In the past, no Philippine Chief Executive has ever contemplated cutting the budget of the state universities. While they may not recommend that the budget be increased, neither have they recommended that the budget be cut. The political costs are just too great. I am very aware of UP’s perennial request for a budget increase with Congress. Congress usually does not approve the increase or if it does, it is way below UP’s expectations. In 2008, Congress was generous since it gave a “gift” for UP’s centennial as part of its enactment of the new UP Charter.

But let’s have a bit of history first to put Noynoy’s decision in its proper context. When the Americans took over the Philippines and after crushing the Philippine Republic, their first project was to set up a public education system that would supplant the religious university and colleges. The Americans first put up the professional colleges, like the Normal College, Medical College, Agricultural College and the Law College. The latter three were made part of  the Philippine University  founded in 1908 as the University of the Philippines.  The Americans established it as the apex of the public education system. This system was geared toward creating a new intelligentsia who will run the civil government, head the police and the armed forces , staff the health service, run the departments of instruction, staff the judiciary with judges and lawyers and produce the country’s scientists, humanists and artists.   The UP spawned a new elite which has determined the course of the nation’s history.

But the UP  has always proved to be a thorn on or a pebble in the shoe of the Executive, which has always threatened to cut its funding. In fact one American Governor General was so dissed by the UP that he proposed privitising it in the 1920s! The temptation was there as the US entered the Great Depression. However none of the American Governors General or the successor President of the Commonwealth Manuel Quezon ever cut the budget of the university. Manuel Quezon would be always annoyed by the University more than he was annoyed by the Dominicans of  his alma mater UST, and he would try to put pressure on the Regents, but still he had an affection for the state university. The UP would be well considered by succeeding Presidents.

Now fast forward to the 1970s and to the present. The Dictator Ferdinand Marcos even if here were UP High’s and UP Law’s most famous alum, had to keep the university at least superficially happy (BTW, the Great Apo Ferdinand signed our UP High yearbooks!). Years later Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo kept the science faculty happy for allocating money for the science complex!

Now with Noynoy, we have to ask the important question? What is the value of state university education to him? The official presidential statement on the budget cuts in the Official Gazette is telling. It appears that Noynoy wants the SUCs to get the budget shortfall from tuition fees! I suspect Noynoy thinks that like parents sending their kids to private universities like his alma mater Ateneo, could easily come up with the money for fees! Noynoy is clueless about the realities of the state university system and how students and their families are having a hard time to come up with tuition money!

The truth is far from what Mr Aquino thinks. State universities still remain as the most affordable way to send your kids to college and to get quality education. However with an increasing student population, lessened buying power of the peso and decreasing allocations, the SUCs are forced to increase fees. The UP’s credit unit fees are now at an average 1000 pesos per unit. Thus many students have to pay 20K-21K per semester. In total, UP’s fees of 40-42 K per year is not that far from fees charged by downtown Manila’s University Belt schools.   The Polytechnic University of the Philippines (PUP), the “people’s university” is considering increasing its fees to 300 per unit. This made students storm CHED in protest.

Education remains as the last possibility for Filipinos for class mobility (if you exclude boxing!) . The UP and the SUCs have in the past provided that avenue. But competition for slots have become more intense. This is worsened by middle class students abandoning the private education system (whose fees increase every year) for the public schools and universities. UP being the apex of the system was the first to notice the effects. In the late 1970s and to the 1980s more and more affluent students qualified forcing UP to come up with a socialized tuition fee system in 1988. However the STFAP system has its drawbacks. The requalification of scholarship “brackets” while it gave more support for the unprivileged, made some of the beneficiaries from the lower middle class lose what ever support they had.

It is the middle class that will be much impacted by Noynoy’s budget cut. Many of our public servants fall into that category. The kids of government employees may have to kiss their SUC dreams goodbye and forget college at all. With Noynoy Aquino’s policy even the PUP may see a student parking problem in its Santa Mesa-Nagtahan campus!

