Witness: Chavit Singson / Erap in emotional low - HERE'S THE SCORE by Teodoro C. Benigno

I wonder what it was like when President Joseph Estrada and Gov. Luis Chavit Singson were great buddies in wine, women, song, gambling and all-around carousal? They must have been that close for few could penetrate the president’s midnight cabinet. It was a nether world, the hidden oyster of the president where Bacchus reigned, where revelry and nepenthe whirled and flowed. And the conversation must have been something. It was best described by Aprodicio Lacquian who said he alone was sober at four in the morning and the others intoxicated beyond description. Including the president, of course.

What brought about the break between the Damon of Malacañang and the Phythias of Ilocos Sur?

Money or the greed for money, according to the latter, Chavit Singson, who readily admits he is a big sinner, tells friends and allies in private that the president’s craving for money is insatiable. Remember that movie Cabaret? Lisa Minelli said it best when she lilted into that song about "money, money, money", the entire cabaret engulfed by its tinkle and power, the seduction of gold and silver. That scene was really a gosh when Minelli while singing unerringly flipped silver dollars into a chest like the sure saliva aim of Deng Xiao Ping at a spittoon seven meters away. He was that good.

Chavit Singson blames Charlie Atong Ang for the break. Yep, I can believe it. Chavit, among other things, was a political and gambling buddy but Atong Ang was something else. We are told he is best when it comes to minting money the president needs, his being the gambling world where Atong plucks tens of millions from greased, rapacious hands in the shadows. In this sense, Atong Ang is the poster boy of Malacañang, a close pal of the president, whose notoriety has never ceased to amaze all of us.

Chavit Singson narrates that Atong Ang, one of the slickest Chinese-Filipinos I have come across, slowly maneuvered to create doubt in the mind of the president about the governor’s bona fides. The poster boy reportedly insinuated Chavit Singson was not turning in all the jueteng proceeds (nangungupit) due the president and that he, Atong Ang, could deliver much more. So Bingo 2-ball came into being. And since this was legal, it would replace jueteng, and whaddayouknow?

* * *

Atong Ang was pocketing the Bingo 2-ball proceeds in his private account, would turn them over to Pagcor only when it pleased him. Worse, Governor Chavit Singson was bumped off from jueteng in Ilocos Sur province. Even worse and this was the trigger, Atong Ang gave the operations of Bingo 2-ball to the political enemies of Singson in his own province. This, he said (continuing the narration of Chavit), on the orders of the president himself. This was the ironball that crashed into Singson’s head. It was like a death sentence from the Sicilian Mafia.

The signals were out. The governor of Ilocos Sur knew, he just knew it was just a matter of time before the gorillas would come and plug him full of bullets. And so, racing madly against the clock, he gathered all his papers and documents (that tell-tale ledger), deftly evaded a post-midnight ambuscade by the police by refusing to get out of his bullet-proof car. He rushed to former Tarlac congressman Jose (Peping) Cojuangco, an old and trusted political friend. From Cojuangco to Pastor (Boy) Saycon, thence to Jaime Cardinal Sin and from here we know the whole story.

Looking back, if all Chavit relates is true, that was a horrible blunder.

And this is the blunder that gave away the Palace’s political amateurishness, its absolute ignorance of political fine-tuning, its lack of an intelligent and rational grasp of events and the nature of human nature, its devil-may-care attitude. Chavit Singson could have been spared. But it seems the brain of Atong Ang prevailed – a brain straight out of anthropoidae – and the whole world started to crash on the head of President Joseph Estrada.

The "Erap-Resign!" street demonstration crackled in Metro Manila spilling into 45 provinces and cities, an angry cri de coeur, a cry of the heart that the president had to step down. And phooey to and a pox on Malacañang’s paid propagandists who take out full-page ads that these demonstrations are "the handiwork of vested interests, the moneyed class whose interest lies in stopping the momentum of social, economic and political reforms under the present administration." In God’s name, what reforms?

