Take a bullet

Today being the 50th anniversary of the declaration of martial law, we remember Ferdinand Marcos the elder and the chief implementers of his military rule.

His defense chief, the impressively durable Juan Ponce Enrile, at 98 is very much alive, with a touch of age-related dementia but still kicking… the butt, it seems, of the “little president” himself, Victor Rodriguez.

Enrile faked an ambush on his vehicle so it could be cited by Marcos Senior as the last straw justifying the imposition of military rule (or was the ambush real? I’ve lost track of JPE’s numerous shifting recollections of this story).

JPE signed all those nasty ASSOs – arrest, search and seizure orders that were served on Marcos’ political opponents, critical journalists and communist rebels, many in the dead of night, after which they were tossed in detention centers. Some stayed in detention for months; others, like Ninoy Aquino for years. Some were tortured; others disappeared, never to be seen again.

Under Ferdinand Marcos Junior, JPE is still signing documents, as the chief presidential legal counsel. This time it’s an opinion that has spelled the ouster of Junior’s erstwhile executive secretary, Vic Rodriguez. By most accounts, JPE is the winner in this controversy.

After quitting as “ES” – the Cabinet’s primus inter pares – Rodriguez has managed to get BBM to sign an administrative order creating the new position of chief of staff or COS in the Office of the President.

Whether Rodriguez will get the broad powers that he proposed as COS remains to be seen.

As of last weekend, Malacañang said a new ES would be named shortly, and the COS’ role would be strictly limited, to prevent the confusion, duplication of functions and turf tensions that JPE had warned about.

Rodriguez, however, could still end up enjoying the upper hand as COS. Marcos will be back in a few days. BBM might have a soft spot for his campaign spokesperson, and allow the requested powers, which smack a lot of the same powers and functions of the little president.

If this happens, BBM should just leave the post of executive secretary vacant. The COS will then have the same functions as the chief of staff in the White House, where there is no ES.

*      *      *

The last time the idea of creating the position of COS was floated at Malacañang was during the presidency of Noynoy Aquino.

At the time, talk was rife about turf wars between two power blocs: the so-called “Balay” group led by Aquino’s BFF Mar Roxas, and the “Samar” faction led by the ES, Paquito Ochoa. Jojo Ochoa was also identified with a faction that supposedly maneuvered the winning “Noy-Bi” pairing in 2010 of Aquino and his late mother’s loyal supporter Jejomar Binay.

Roxas, who lost to Binay, wanted to be appointed as COS, whose powers were similar to those envisioned by Rodriguez for himself.

Aquino’s spokesman, Edwin Lacierda, told “The Chiefs” on One News last Monday that Roxas made the proposal after the one-year ban on the appointment to government posts of losing candidates lapsed.

Lacierda said Aquino eventually thumbed down the proposal, for the same reasons cited by JPE in his opinion opposing the creation of the office of the COS.

At the same time, Lacierda said an opening in the Cabinet occurred after Jose de Jesus resigned as secretary of what was then the Department of Transportation and Communications. The buzz at the time was that Ping de Jesus was in fact pressured to quit, ostensibly over corruption issues, but mainly to make room for Roxas.

The Samar-Balay feud had simmered as early as the 2010 campaign, amid the push for a Noy-Bi win. So it’s not unusual for the current Palace intramurals erupting just into the third month of the new administration.

Still, early turf wars indicate disunity and disorganization that reflect badly on the new team and ultimately on the President himself.

*      *      *

This brings to mind the other implementer of Marcos Senior’s martial law, his military chief and cousin Fabian Ver, who would later clash with another cousin, Fidel Ramos.

Until the people power revolt, Ver remained loyal to Marcos Senior. Ver’s sons controlled what was then called the Presidential Security Command. It was often said that if Marcos told Ver to jump out of a building, Ver would ask, “From which floor?” Ver would have taken a bullet for Marcos Senior.

Marcos Junior needs at least one official who will take a bullet for him. Unfortunately for him, it doesn’t look like his erstwhile little president is it. Instead, it’s the ex-ES who wants to be shielded by the President from adversity.

Power struggles can be disastrous for an administration. A power struggle within Marcos Senior’s inner circle was believed to have led to Ninoy Aquino’s assassination in 1983.

*      *      *

Rodriguez’s woes are tainting his principal particularly because they emanate from the scandal over sugar – an issue over which Marcos, being the concurrent agriculture secretary, has direct supervision.

Yesterday at an outlet of one of the major supermarkets that promised to sell sugar for P70 a kilo, there was sugar at that price, all right, but washed – which as I have previously pointed out has always been cheaper than refined white – and only in 500-gram packs.

Refined white sugar, meanwhile, was available only in 1/4-kilo packs, at P24 each. That means P96 per kilo.

Instead of shielding Marcos from flak arising from the sugar shortage and high prices, Rodriguez has washed his hands of the mess, with resigned agriculture undersecretary Leocadio Sebastian as the main sacrificial lamb.

The new Senate Blue Ribbon committee, in handling its first major controversy, has been a disappointment. If it will sustain its performance as a Malacañang-friendly whitewashing panel, it should be renamed the Senate laundromat.

Last week, rumors circulated that Rodriguez would be given an ambassador’s post, possibly to Australia. The diplomatic service in this country, unfortunately, has long been used for dispensing patronage, to the detriment of Philippine career diplomats. But anyway, the rumors were debunked by the announcement of the COS post for Rodriguez.

This controversy will still be raging when BBM returns from the US. How he ultimately resolves this will set the tone for his presidency.