Noynoy Aquino’s priorities for state university education is in line with his neoliberal direction. To be fair past presidential administrations have toed that line. But under Noynoy and reading his statement, the whole education system may likely be opened to free competition with foreign educational providers setting up campuses here, offering all sorts of courses. This is like what we see in Dubai, Doha and other Arab states. But these states do not have a tradition of having state universities. There are also offshore campuses in Singapore but their accreditation is limited to offering a few business and management courses. The National University of Singapore, Nanyang and other public universities are well funded and can generate their own funds.

While Mr Aquino is right that UP has the ability to source its own funds (and uses that Ayala Technohub as an example!), the National university cannot do that overnight. It is saddled by bureaucratic baggage and it will require a new mentality and culture among university constituents before the UP can become dependent on endowments and private investments. The positive aspect of this is that it challenges UP.

Noynoy’s policy on state university education is getting money from the rich to support the poor. This has led some Lefty wags to jokingly propose, why not Noynoy tax Ateneo and La Salle to support public education!?! LOL!

But of course Noynoy is no Fidel Castro. The Socialist revolution in Cuba made taxing their own Ateneo a reality!

PS: This is not to demean our Ateneo and La Sallian  friends. It’s just a joke!

We know now of course that the Supreme Court has in effect legitimized the great public disorder of 2001 by holding that what actually occurred in EDSA II was not really an uprising of sorts but speechifying, yet intense enough to force the beleaguered Estrada into “constructive resignation.” As a result, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, a latecomer to the EDSA II movement, was voted in by the Court only because the incumbent was booted out in the EDSA fashion (Arroyo now claims she was “thrust” into the presidency apparently by operation of the law on constitutional succession). There was then no opportunity for the Filipino people to learn or demand from Arroyo the unfurling of her philosophy of governance for prior public vetting.

My own enthusiasm immediately petered out on the very day President Arroyo delivered her first policy speech upon being swept into power. Arroyo made no grand promises of reforms (or, for that matter, transformation) following what everyone but the Supreme Court believed had been a rebellion, except for her to govern the country business as usual, i.e., to keep the status quo.

“During my administration, democracy and the market will be the guiding principles of my domestic and foreign policies,” she announced. The vision articulated no doubt had a calming effect on the Establishment. In the same speech, Arroyo made the further assurance that her “administration will resist the temptation to adventurist initiatives and directions for the sake of appearing to be innovative.”

Like Barack Obama, Noynoy Aquino was elected president on a promise of great change. But while Obama acknowledged that change would not be easy, Noynoy during the presidential campaign confidently asserted that it is “extremely possible” because “the solutions have been there all along.”

I have come to believe early on that a Noynoy presidency can be transformational (and by it I really meant liberatory) drawing support for such a belief from the published platform of the Liberal Party and at least from two of Noynoy’s key legislative proposals, Senate Bill No. 1370 requiring businesses to grant annual productivity incentive to all workers in the private sector amounting to no less than 10% of the company’s net profits and Senate Bill No. 2036 amending the Wage Rationalization Act by increasing the penalties for non-compliance of the prescribed increases and adjustments in worker’s wage rates.

On the other hand, the Liberal Party economic program includes the promise to: break up monopolies in public utilities; mobilize Filipino capital towards a vigorous program of industrialization and employment creation; target high value-added industries to accelerate the country’s development process; build industrial partnership by ensuring every employee’s right to participate in business decisions and by promoting the concept of employee co-ownership.

By contrast, Arroyo apparently concerned about a change for the worse has avowed to shun adventurism and innovation for their own sake, something that fits her well into the mold of a prototypical conservative in the ideological spectrum whose publicly professed vision is to conserve aged-old traditions and institutions such as market democracy. If Arroyo were to claim to be a reformer at all, it would be fair to say that she, having been a president for nine long years, is at best an incrementalist.

I have posed this question before:

If [Arroyo’s] accession to presidency has been justified by Chief Justice Davide on the principle of salus populi est suprema lex, reliance upon the market and formal democracy alone without social justice and stewardship on the part of the nation’s patricians would look like a policy disconnect to the rhetoric of advancing the welfare of the Filipino People. For, social justice, the main tool for the advancement of its cause being state intervention through “the humanization of laws and equalization of social and economic forces,” is traditionally antithetical to free market that follows, first and foremost, the dictates of “rational self-interest.”

