Why not Abaya, Alcala, or Abad as Roxas’ VP?

Midnight “pabaon” at state agency?

Twenty years after the makeover of Manila’s Smokey Mountain dump, the ex-squatters have yet to receive the titles to their home lots. Naturally they’re insecure. The state Home Guaranty Corp. (HGC) is withholding their titles for reasons related to fund misuse. Meantime the agency is selling off at giveaway prices the adjacent land reserved for livelihoods. A temporary court order against the selloffs has lapsed. The residents fear that scheming HGC bigwigs would sell their houses next. As is usual in land disputes violence is brewing.

The House of Reps and Commission on Audit have long suggested a settlement. The private reclamation developer R-II Builders has offered to advance P5 billion to cover the HGC’s cash shortage – to no avail. With only ten months left in office, the HGC brass oddly prefers to sell the extra land for a third of R-II Builders’ offer. It smacks of a midnight deal from which the perpetrators would extract “pabaon” (going away present), a congressman says.

That the housing for squatters and garbage scavengers is ending up this way should alarm President Noynoy Aquino. His mom President Cory had envisioned the project, which successor Fidel Ramos finished. State institutions like the Social Security System bankrolled the work. For a P500-million fee the HGC guaranteed the loans. Changes in government specs led to R-II Builders’ cost overruns. The lenders called in the HGC as guarantor. By then suffering from fund mismanagement, the HGC could not repay them. Three administrations later, P-Noy’s appointees still couldn’t raise the money. Lawsuits ensued, as the HGC demanded from R-II Builders P5 billion, not just the P2.9 billion that the developer computed as obligation.

As the HGC hardened its position, interest of P500,000 a day bugged R-II Builders. Caught in the middle was the SSS, the mutual provident fund of private employees, which needs to recoup its P1.5 billion loan to the project. Pressured by lawmakers for a solution that would save the SSS, R-II Builders relented. It offered to advance the P5 billion that HGC was demanding, for later account reconciling.

But the HGC suddenly changed its mind. Opting for a weird alternative, it recently advertised for sale the land on which should rise the shops for wares and services of the squatters-turned-entrepreneurs.

The sale price is a dead giveaway for sleaze. HGC is asking for only P12,000 per square meter, for prime lots beside Manila Bay worth at least double. From the sales, HGC would get a measly P1.9 billion, less than half its P5-billion original demand, and P1 billion less than R-II Builders’ past offer of P2.9 billion. What gives?

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In wooing Grace Poe as vice presidential running mate, Mar Roxas is counting on reflected popularity to boost his presidential bid. It’s like the moon borrowing brightness from the sun. It has been proved that fame is non-transferable. P-Noy’s overwhelming victory in 2010 didn’t pull up Roxas to become VP. But Roxas believes in the impossible.

Still, Roxas might consider getting not an outsider like Poe but a member of his Liberal Party as VP. Two LPs, Vilma Santos and Leni Robredo, have turned him down. But Roxas has more prominent party mates from which to choose. And we don’t mean P-Noy, contrary to the idea of an LP congressman for a Mar-Noynoy team-up in 2016.

Foremost are Cabinet members and household names Joseph Abaya, Proceso Alcala, and Florencio Abad. Throw in as fourth choice Alberto Lina, the Customs chief who is very much in the news lately due to his bright idea against Balikbayan boxes of those good-for-nothing smugglers of little gift items – chocolates, perfume samplers, shampoos-on-sale, and hand-me-down shirts and pants – masquerading as overseas Filipinos.

In terms of geographic representation, Poe is a bad partner to Roxas. They are both Ilonggos, she from Iloilo and he from Capiz, both in Panay Island. That would turn off voters in Luzon and Mindanao.

In contrast, Abaya is from Cavite and Ilocos, Alcala from Quezon, and Abad from Batanes, all in Luzon. That would please the bulk of voters in the so-called Lingayen-to-Lucena corridor. That corridor includes Cavite and Quezon, among the most populous voting provinces. Batanes may be the smallest of all, but it has Abad’s wife as congresswoman. That uniqueness got for the islands a congressional pork barrel in 2011-2012 of P880 million, when bigger districts merited only P70 million each. Lina is from Laguna, also vote-rich.

Abaya is famous among the youth, especially Netizens and rail commuters. Note how millions swarmed in news blogs when he wisely shut up complainers against traffic by saying it doesn’t kill. Alcala is famous among farmers and consumers, given the price spikes of rice and vegetables in 2013-2014. Credit that to his smart pick of assistants to conspire with smuggling cartelists. Abad is famous with white-collar criminals, having conceived the presidential pork barrel DAP. Lina is particularly skillful. Although only a few weeks as Customs chief, he has managed to make himself known to every Filipino family that has a Balikbayan box sender from abroad, which means practically all of us.

Choosing from within the LP would prove Roxas’ sincerity. He is running on a platform of “continuance.” That means more of the same of the LP’s ... you took the words right out of my mouth ... insensitivity and ineptitude.

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