Challengers rise vs Drilon, JDV

One text joke has it that Sen. Tito Sotto will return to Eat Bulaga. Another, that Sen. John Osmeña, who is trailing the race, will take back the cellphones of ingrates who didn’t re-elect him. Still another says there are only four degrees of show biz separation between senatorial candidate Lito Lapid and his governor-elect son Mark: Lito was once romantically linked to actress Melanie, sister of Joey, ex of Kris, who’s now dating Mark. Voters are still savoring more such quips, while Namfrel unofficially has counted barely a third of precinct tallies and Comelec has just begun canvassing the national results. But this early, talk in the emerging administration majority is about replacing Franklin Drilon as Senate President.

Sen. Manuel Villar is challenging Drilon for the chamber leadership. Of the seven remaining administration senators, three supposedly are for him: Joker Arroyo, Francis Pangilinan and Ralph Recto. Talks reportedly are going on with possible administration winners like Bong Revilla, Dick Gordon and Pia Cayetano for Villar to clinch the top Senate seat.

It’s still a dicey 7-7 tie for the post, though. Drilon is said to have the support of Sen. Juan Flavier and Ramon Magsaysay Jr. As Liberal Party head, he can count on race-leading party mates Mar Roxas and Rodolfo Biazon, and possible re-electionists Miriam Santiago and Robert Barbers.

Lapid can tip the scale any which way, but he must first enter the Magic 12. And to guarantee a smooth bout for the Senate Presidency, both Drilon and Villar will have to strike a modus vivendi with opposition leaders Sen. Ed Angara and Aquilino Pimentel Jr. to not spring a surprise.

Villar’s campaign line is for a decisive Senate head. So weary is the administration majority of endless politicking and shaky leadership under Drilon’s slim 12-10 hold over the Senate in the past year. Villar is counting on civil society groups to work on administration senators to elect him.

But the civil society allies are busy with their own lobby. Wary of the possible entry of Jinggoy Estrada to the chamber, they are into a separate campaign for fiscal management. They have abandoned their text brigade to return Jinggoy to jail to face plunder charges with his father Joseph Estrada. Now they want him, in the interest of cost-cutting, to share his Senate budget – staff, room, parking slot and pork barrel – with his mom, Sen. Loi Ejercito.

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Over at the House of Representatives, talk is about the challenge to Jose de Venecia for the Speakership. De Venecia had won unopposed in his Pangasinan fourth district. His cabaluyens obviously want him to retain the top seat in the House. But it’s not for them to decide that; the 214 other congressman will. It is yet unclear if his Lakas party will recapture the House majority. Or, if the Nationalist People’s Coalition will retain the second-highest number of seats to stay with his Rainbow Coalition.

Danilo Suarez of Quezon’s third district has been reelected after a three-year rest, and is now raring to challenge de Venecia. During his term as congressman of the Ramos and Estrada years, Suarez often was reported to have cut huge financial deals, which earned him a war chest big enough to go for the Speaker’s post through blandishments. By contrast, De Venecia will bank on his experience.

If more reform-minded young politicians land in the House, they will want to push for legislation that can spur the economy and improve public services. De Venecia, with nine years of Speakership, will be their man to make such bills pass into law.

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Critics say President Gloria Arroyo’s formation of a Commission on Values Formation is presumptuous, for she has not been proclaimed as the election winner. But allies say she should have done it upon ascension to the Presidency in Jan. 2001.

The CVF will be the government’s policy-making body against graft, patronage politics, apathy and factionalism. Among the functions of the six-man agency is to instill such values as honesty, modesty and good work ethic among government employees.

Religious and civic leaders had advocated such a commission in the wake of EDSA-2. They correctly assessed that the people urged Estrada to resign because of the breakdown of morals under his Presidency. This was apparent in all-night drinking sprees in Malacañang, the preoccupation with granting new gambling concessions, and the emerging notion that there was nothing wrong with taking bribes from jueteng lords because it supposedly is not public money. The example it showed was that if no less than the President was doing it, so may public officials down the line. And so there was a breakdown of law and morals in the bureaucracy. A few Estrada cabinet men tried to stop it, but they were no match for cronies who went straight to the Executive Office for shady deals and smuggling permits.

By ignoring pleas to immediately set up a moral restoration team, Mrs. Arroyo gave the impression that she needed to repay political debts to sectors that shouted Estrada out of, and her into, power. Too, that she was raising money for election to a full six-year term. Her lifestyle checks and cabinet shakeups came too late. Had she formed the agency earlier, she could have given eminent appointees a free hand to clean the bureaucracy, even to the extent of doing for her the difficult job of firing incompetent and corrupt friends. Had a moral body raised the people’s civic consciousness, narcopoliticians wouldn’t have won hundreds of barangay seats in 2002. The last election would not have been fought over populairty but platform.

That’s all water under the bridge now. Mrs. Arroyo’s job is to appoint persons of proven integrity to the CVF. Better late than never.

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