At the other end of the spectrum is liberalism which comes in different formulations, one of the most acceptable of them being “liberation or freedom from traditions.” Someone who believes that change for the better is “extremely possible” and is willing to experiment on a new governance paradigm is quintessentially a liberal (in the modern sense).

Modern liberals (as distinguished from classical liberals) believe that guarantees of individual rights are meaningless where individuals are bereft of the wherewithal (such as suitable education and gainful enterprise or employment) to exercise or benefit from those rights. Whereas classical liberals demands limited government and emphasizes freedom from restraint or negative liberty, modern liberals requires greater government involvement especially in matters of economic affairs to promote positive liberty. Classical liberalism which seeks to empower the commercial class and forms the basis of laissez-faire capitalism has somehow metamorphosed into conservatism.

This earlier post of mine I hope will help differentiate the one ideology from the other:

In political life in general, there are as many individuals or groups of individuals doing their best to transform our political habits, practices and institutions as there are others at the opposite end trying equally hard to conserve those habits, practices and institutions.

Radicals in this contest are seen as impatient with snail-paced reforms that leave behind their tracks a great mass of distressed losers. Conservatives, on the other hand, content with trickle-down progress, are regarded as reverential to certain time-honored values and traditional authorities that are deemed to serve well the existing order and a few winners who benefit most from it. In the face however of the perceived failure to justify the perpetuation of the system in place, drastic measures would be attempted paving the way in the process for the ideology of revolutionary transformation. For instance, feudalism or the old economy based on slaveholding, having lost its reason for being, has given way to industrial capitalism, and then capitalism itself, in need of reforms, has been subjected to serious challenge mounted by rival ideologies such as Marxism and socialism.

In 1989, conservative thinker Francis Fukuyama, in The End of History?, dared to claim that the big question has been settled with the supposed triumph of “liberal democracy” which he hailed as the “end point of mankind’s ideological evolution” and the “final form of human government”; and that if at all flaws in that triumphant ideology might still be extant, they were rather due to “incomplete implementation” than “in the principles themselves.”

Ideologies are secular (not religious) beliefs in the abilities of man to establish the good society on earth. In the Western world, whether the good society for the greatest number would come in spurts or trickle is driven by the claims of two competing ideologies, one promotes the preservation of allegiances to established order and the other advocates the rupture of bonds from such order, or the values, thoughts and institutions that support it; yet both of which are all the same based on liberal democracy.

There is historical basis in the contention that liberalism grew out of the friction between government and business, with the latter asserting freedom from interference by the former. It was in that sense a negative liberty (freedom from), which insists further on continued protection by the government of such liberty so recognized. Therefore, the progenitor of modern liberalism is economic (or market) liberalism.

Before the emerging power of the merchants and manufacturers sought privileges against restraints, it had always befallen upon the government to provide for the well-being of the nation and its people and toward that end direct and control the national economy. Then, Adam Smith wrote a convincing treatise to reinvent the wheel, arguing instead for a self-regulating economy where the efficient producers of goods and services in free competition are supposed to outsell the less efficient ones and consumers as a result get better products for their bucks than when government interferes with such freedom. Smith’s postulate was the early beginning of laissez-faire economics and inter-national trade.

Democracy on the other hand is about the assumption by the people of the responsibilities of government. It is in a sense an aspect of positive liberty, of self-determination or the realization of the individual’s fullest potential. Political participation is a solemn exercise of this liberty.

Unfortunately, a large population is often too raucous to make decisive action. Democratic governance would then require the initiative of an organized group or the commitment of an elite citizenry to run the government in the name of the people. The growing complexity of modern life has also reduced the expression of political sovereignty to the practical requirement of government by representation. When the undercurrent of elitist democracy converges with the rush of economic liberalism to make up the ideology of market democracy, there is the peril that the blend could end up only in the protection and maintenance, constitutionally or otherwise, of rights and rents already vested (in those who may have attained “market power”) and deference to old habits and modes of thinking rather than in experimentation and innovation with a view to the substantive distribution of opportunities to the impoverished majority desperately aspiring to secure them, or at least the safeguard against invasion of basic rights. x x x

Indeed, democracy is threatened at any time political equality is violated (such as when the vote assigned to each particle of sovereignty is not properly counted or valued) just as in instances where political sovereignty is disregarded (such as when the will of the majority is adulterated or simply set aside post-elections through logrolling, cronyism, patronage and other political rent-seeking activities). In fact, there is as much failure of democracy when ordinary citizens lose the power of effective control over leaders resulting in utter lack of public accountability, as there is market failure when market-dominant minority engages in predatory market behavior because of unrestrained market power.

