Separating the men from the girls
November 5th, 2003
Of the four likely presidential candidates in 2004, we have so far heard a clear, consistent expression of opposition to the impeachment of Chief Justice Hilario Davide only from Raul Roco.
Fernando Poe Jr. and Panfilo Lacson have both kept their mouths shut. President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo first hemmed and hawed and claimed neutrality when the articles of impeachment passed the house last week.
She did materialize at the flag-raising ceremony at the Supreme Court last Monday, October 27. But that looked like, at best, an attempt to give the lie to Senator Joker Arroyo’s claim that she had colluded with businessman Eduardo Cojuangco in impeaching Davide. At worst it came off as a pathetic effort to curry favor with Davide and those supporting him—of course in aid of her election in 2004.
Roco and his allies in the “third force”—former Cebu Governor Lito Osmena and former Defense Secretary Renato de Villa—had condemned from day one the initiation of impeachment charges against Davide last week.
There being a ban on more than one impeachment charge a year against impeachable officials, and the House having just dismissed an earlier charge against Davide, Roco said the impeachment of Davide was patently unconstitutional.
Roco played a crucial role in the 2000-2001 impeachment of Joseph Estrada, and was among the handful of political figures who best exemplified the ideals of EDSA 2. (Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, the main beneficiary of their efforts, was not among them.) Though still a senator, he served as Secretary of Education in the Arroyo government. He resigned that position when Mrs. Arroyo allowed the filing of graft charges against him in an obvious attempt to undermine his consistent and growing popularity. Roco kept his Aksyon Demokratiko in the People Power Coalition, but broke from it when Mrs. Arroyo reneged last October 4 on her December 2002 pledge not to run in 2004.
Roco had sensed since over a year ago that Mrs. Arroyo was fast losing her popularity while his continued to grow, and understood that one of the reasons for the latter was his identification with the anti-corruption, oust- Estrada movement, and with EDSA 2’s promise of reform.
He was thus critical of Mrs. Arroyo and her government, but remained allied with the PPC. This was not entirely on the assumption that Mrs. Arroyo would not run in 2004 as she promised, thus giving Roco the chance to be the coalition’s standard-bearer. It was also because he also had a right to the PPC’s name, and to whatever remained of its ideals.
Having broken with the PPC since October, and not having allied with any of the factions of the opposition—the quality of whose performance in politics and governance since 2001 has ranged from mediocre to vile—Roco is in an enviable position rare among politicians: he can speak his mind and in the process antagonize the country’s power brokers without fear.
This explains the speed with which Roco was able to articulate his group’s position on the Davide impeachment issue. He was unimpeded by such considerations as its impact on presumptive king-maker Eduardo Cojuangco, whose support for Roco has never been likely in the first place—or on such other factors as the command votes of certain religious groups and how the feudal lords in the House will get back at him in 2004 at the district and local levels.
Roco has never counted on these factors in the first place, and it is in this sense that he may represent an emerging force in Philippine politics distinct from the economic and power elite both the administration and the opposition represent.
Consider Mrs. Arroyo, who has been accused by one of her most important Senate allies, Senator Joker Arroyo, of colluding with Cojuangco in seeking Davide’s impeachment.
Everyone with a two-digit IQ has by now learned that Mrs. Arroyo is a spontaneous person only when she’s telling off media people whose reporting she doesn’t like, or when she’s answering questions like “Do you still have sex?”.
The rest of the time she’s calculating every move, and weighs and considers every detail before making a statement or announcing a decision. This would be the ideal way to run a country—if Mrs. Arroyo were weighing the impact of her decisions on the Filipino nation, its welfare and its future. The fact that what she’s usually weighing is her decisions’ and policies’ impact on herself, her welfare, and her future makes it the worst way to run anything.
The consummate segurista, Mrs. Arroyo always hedges her bets, while at the same time stacking the odds in her favor. Her behavior in the past, as well as the logic of the situation in the House of Representatives, thus forced Joker Arroyo to conclude that the impeachment of Davide could have passed that body only with the collusion or calculated indifference of Mrs. Arroyo.
With her equally segurista ally Jose de Venecia, Mrs. Arroyo could have cracked the party whip and gotten most, if not all, of the Lakas-CMD members in line, as they did in the case of the first impeachment complaint—which if it had prospered would once again have raised anew the question of Mrs. Arroyo’s legitimacy.
Obviously she didn’t, and it doesn’t require mega-doses of skepticism to suspect that she didn’t out of consideration of what Cojuangco—whose boys in the House initiated and rammed through Davide’s impeachment—could do in aid of her election.
Assuming the best of her, and that is, that she was only in default, there is another explanation for it that’s at least equally unflattering to herself as well as her House allies. First, that the latter were bought; and second, that try as she might Mrs. Arroyo cannot now move them to withdraw their signatures.
Mrs. Arroyo has thus wimped-out on the Davide crisis by pretending to be neutral while at the same time trying to demonstrate in deeds that she’s at heart against the Davide impeachment. It’s a subterfuge the public can see through quite well, thank you—and which the research group Ibon Foundation predicts should have an impact on her approval ratings for the next quarter.
Consider Panfilo Lacson, on the other hand. To get to where he is—a possible President of the Republic, which as a young Constabulary officer he helped destroy during the martial law period—Lacson has needed plenty of help. That help did not come only in the form of hefty contributions from the Chinese Filipino communities terrorized by kidnapping and other crimes. It came as well from the usual power brokers, among them Eduardo Cojuangco, who has been supporting Lacson’s erstwhile patron Joseph Estrada since he ran for senator.
Lacson has been uncharacteristically silent on the Davide impeachment issue. He did mutter at one point that it should proceed. He has not elaborated on that tentative statement since, and the reason should be obvious.
He has every reason to wish the Supreme Court ill, but it’s not only because the Court has ordered the retrial of his Kuratong Baleleng murder case. It’s also because the opposition—all the various wings of it—is still hoping that, come crunch time, Cojuangco will go where his heart truly is, meaning not with Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, but with the group whose leading personalities he has been supporting, and who have been his allies, for years.
Let’s not consider Fernando Poe Jr. He doesn’t count, and neither does Noli de Castro, since neither have declared their candidacy. But what would be interesting is what these gentlemen will say about the Davide impeachment crisis if and when they do declare themselves candidates for 2004.
Since Poe would very likely be running under the opposition standard, there is no way in hell that he won’t toe the opposition line—unless he chooses to squirm out of the responsibility of expressing an intelligent opinion by saying nothing on the grounds that he has nothing to say.
Ditto for de Castro, who has said that if he does run it would be either as an oppositionist or as an “independent.” How “independent” de Castro would be the public could gauge by asking him his thoughts, if any, on the Davide impeachment crisis.
If they choose to remain silent, whether out of political calculation or because they do have nothing to say, Poe and de Castro would be shouting volumes the informed should be able to hear.
There is thus one positive thing the Davide impeachment issue is doing. It’s separating this early the merely trapo from those who’re more than that, and the men from the girls. The electorate can do worse than to remember who’s who when it goes to the polls in May, 2004.
(Today/abs-cbnNEWS.com, November 1, 2003)