A parody

Filipino humor strikes again. I wasn’t sure if the Manila siege was a spoof when I caught it on TV. The panelists ­— Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, Brig. Gen. Danilo Lim and former Vice President Teofisto Guingona — looked serious enough as they called on the people to support their cause. However, right behind Lim was a gun-toting character wearing a ridiculously ill-fitting wig (police initially identified him as a corporal, but later clarified that he is an employee of Makati City Hall).

It made the whole thing a parody; more so Trillanes’ wish to lead a caretaker government. No amount of his rhetoric can mask the absurdity of such a proposition. It wasn’t even acceptable to opposition folks who, if reports are true, took part in planning the destabilization plot, which was apparently why they did not even bother to show up.

During the six-hour standoff, Trillanes and his crew waited in vain for public support. Having none, the media ended up as their human buffer. The failure of his caper can actually be gauged from the tone of his  statements as the day progressed. “One thing I can assure you is we have more than enough will power and fighting spirit to bring this government down,” he was quoted as saying at the height of the incident. But within hours of that statement, Trillanes told the media and employees of the Manila Pen, “Like I said before, we are going out for your safety.”

Sen. Miriam Santiago has since expressed the majority of the people’s collective disgust over the whole thing with her resolution seeking to suspend or expel Trillanes for “disorderly behavior and unparliamentary acts and language.” Even that is an understatement for what the extremely cocky Trillanes, as senator of the republic, has done. Rep. Iggy Arroyo had the more appropriate description: Trillanes has become a terrorist and “for him to present himself as a hero is bizarre, to say the  least.”

Senate President Manny Villar has indicated that the matter should be decided by the Supreme Court. Sen. Pia Cayetano, who heads the ethics committee that should tackle the resolution, believes that any action against Trillanes would be premature since his cases are still pending in the courts. Senator Pimentel echoed a similar position. “He has to be convicted first before he is punished,” he said. As for Sen. Francis Escudero, the whole thing is a “numbers game” that the opposition won’t concede.

But in cases of rebellion, doesn’t national interest supersede partisan political concerns? Sen. Pimentel even pointed out why: the Makati standoff projected the Philippines as unstable. Does he even  remember that the economy grew by 6.6 percent during the first nine months of the year? That announcement was made last Thursday, but everyone’s attention was riveted to the Makati standoff.

Sen. Dick Gordon hit the nail on the head: “It primarily puts people in harm’s way and, secondly, adversely affects the economic impetus that has been building up in the country which is good, particularly for the poor. Nobody wins in this kind of situation – not the people, not the institutions and not the instigators – the whole country loses!”

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During the siege at the Peninsula Hotel, Speaker Jose de Venecia was tendering a luncheon at the Manila Hotel, and had the difficult task of calming down 140 members of parliament from Europe, the United States, Asia and Africa, including 10 senate presidents, speakers and deputy speakers and members of Manila’s diplomatic corps. He told Secretary General Andrew Johnson of the Interparliamentary Union (IPU), which have 160 member parliaments, that the Manila Hotel was safe and guarded by a Special Parliamentary Security Force.

Relatives and staff of the parliamentarians had called from Europe asking if they were safe because of BBC and CNN TV newscasts about the Peninsula siege. Speaker de Venecia said no coup will succeed, and that the “Filipino people are tired of extra-constitutional attempts to overthrow the government.”

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Speaker de Venecia made the clarification that he had resigned as Landoil president in 1985, and the Landoil-PCGG agreement was signed in 1988. He said that PCGG Chairman Camilo Sabio should have said that he (JDV) was “not a signatory to the 1988 agreement and did not have any personal loans with the government, and that the Joint Agreement confirmed that Landoil and its officers were ‘victims and not cronies of Marcos.”

The Speaker said Landoil is trying to collect $169-million (without interest) from the Iraqi and Libyan governments. The company was a victim in the Iraq-Iran wars (1981-89) and then the US-Kuwait Iraq Gulf War when the Iraqi Armed Forces took over almost $50-million worth of its transport, construction and mass housing factory equipment.  

Landoil, Joe emphasized, was the victim of two wars, while other domestic Philippine companies enjoyed behest loans “for corruption.” Landoil had employed 51,000 workers in the Middle East in ports operations, oil-drilling, hospitals, agriculture, electrification, and mass housing project projects in the Middle East and Africa.      

 Joe said the Landoil case was dismissed by the Ombudsman, the Sandiganbayan Court and by the Supreme Court, and resolved by three PCGG commissioners over three years. Landoil had turned over its Iraqi and Libyan claims to PCGG, which, Joe said, should help in their collection.

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