The observation that political elites are oftentimes helpless against well-entrenched economic elites who normally come out unscathed and blameless in the power play somehow dovetails with [Yale Law School professor] Amy Chua’s observation that fair, honest and democratic elections bring to power anti-market forces. Chua explains the polarity this way: “Markets concentrate wealth, often spectacular wealth, in the hands of the market-dominant minority, while democracy increases the political power of the impoverished majority.”

What’s basically being argued here is that Liberal Party’s Noynoy Aquino is ideologically a liberal over against Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s stark conservatism. But even as a liberal, Noynoy’s aspirations are focused on the positive rather than the negative aspect of liberty.

As a modern liberal, we could look up to Noynoy Aquino as “someone,” as John F. Kennedy puts it, “who looks ahead and not behind, someone who welcomes new ideas without rigid reactions, someone who cares about the welfare of the people – their health, their housing, their schools, their jobs, their civil rights and their civil liberties.”

We should not expect Noynoy Aquino to label himself in his inaugural address a political this and that the way his father, the martyred Benigno “Ninoy” Aquino, Jr., had expressly described himself a Christian socialist. We hope however to learn further from such a momentous occasion more indicia of our new leader’s political values and philosophy by the priorities of governmental policies and programs he plans to pursue, and when and how.

“Foul whisperings are abroad. Unnatural deeds
Do breed unnatural troubles.”

—William Shakespeare, Macbeth

At around the time that the hardworking and prayerful Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was due to deliver her ninth—and presumably last—State of the Nation Address, as well as for several days after, the phrase “lame duck” was predictably bandied about to refer to her. It would probably be more accurate, however, to say that, in the face of the overwhelming nationwide antipathy that has dogged her through nearly a decade in power, the President has consistently comported herself like a lame duck. That is, she has acted in ways that show a flagrant disregard for the consequences other than her own political survival—and, of course, the occasional “simple dinner“.

It is for this reason that all the perfumes of Arabia—or the boisterous bleats of her bovine boosters, anyway—will not sweeten either her rule or her legacy. It is also for this reason that she and her allies have been doing their utmost to damn the mandate of Sen. Benigno S. Aquino III, her apparent successor, with spots—ones that are calculated to be difficult to wash off or rub out, ensuring that the next administration will be so completely preoccupied with and weakened by setting the house of the state in order, it will be unable to live up to even the simplest and most basic expectations of an electorate that has invested so much in the hope that a new leader with a clear, legitimate mandate can and will usher in positive, meaningful change.

Dashing such a hope, as Macapagal-Arroyo surely knows from experience, can only be advantageous to her. After all, it seems to me that her betrayal of the spirit of EDSA by reneging on her promise not to run once she had sat through the term of her ousted predecessor, and then rigging the polls in her favor to boot (allegedly, because, per her lackeys, the evidence has yet to presented at the proper forum), did not so much spark a massive uprising as it did drain the public of the vigor for vigilance and cause widespread resignation—a situation to which the perceived weaknesses of those who could have conceivably replaced her (action star Fernando Poe, Jr. during the 2004 elections, and Vice President Noli de Castro in 2005 following the explosion of the Hello Garci scandal) also contributed. Once the people were sufficiently alienated from and cynical about the political realm, Macapagal-Arroyo gained a far freer hand to do as she pleased, and the results have been appalling beyond belief, as the annus horribilis that was 2009 alone shows: the deeds of her regime ranged from the imposition of duties on imported books—a blatant violation of the Constitution and the Florence Agreement that, per anecdotal reports, is still being implemented—to the torture and execution of 57 people in the Ampatuan Massacre—a crime that represents the very nadir of impunity, and which the hour of justice would seem to be approaching at roughly the pace of a paralyzed snail.

