Scandals at the Senate

The quarrel between newly retired Election Commissioner Rowena Guanzon and erstwhile fellow Commissioner Aimee Ferolino has degenerated into a bawdy circus, with the Senate playing a big role.

Guanzon said Ferolino was delaying the resolution of the disqualification case against presidential aspirant Ferdinand Marcos Jr., aka BBM, upon prodding from a senator.

The implication is that the senator is supporting BBM, who’s leading in all pre-election surveys.

The senator, Guanzon intimated, was Ferolino’s lover boy.

The senator and Ferolino are both married. The Comelec commissioner has lately dropped her husband’s surname, Ampoloquio.

Guanzon exposed the l’affaire after she learned that her vote to disqualify Marcos would become invalid upon her retirement.

“It’s enough for me that his wife already knows and there’s going to be a war in his household,” said Guanzon.

Implicit in her statement is the wife would beat up the philandering solon after the discovery.

One of the hints that Guanzon dropped was that the senator concerned is from Davao.

There are only two senators from Davao: Ronald “Bato” dela Rosa and Christopher Lawrence “Bong” Go.

The usually staid Senate has become a gossip mill with every member asking another who the senator is.

Senate President Vicente “Tito” Sotto asked Majority Leader Juan Miguel “Migz” Zubiri what he and Dela Rosa were talking about at the back of the session hall.

Zubiri’s reply: “A distinguished member of the Commission on Elections mentioned that there was a senator from Davao. I approached the two senators from Davao, which one of them because we have only two senators from Davao.”

Senate Minority Leader Franklin Drilon, a naughty smile on his face, asked if Dela Rosa was already back in the session hall.

Sotto said yes, Dela Rosa was present at the Commission on Appointments session.

“So, his face was not exactly, you know, look like it was beaten up. Is that true?” Drilon said in a mixture of English and Tagalog.

“I also asked him that, Mr. President, but he said it’s not true that he was beaten up,” Zubiri said.

Dela Rosa, smiling, pointed his index finger at fellow senators who made him the butt of the joke.

“You know, he (Dela Rosa) should learn from the masters, Senators Bong Revilla and Ralph Recto,” Drilon said later.

The implication was that Revilla and Recto are philanderers.

“Those two (meaning Revilla and Recto) were staying quiet but got dragged into the picture,” Sotto cracked.

From the senators’ banter, who do you think is the senator being referred to by Guanzon?

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When Guanzon gossiped about the illicit relationship between Ferolino and the senator that she didn’t identify, she probably didn’t know that her whisper would become a shout in this country of rumormongers.

She probably didn’t know she would be destroying reputations that would lead to domestic troubles and possibly broken homes.

If Guanzon could be irresponsible in her actions, how could she be trusted in her judgment as election commissioner?

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The Senate has had its share of sex scandals.

Years ago, two senators, both married, had a love affair that became an open secret.

The lady senator’s husband asked me the veracity of the rumors over coffee.

My reply: “Why don’t you just ask your wife?”

I didn’t want to be the source of the domestic trouble.

Another juicy love affair between two senators was broken up after the wife discovered the tryst.

Still another senator, an elderly one, impregnated one of the elevator girls in the Senate building.

A pimp once told me one of his wards complained that a senator sprinkled cocaine on her body from her breast to down to her fuzz and snorted it.

“Pag dilat ang mata ni Senador at mabilis siyang magsalita, ibig sabihin nakasinghot na (If the senator’s eyes are wide open and he talks fast, it means he’s high on cocaine),” said the pimp.

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Former president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s memoirs, “Deus Ex Machina,” devotes 20 pages on her conversation with then Comelec commissioner Virgilio Garcillano, to debunk suspicion that she cheated her rival, actor Fernando Poe Jr., in the 2004 presidential election.

She says it was a misstep on her part to make that phone call that was later dubbed “Hello Garci.”

The call reportedly was to ensure her victory.

GMA says she never cheated FPJ and won “fair and square” over her strongest opponent.

If I were to be asked, the GMA camp cheated by buying votes, especially in Muslim areas like Maguindanao; however, the fraud was not massive enough to influence the outcome of the election.

Even if there was no cheating, Arroyo would still have won the election for the following reasons:

• Her selection of then senator and hugely popular broadcaster, Noli de Castro, as her running mate.

• Noli’s popularity with the masa (masses) took away a big chunk of votes from FPJ.

(Modesty aside, I suggested that the GMA camp take Noli as her vice presidential candidate. I made the suggestion to first gentleman Mike Arroyo, who was then my close friend. The meeting between Gloria and Noli was facilitated by my brother, Erwin, who was Noli’s colleague at the ABS-CBN at the time.)

• Gloria won over FPJ in vote-rich Cebu and Pangasinan, because she speaks Bisaya and her mother, Evangelina Macaraeg-Macapagal, was a Pangasinense.

• Cebu gave GMA one million votes while in Sto. Tomas, Pangasinan, FPJ scored zero although he was – ironically – from nearby San Carlos.

• GMA’s outgoing nature. She engaged officials in places she went to on the campaign trail.
FPJ, on the other hand, refused to meet with local officials and even ordinary citizens, who asked to be photographed with him, because he was shy by nature.