* * *

They would make the president –now under impeachment in the Senate–look like Mother Teresa. Sacre bleu!

And so now we see Luis Chavit Singson testifying in the impeachment proceedings. Never has this nation been glued on TV as it is today, although at times the proceedings tend to be boring with all those legal wrangles about technicalities. The twin star witnesses so far are Emma Lim and Chavit Singson. Emma was a lodestar, the first to testify she delivered the bundled amount of P5 million to President Estrada at his office in Malacañang. No, she had no documented proof she did this. But the overwhelming majority believed her when she said she turned over the jueteng loot to Malou, the president’s secretary. And the president was there, just so many meters away. And saw her.

I suppose the impeachment trial is largely about credibility. Emma Lim had this, communicated this, a lotus blossom that Estelito Mendoza failed to dent despite a barrage of over 200 questions. And what about Chavit Singson? In this trial, he is the big brass ring. Wednesday, he finally stepped into the impeachment footlight. He repeatedly said he delivered almost every fortnight the amount of P5 million in cash to the president. En toto, as we remember, P400 million representing jueteng, about P200 million in tobacco excise tax money. During a two-year period.

The president, of course, has denied and will continue to deny all this. As with cavalier disdain and spite, he denied he had ever seem Emma Lim, and that his secretary Malou ever received the latter. Again credibility. It is the president’s misfortune, if not tragedy, that much of his credibility has gone down the drain. Many people tend or prefer to believe Singson is telling the truth. Not, of course, the senators who have already made up their minds to acquit the president.

All you have to do is watch the impeachment proceedings closely.

Each senator sings his or her own song, and the music is in the face, the theater in the gesture. It’s easy to spot who the "eight Judases" are as they arise to ask questions or engage in debate, or glare (gloat?) at each other. Or remain silent. That’s the beauty of TV. The camera pans in and virtually undresses the feelings, emotions, and convictions of each senator. Even their humor. It was asked by friends whether I was covering the impeachment proceedings ringside. My answer was that nothing could replace the TV coverage.

* * *

And the whole thing is just beginning. As I said before, I may like the impeachment trial of the president as theatre, like you see a movie, but I cannot be budged. It’s all make-believe. The script has been written, the cast of characters and their roles defined. The president will be acquitted not by an act of God but of man; maybe it’s better this way. For when this whole kit and caboodle turns out to be a farce, it will demonstrate to all of us as nothing can that the whole system is rotten to the core.

And then, EDSA in 1986 will be nothing compared to how the nation will explode.

Even then, how’s Chavit Singson faring? Pretty well, I would say. He got into a hole when Sen. Juan Ponce Erile pointed out in two instances the amounts in the ledger were not correctly added. But this is pointillist painting. The canvas is that Singson was a Mafiosi, not only in the know but a great and good pal of the president, and he knew and because he know too much, he said he was marked for liquidation. In America, the best witnesses against the Mafia are Cosa Nostra big guns who squeal because they know they are marked for extinction. And the only way they can survive is to tell the government the truth. Then they are bundled away under the Witness Protection Program, spirited to distant places by the FBI where they can eke out a new existence.

Apropos of the president, we are told he has "hit an emotional low" because of the impeachment proceedings. Actually, we are amazed that he remains on his two feet, physically healthy it seems, able to travel to the provinces, far from losing his mind. Under normal circumstances, anybody under this pressure where the walls are closing in and the cackle is that of witches riding doomsday broomsticks, would have at the very least a nervous breakdown.

But Erap is tough. Years of living la dolce vita have yet to break his health, rupture his kidney or wobble his heart. In this, the president is phenomenal. Is it because he is in denial? Is it because he believes or has hypnotized himself to believe he is on the right course? Is it because life, even the presidency, is all a movie and he will win out in the end? A Greek tragedy is at hand.

Is it possible he does not sense this at all?