Considering her victorious campaign to represent the second district of Pampanga in the Lower House, and the number of land mines that she has laid to maim and mutilate the mandate of Aquino—the appointment of the publicity hound Renato Corona to the position of Chief Justice by way of a convoluted Supreme Court interpretation of the Constitution is but the most prominent—it would appear entirely plausible to posit that the name of Macapagal-Arroyo’s game is to ensure that, once Aquino takes the helm, the ship of state flounders so badly that she can credibly bring impeachment to bear against him (perhaps on the basis of betrayal of public trust, an offense that she is particularly adept at committing). Her recent smarm offensive regarding the dubious accomplishments of her administration dovetails with this goal: should the nation succumb to disillusionment and despair-induced docility, as is doubtless her wish, “Buti pa noong panahon ni Gloria” might wind up resounding in the public consciousness sooner than one might care to think. Worse, as many a political observer has warned, she could somehow pull together a large enough coalition to instigate the process of charter change, which she has consistently pushed for, paving the way for her return to power, this time as Prime Minister—or, for all we know, as queen regnant.

The recently concluded national and local elections, therefore, are only the end of the beginning—the hurlyburly is not yet done. We, the people, have scorched the snake, not killed it, and we remain in danger of her fangs. In truth, I hope that this assessment will turn out to be an ultimately alarmist one, but for the moment it seems a touch of paranoia is warranted. As Peter Wallace has remarked, the Philippines, especially under the present dispensation, is a magical place, one that has been bent and warped ad majorem Gloria gloriam.

*

(This post also appears in my blog, Random Salt.)

This is surely preliminary.

Highly placed sources are revealing this still incomplete but close to the final make up of the next President’s official family.

It is a mix of seasoned executives with previous cabinet-level portfolio slots and newcomers armed with valued friendly-cum-professional ties with Senator Noynoy Aquino.

Notable in this list are suck posts as foreign affairs and justice secretaries, the heads for the revenue-generating agencies and those that handle mutual funds.

I am thinking this early ‘leak’ serves that purpose of trial balloons to gauge the prospective cabinet members’ acceptability.

Expect both salutary reactions and brickbats being thrown in their direction.

Officially the Aquino search committee for these and lower level selections is headed by former civil service commission chair Karina David.

But it has also been reported that the Aquino sisters Ballsy and Viel arr helping vet the long list of applicants for the obvious reason of affirming their personal closeness and loyalty to their brother.

This is entirely understandable.

But certainly some of the criticisms will be well-intentioned.

Here’s the working list:
1.Buddy Zamora
2.PAGCOR chair – Bong Naguiat;
3.Pete Prado -  DOTC;
4.Dinky Soliman DSWD;
5.Bobby De Ocampo – DOF;
6.Popoy Juico – DAR;
7.Jojo Ochoa – Exec Secretary;
8.Rene Almendras – DPWH;
9.Cesar Purisima – DTI;
10.Arben Santos – Customs;
11.Eddie Gana – GSIS;
12.Jun Simon DILG;
13.Cesar Sarino – SSS;
14.Atty. Avelino Cruz – DOJ;
15.Johnny Santos – DOE;
16.Sonny Dominguez – DA;
17.Butch Abad – DepEd;
18.Ramon Del Rosario – Foreign Affairs

More to come.

A good commander knows how to pick his battles.

If our new President knows how to picks his, he must realize that while he has immense political capital going into Malacanang on Jun 30, the Filipino people expects him full well to expend that capital prudently and in a manner that the downtrodden that he is the avowed champion of understands and understands easily.

Yes, President Noynoy won by a landslide with his spinmeisters dubbing him the ‘People’s President’, making him sound like he’s Manny Pacquiao.

But let’s stop the mixed imagery right there.

It’s not as if Benigno Simeon Aquino III is some bang pugilist who eats Mexicans for breakfast and a Bob Arum packaging his next megabucks fight.

Aquino is President and the first order of business for him is to translate his electoral victory into effective government and good governance.

