How time flies! Before I realized it, it’s been exactly three years that I have been at the desk since bowing out from my daily reportorial coverage of Malacañang Palace. I started Palace coverage in September 1986. This was a few months after the 1986 February EDSA People Power Revolution when former President Corazon “Cory” Aquino was installed into office and took over the reins of government from the late strong man President Ferdinand Marcos.
This year’s observance of the 22nd anniversary of EDSA-1 brought me back to nostalgia as we, Filipinos reminisce today this spontaneous “people power revolution” that was once feted by the world as one of the most peaceful changes in government, though done through extra-constitutional means.
Looking back at those years past, I could say I have witnessed up close some of the greatest and the lowest moments in our country’s history right inside the halls of power during that span of time. Many of my friends in and out media have been trying to coax me into writing a book of memoirs (Coffee Table Book) about those years of my Palace coverage from Mrs. Aquino to former President Fidel V. Ramos (FVR) to deposed President Joseph “Erap” Estrada and up to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. But I’m too young and too busy to find time for such an undertaking. For now, I just enjoy sharing some of my fond memories of specific points of that history in relation to a particular situation at present.
Each of these four Presidents had their own stinks that have been associated with their respective administrations. But who among our past Presidents before them did not have one? Whether true or imagined, some of these notorious things associated with his or her administration have scarred their names in Philippine history.
For Cory, who was denigrated for her being a mere housewife of the slain Sen. Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino before she was catapulted into power, had her much-ballyhooed “kitchen Cabinet,” in reference to her advisers in and out of the Palace aside from allegedly allowing her relatives, pejoratively called as “Kamag-anak Inc.,” engaged in government transactions. Mrs. Aquino was severely criticized for having undertaken a very expensive renovation of the New Executive Building that was christened as “Borloloy” Building at the Palace grounds. After surviving seven failed coup d’etat, some of them bloody, Mrs. Aquino completed her term and had a smooth transition of power to FVR.
In the case of FVR, his critics scored his administration for having “militarized the bureaucracy” when he kept appointing his clique of ex-military and retired police comrades as advisers in the Cabinet and other key positions in government. FVR had his shares of corruption charges from the PEA-Amari land deal dubbed as the “mother of all land scams” to the reported anomalies in the construction of the Centennial Expo scam in Pampanga. The land scam was about the alleged multi-million peso kickbacks out of real estate contract between the Public Estates Authority (PEA) with the Ital-Thai Amari to develop vast tracts of reclaimed areas in Roxas Boulevard. Despite his retirement after six years at the Palace, the Centennial Expo scam hounded FVR at the Senate when investigation on this was opened at the behest of Estrada. And for doing this, FVR has not forgiven Erap and his successor in office which paid a dear price for it.
During the shortened stint of Estrada at the Palace, his detractors pilloried him for having a so-called “midnight” Cabinet to refer to his drinking and mah-jong buddies who kept him company up to the wee hours of the morning. While undergoing impeachment trial at the Senate for his alleged “jueteng” takes and “Jose Velarde” account, Estrada was ousted in a remake of a “people power revolution” dubbed as EDSA-2 in January 2001. FVR joined the military-backed ouster of his successor and helped install then Vice President Arroyo to office.
Now as the incumbent elected President, Mrs. Arroyo is no exception to these scarring of whatever legacy she wants to leave behind at the end of her term in June 2010. She had, in fact, been faced with impeachment proceedings, not just once but twice already. Mrs. Arroyo found herself under fire for the “Hello, Garci” wiretapping scandal. She, too, was accused of keeping her own “midnight” Cabinet. It is supposedly headed by the President’s husband, First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo. The Arroyo “midnight” Cabinet is purportedly in cahoots with the “oligarchs” or businessmen with strangleholds of certain Philippine industries who help keep in power the embattled leadership of the President from crisis after crisis.
That is, if we are to believe the allegations of Mrs. Gina “Manay” De Venecia, wife of erstwhile Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. Manay Gina has come out swinging at the President after her husband, who is in his fifth term as Speaker of the House of Representatives was unceremoniously ousted by their own partymates from both Christian-Muslim Democrats (Lakas-CMD) and Kabalikat ng Malayang Pilipino (KAMPI). I could not help but take with a grain of salt Manay Gina’s perorations against the Chief Executive. I used to see her at the Palace while she shadowed Mrs.Arroyo.
De Venecia’s ouster as Speaker came at the heels of the exposé by his namesake — son, Jose “Joey“ De Venecia who accused the First Gentleman as allegedly getting $70 million “commission” out of the $329 million national broadband network (NBN) project awarded to ZTE Corp. of China. The De Venecia couple are still smarting over the fact that the ouster of the Speaker was fully backed, if not engineered behind the scenes, by the President’s two congressmen-sons, Reps. Mikey Arroyo (Lakas, Pampanga) and Dato Arroyo (KAMPI, Camarines Sur). Worse, Manay Gina cried, the two congressmen-sons of the President are her own wedding godsons.
In our Filipino idiomatic expression, “nagsoli-an na ng kandila” (gave back the candles to each other) to mean breaking the family ties that bound them through the years. At the rate they keep throwing stones at each other’s glass houses, it seems the two feuding families are also out to burn to the ground each other’s houses. Unfortunately, however, it is our national house as a Filipino nation, founded by EDSA-1, that is now being threatened.