Congress doesn’t get it / Brother Mike, please don’t

Congress just doesn’t get it. If it remains on the shorter, filthier end of the stick in the impeachment controversy, it’s simply because it has no credibility. Samplers: When Speaker Jose de Venecia bombinates on the honor and integrity of the House, including his of course, there is a loud, riproaring guffaw all over the land. When the Brat-Pack of Eduardo (Danding) Cojuangco cross themselves with holy water, there is a national shudder as of the Christ-Child being wrung in the neck. When Senior Deputy Leader Constantino Jaraula insists as part of his five-point formula for "constitutional reconciliation" that the House preserve its right to ransack the JDF records of the Supreme Court, the man is simply stupid. That’s precisely what Chief Justice Hilario Davide is dead set against.

When the House in a 31-page missive to Mr. Davide perorates it is "a co-equal and independent branch of government" and the High Court has absolutely no right to call on the solons for a status quo so things can cool off, the House betrays its cant, humbug and arrogance by sneering at the Chief Justice and demanding that he back off. Co-equal. Independent? Who’s really guilty here? A Supreme Court seeking respite? Or a House with Hitlerian pretensions bawling Sig Heil all over the place and preparing the torches that will set the Reichstag afire?

You want a collision course with the Chief Justice and the Supreme Court? Go right ahead, mynheers. You are welcome to board the Ship of Fools.

There are two things, better still two cancerous growths that have long bedeviled the House. For decades, the House has racked up a record for knavery, for looting the public till, for transforming pork barrel into the "mother " of all scams. I understand a senator gets about P300 million annually in pork, a congressman about P150 million. This still excludes the notorious congressional initiatives or insertions that again amount to tens of millions. Politely, this is called the Countryside Deve-lopment Fund.

Impolitely, I call it the Cavern of Caligula. Ask, just ask any congressman or senator to account for his pork barrel loot, and he will shriek it’s none of your business. Ask, just ask why the House has power of oversight over Supreme Court funds, and why nobody, absolutely nobody has power of oversight over Congress, which is probably the biggest crook ever faggoted by Mephisto. The answer you get is that they are untouchable. Untouchable? Why untouchable? They steal and they swindle and they extort and they embezzle. And they remain untouchable? Joe de V untouchable? Oh, my God!

See, mynheers of the House, why the public holds you in such high contempt, why they want all of you to disappear in a single bomb blast.

The other factor is the Unseen Man, the Man with the Cloak and the Dagger, the shadowy Orchesta Conductor – His Immensity Eduardo (Danding) Cojuangco. This man has more powers than Houdini, more sleight-of-hand wizardry than David Copperfield, more hands than the tentacles of a giant octopus, more right of way than a berserk freight train. I used to be deathly afraid of him. Maybe I still am. But even when I was, particularly when he returned in stealth to the Philippines in the late ’80s, I gave it to Mr. Cojuangco in spades, in language abrasive and language vituperative. I hit him hammer and tongs from brow to beltline. Why in hell did he dare to come back? Did he have no shame? He belonged to the past, to a past we all wanted to forget – the Marcos past covered with mud and grime and ignominy.

Then President Cory Aquino consigned Danding to Coventry. She would have no truck with him, shuddered at the mention of his name. Did she believe that Danding, her first cousin, plotted with the dictator and Imelda to assassinate Ninoy at the airport? I believe she did. But she did not breathe one word to me as her press secretary. But resent Danding she did, abominate and excoriate him. If silent curses could kill, Mr. Cojuangco would long have been dead.

But like everybody else, Cory, despite all her powers, could not stop her cousin. He was a reverse Count of Monte Cristo, who pledged to remove the Sorianos from San Miguel and did – with mucho gusto. He plotted his moves well. He joined the inner circle of Joseph Estrada, who still respectfully calls him Boss. In no time, he had Erap doing almost his every bidding. And so when Estrada won the presidency in 1998, Danding Cojuangco lost no time getting aboard his Chatanooga Choo-Choo to establish his lordship over San Miguel Corporation. Was he a good administrator, a bad administrator?