At the same time that he is assembling a Cabinet made up of men and women of both broad and deep seated commitment to his agenda of positive change the new President must cobble together principled leaderships in both the Senate and the House of Representatives.

This will not be an easy task but it can and must be done, notwithstanding the antics that Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and her allies can be expected to continually pull.

At the Judiciary, the battle is also against corruption, as corruption is seen as also at the root of injustice.

President Aquino will be wrong, woefully wrong, to think it’s about him simply showing petulant displeasure at GMA successfully installing her midnight Chief Justice and completing an ‘Arroyo Court’ that will protect her from the slew of cases over her misrule.

The onus will be on Chief Justice Renato Corona, Mr. President, to cast his own independent, probative shadow.

First things first.

Automation has resulted in something virtually unheard of in Pinoy electoral politics in the past. The leading but losing national candidates have conceded  beginning with senatorial candidate Brig Gen. Danny Lim and the latest was presidential candidate Gibo Teodoro.  Since this is a first, some of these candidates need some pointers in looking like statesman  and gracious at the same time. Losing American presidential candidates are masters at this. A good example is John McCain. When I was in Australia, I recall losing PM Paul Keating conceding to Liberal Party leader John Howard. When Howard lost the election 12 years later, he conceded to Labor’s Kevin Rudd. The losing candidates were practiced in the concession speech. The speech has the usual formula  1) Concession, 2) Thanking supporters and die hards, 3) Congratulating and pledging support and cooperation for the winner. Since we are so unused to this, we have a number 4 which is largely unacceptable to Western electorates and this is 4) public griping or “sour grapes” (BTW my Brit friends say that the audible but lost out PM Gordon Brown has come close to this!)

But we can forgive our candidates. This is their first time. But there is one candidate that won’t concede is the subject of this blog post. It is no other than the Erap who as of this writing has 8.3 M votes compared to Noynoy’s 13.03 M!

I take this no concession stand as another showbiz stunt for the fans which should not really be taken that seriously. But before Noy fans exult, we have to  have a non passionate look at how the voting trends are going. The second Eraption is a sign that we now we have a very clear division between the classes and something that may be eeerily similar to the Red Shirt and Yellow Shirt division in Thailand. While in Thailand the Red Shirts are largely from the provinces and the Yellows are more urban, in the Philippines the Erap fans (Red-Orange?!?) are of the poorer classes (urban and rural) and the Yellows (mainly urban). It took several years before the Reds and Yellows in Thailand went into political “trench warfare”. But the Thai situation is rather different in  some respects to ours. Thaksin’s largesse have benefited the Red Shirts since they have Red tees and Red Crocs (I have seen this), but I doubt it if Erap’s largesse has given Orange Crocs to his fans.

This entrenching division in Pinoy society was exacerbated by no one else, but the Glory of the Second District of Pampanga, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

The second Eraption is significant since it is incontrovertible proof that Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s claim of  economic successes that has uplifted the poor is largely a farce.  The second Eraption is in the process of sinking the SS Mar Roxas, which is the Surprise of this Election. While my relatives who voted and are wags would attribute this the “Korina factor”, I doubt it. Roxas despite spending time in the palengke with a padyak-padyak, never successfully shed off the elitist aura off him. This is the surprise since the Holy Trinity of survey firms never predicted this!

The loss of Villar is another unintended casualty. While Villar may have indeed risen from lower middle class to what he is now, the Pinoy electorate (elite and the poorer classes) are not yet comfortable with the idea of someone making good through hard work and investment savvy. The electorate is more comfy with a rich bloke identifying with the poor (whether this is real or just plain gimmickry). And this is not true for Erap alone but for Noynoy as well.

The second Eraption is also evidence of the irrelevancy of the Left and it’s ideology It’s candidates Satur Ocampo and Liza Maza are like twins at 24-25 places in the senatorial tally. The other moderate Lefty Risa Hontiveros-Baraquel is 13th place. But Baraquel was repackaged more as a centrist than leftist.

The silver lining in our more divided society is that Mr Benigno Simeon Aquino III will be accepted by all as the legitimately elected President of the Philippines. This is something that eluded Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo ever since becoming the Malacanang tenant.  Mr Aquino will be unlike Thai PM Abhisit and even his mother Cory (who came into power through military coups although in the case of Mrs Aquino, it was failed one rescued by more than a million people).

