That powerful man Robert Ludlum could reveal

Present day readers of fiction have come to like the Jason Bourne series which includes Bourne Identity, Bourne Supremacy and Bourne Ultimatum. I myself was introduced to the author, Robert Ludlum, may his soul rest in peace, in the mid 70s. One morning, while sorting thru “new arrivals”, the term we gave to books that we just received from our sources, (my in-laws owned the Oriental Book Store), I saw the paperback entitled Scarlatti Inheritance. The author was new to me. I liked though what I initially read from the back cover which gave some kind of a summary. It sounded like a Frederick Forsythe and John D. MacDonald work. When I opened that book that evening, I could not put it down till its last page and then, I became a Ludlum ardent reader for years to come.

While the usual characters of the books of Robert Ludlum are powerful men in high places, the turns and twists are difficult to predict. That makes reading his books quite challenging. In most cases, brilliant people and honorable men are involved in bizarre plots against equally high-strung personalities. It would normally happen that those seemingly honorable and respectable people had, towards the end of his work, the most devious mind.

It is this influence of Robert Ludlum in my thought process that makes me examine critically many social and political upheavals in our midst. No, I am not paranoid. It is just that the plot of a Ludlum story is not different to many shocking worldwide incidents. At times, his work finds uncanny similarities to events in the local scene, if one really cares to use his imagination. For instance, the Matarese Circle, written in the late 70s (?), had a distinct semblance among the elite in modern societies. The characters in that book could very well be our rich and powerful neighbors whose outside appearance is rather unbelievably innocent.

So, this early, let me caution you that this article, while not a fiction, challenges your imaginative minds in such a way that some of you may, arrive at unbelievable conjectures.

There was a claim of Her Honor, Cebu Governor Gwendolyn F. Garcia that is worth a second look ala Ludlum. When interviewed on her Sandiganbayan cases, the governor revealed that the timing of the filing of the cases was, to her, a political harassment. Of course, her detractors dismissed her statement. But, the governor was very specific in her claim. She said that the timing of the filing, not the cases themselves, appeared, to be a political harassment.

Like in the “Road to Gandolfo”, an off-beat Ludlum book, sitting atop a high political totem pole always attracts pretenders, some of them serious contenders. That is understandable because power is attendant in high positions. As regards the first Cebu lady governor, she has shown to use the power available to her office. In such display of power, she might have achieved something that could push her to more power. For example, without her tremendous power, she could not have been extra generous to many of our brother Filipinos who have been victims to calamities in various parts of Visayas and Mindanao. Incidentally, that use of power could pave the way for higher, and therefore, more powerful positions.

Like most observers, I agree that nobody among the present officials of the province could be that devious person to engineer the political harassment the governor claimed. Most of them may have recently gone to another political alliance, but, they have remained “friends”. More importantly, they do not have the pull, others call it connection, to move things in the manner the cases were filed in impeccable timing. Neither do I believe that the present national administration had anything to do with it. They would not gain politically with that maneuver.

Having eliminated many primary probable authors, we must proceed to look around. If the governor is destroyed politically, who would benefit most? This beneficiary must be well placed as to be able to pull the caper. But, if he were highly positioned, he would not need that devious move because, he knew, it could backfire. What I am saying is that, in the Ludlum flow of mind, the beneficiary must have the backing of someone close to him whose position, present or past, is so well respected that he could have made a powerful and persuasive phone call to set in motion the event that the governor recently faced and still remain honorable and spotless. If Robert Ludlum were only alive, he could clarify what I only suspect.