That hardly mattered at all. What mattered was the biggest thorn in the side of Danding Cojuangco – the coconut levy scandal. His nemesis here was the Supreme Court which declared the levy funds, now amounting to a staggering P100 billion, were "public in character". Mr. Cojuangco who had always insisted they were "private" and therefore under his custody, sprawled bloodied to the canvas with the High Court’s decision. The villain of course was Chief Justice Hilario Davide, a red-blooded, fearless Geronimo, indomitable as his Apache tribe was indomitable. Davide still has under his and the Court’s belt a number of cases involving Cojuangco. So Davide is enemy. He has to be removed.

I’ll tell this to Danding Cojuangco.

You may have all the residual powers, the money and the power, to remove the Chief Justice through impeachment. You may have cut deals with President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Speaker Jose de Venecia for 2004, but you can’t win. And even should you win nominally, yours will be a Phyrric victory. You will end up a moral carcass. Hilario Davide will never surrender to you. If need be, the Chief Justice will fall on his sword. But he will fall like Charlemagne with all of France grieving. While the SMC chairman’s name will be mud. The Brat-Pack? Who really cares for these pumpernickel pipsqueaks? They are just pawns on the Cojuangco chessboard. Wimpy, go back to school.

This is of course a cautionary tale. If like the lemmings, Congress wants to commit suicide – that is its business.

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I don’t know if it’s too late, but I do call upon Brother Mike Velarde to cease and desist, to call off his "People’s Summit" this weekend. He should be the last person to summon this kind of summit. Number One, he doesn’t represent or personify the people at all. Number Two, his spiritual and personal morality has always been under question. So Mike Velarde has no call to summon the top leaders of the land to "arrest the possible collapse of our democratic institutions". What gall!

Number Three, he has enthusiastically invited an imprisoned felon, under penalty of death for plunder – Erap Estrada – to attend his "People’s Summit". Number Four, like Congress, Brother Mike has yet to satisfactorily account for the huge towering piles of money he gets from his flock as a preacher. Number Five, the civil society impression of Mike Velarde is that he is a slick operator, a snake oil vendor or Barnum and Bailey proportions. And probably, most damaging, Mike Velarde is a political opportunist of the finest cut, who would now wade into the impeachment fray like the Archangel Gabriel atop a white horse. Hah!

Please, Brother Mike, spare us. If you would have your prayer rally, do so with the purest of intentions. No invitations. No vaudeville. Just pray, that is all.

I do not even know why Rev. Archie Intengan, Jesuit provincial, a man I respect a lot, had to link up with Mike Velarde to sponsor his "People’s Summit". In the end, Father Archie, the Summit will be a charade, a gilded tent of totems proclaiming the incomparable powers and spiritual prowess of Brother Mike. The latter says the invited political leaders will not be allowed to speak. Baloney. El Shaddie’s TV cameras will prowl all over the VIP attendance, the ultimate testimonial that when Mike Velarde summons, the nation’s most powerful and prominent men and women will say allelujah and heed his call.

I say that’s cheap. I say that’s unadulterated showbiz. I say that spirit, if spirit Mike Velarde indeed has, has to withdraw from the hurly-burly of politics and national crisis. I would prefer that Cory Aquino and Jaime Cardinal Sin call for this prayer rally as they have done in the old days. They should not allow an interloper like Brother Mike to preempt this call for the spirit to soar through prayer, for the heart to throb with love of country, for the conscience to knock at the gates of heaven and implore the help of Divine Providence.

Brother Mike is shaman, circus barker, and juggler rolled into one.

His antics are getting to be annoying. Maghawakan kayo ng kamay. Itaas ang kamay. Ilagay ang kamay sa puso. Ang pinakamahalaga na dala niyo, itaas sa langit. Lahat ng biyaya, ibibigay sa inyo ng Diyos. Buksan ang mga payong. Ibaliktad niyo. Itaas uli sa langit. Ganyan. Uulan ang grasya. Amen? And the flock roars amen. I say this is crowd manipulation, tomfoolery and mesmerism. And has nothing to do with received religion.

I would advise the prominent political leaders who have been invited to boycott this shoddy, hypocritical, tinsel and tawdry "People Summit".