said the reconciliation formula should embody a “government of national unity” as the exit strategy for both the democrat Aung San Suu Kyi and the camp of the military dictators with power-sharing between the President and Prime Minister and in the Cabinet. JDV said it is the only viable formula as well to unite the fractious parties in the Philippines after the crucial elections in May; this he calls “reconciliation with moral revolution.”

In the presence of European Ambassadors Luis Airos Romero and Alistair MacDonald, JDV asked EU to deploy EU monitors for our May elections, together with US and Asean + 3 representatives, to watch the first electronic polls, and pressure the politicians to “insure a presidential proclamation on time.”

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