Mr Aquino has to immediately deal with the problem of our deepening and entrenching class divisions which have been described by both Time and Newsweek as a problem of “having a growing underclass with an increasingly insensitive elite” This is something that his sainted mother failed to address and thus resulted in the corruption he wants to get rid of so we can take that straight way.

Now how will he deal with Erap pardoned with all rights reinstated and Gloria in Congress? How will he immediately implement the needed reforms or else we end up with another dose of Yellow tinged betrayal? We have to remind Noynoy that the straight way may be paved with good intentions but right into hell!

The assessment itself is nothing new, considering that the CPP, in a statement issued to mark its 41st anniversary last December, said Villar seemed to be “the most patriotic and progressive insofar as he advocates the interests of Filipino businessmen, expresses sympathy for the workers and peasants and condemns human rights violations”. Of course, the CPP has also derided Villar for his bureaucrat capitalism, for being “the biggest among [former President] Estrada’s stooges“—are these remarks that belong to the dustbin of history as well?

In any case, the statements of Sison are interesting to me for a couple of reasons. The first reason is that it unfailingly leads me to the question, “What program?”

Granted, there was that much-vaunted “mutual adoption” of platforms between the Nacionalista Party (NP) and the Makabayan coalition, but the resultant document was published in the NP web site only on February 20, several days after the official campaign period had started, and over two months after the same material was available on the Makabayan web site. Perhaps more importantly, can the document be found in Villar’s main campaign site? As of this writing, it cannot.

I wish to stress that, as I have pointed out elsewhere, Villar is utterly dismissive of platforms, and his dismissiveness is a matter of public record. In an interview with Ricky Carandang, he said, “Kasi yung mga plataporma, madaling sabihin ‘yan e. Pagagawa mo lang sa speechwriter mo ang mga plataporma mo, sasabihin mo ‘yan, me-memorize-in mo ‘yan, okay na.” Such a statement should strike no one as having come from a man who takes platforms in particular, and governance in general, with any gravity or sincerity.

This brings me to the second reason that I find Sison’s evaluation interesting: in claiming that Villar would be more amenable to negotiations with the NDFP—Aquino being supposedly surrounded by anti-communist and pseudo-progressive elements—Sison appears to have overlooked the fact that the NP is a former ally of, and is still friendly with, Kilusang Bagong Lipunan (KBL), of which the honorary chairman is none other than former First Lady Imelda Marcos, the living half of the conjugal dictatorship that was once touted as the most effective recruiter for the CPP. Moreover, Villar and the Marcoses are on such good terms that they, along with the so-called solid North founded by the late dictator Ferdinand, will be voting for Villar.

Even if Sison later quibbles and says that he had, after all, been asked to pick between undesirable choices, his seeming willful blindness to the Marcosian specter and spectacle that is necessarily connected to the “relatively better” Villar, is disturbing.

Does Sison believe that delivering justice to a body politic that continues to suffer from the ravages of the Marcos regime is no longer the priority that it was? And what about the allegations of abuse against Villar himself—do not these matter? Has Sison yielded to the inevitability of a Villar-aided Marcos restoration? Or, as Business Mirror columnist Manuel Buencamino suggested some time ago, is the revolution indeed over?

Insofar as the concept of revolution implies the presence of a circle, closing with this quotation from Imelda Marcos may well be apropos: “My economic theory is that money was made round to go round. Money was made to encircle man so that he would blossom with many flowers. The whole trouble is, the center is money. All the heads of people thinking about money. All the hands of people reaching out for money. All their poor little bodies working for money. They are running in all directions for money.”

There have been other public appearances and debates in different formats in which Aquino and Villar as well as the other presidential candidates have participated. During such an important part of the electoral exercise, the candidates were subjected to tough questioning and scrutiny by each other, the program host, a panel of moderators or the public but none of them has conceivably exhibited any such irrationality that otherwise indicates any form of mental impairment as to put his or her presidential bid in peril by virtue of it.

Of late, while the Villar presidential campaign has been seen as losing some steam, a dubious “psychological” report involving Noynoy Aquino as the patient has surfaced out of the blue. The suspicion is strong that the Villar camp is the original source of the report which has every indices of being a hoax. For one, the spurious character of the report is discernible on its face. A “psychiatric” evaluation prepared by a clergy coming from an academic department (the Psychology Department) of a university instead of a professional medical clinic or a hospital?

Fr. Tito Caluag who is supposed to have signed the report has publicly denounced the hoax by stating to the effect that the document is forged and that he is not even competent to make the evaluation since he is neither a psychologist (nor a psychiatrist).

It was then a perfect opportunity for Villar to be a gentleman politician by condemning the ludicrous fabrication and thereby allowing to mitigate the tone of animosity in the campaign (that is, if the source of the report is not his party or a cabal of rabid partisans). Very unfortunately, Villar did just the exact opposite.

One may recall that during the last US presidential election, a woman from the audience in a town hall meeting stood up and took the microphone to confirm from John McCain if Barack Obama is an Arab (implying maliciously that being an Arab, Obama is either uncivil or a terrorist). McCain defended his rival without any hesitation. “No ma’am,” McCain said to the woman after retaking the microphone from her. “He is a decent family man . . . citizen that I just happen to have disagreements with on fundamental issues and that’s what this campaign is all about,” he further stressed earnestly.

Unlike McCain who had had the basic decency to cut off the woman wanting to stoke bigotry, Villar reacted in the other extreme by issuing a statement challenging Aquino to submit to a psychiatric test to determine his rival’s fitness to be a president. In a pretense to appear fair, Villar said he is willing to take the same test or a “comprehensive physical and mental examination in order to ascertain [our] fitness to occupy the highest office of the land.”

In the same town hall meeting where another instigator had claimed to fear the prospect of an Obama presidency, McCain responded emphatically in this fashion: “I have to tell you. Sen. Obama is a decent person and a person you don’t have to be scared of as president of the United States.”

Manny Villar has chosen to be cut-throat but, doesn’t this kind of political stunt remind us too of boxer Floyd Mayweather’s own silly antics? Mayweather, apparently avoiding an early encounter with Manny Pacquiao, has demanded a pre-fight Olympic-style blood testing. There is no testing policy of sorts required by any boxing commission in the US but Floyd’s excuse in insisting on it is that, like Villar, he’s willing to take the test himself.

Boxing fans all over the world consider Floyd’s demand baloney, many of them convinced that Floyd is either ducking a confrontation with Manny Paquiao or otherwise out to mudsling the Filipino boxer’s reputation.

Is it too hard for millions of Filipinos who since the Pacman phenomenon have turned boxing aficionados in droves to imagine that Manny Villar is simply doing a Floyd screwy spoof?

The plot thickens.

The man tagged as the blogger who came out with the bogus psychological report about Sen. Noynoy Aquino is denying any role in manufacturing the fake report bearing the signature of Ateneo priest, Dr. Tito Caluag.

Atty Ariel Radovan told on-line friends :

I am a lawyer not a doctor. Kung court records pa I could make research pero medical records pa of a well known personality where on earth I would dig (sic) that. If it is court records well and good.

But, medical records of a well known personality, not my type. The picture there (with Sen. Loren Legarda)  was taken pa 2004 during FPJ campaign, so it was spliced and painted on the article.

Radovan was directly asked about the bogus psych report:

Radovan said he suspected former Justice Secretary Devanadera of involvement in the brouhaha:

Examine the contents (of the blog written by political writer Patricio Mangubat), the personalities being attacked is my forger boss Gov. (Willy) Enverga (of Quezon) and his son Cong Enverga. I suspect the green camp of former GOJ Secretary Devanadera is behind all of this to discredit my boz Cong Mar through me.

On the ‘psych’ document, Radovan says:

San nga ako kukuha ng ganyan. Ginamit lang ako. Read the article in full and see who is being attacked. bakit ko pagkakaabalahan an med records ni Noynoy eh am not privy to his state of health from the time he was born. In all my political life in association with my bosses sanay na ako na ginagamit.

Here, the only thing that was so funny was the way I am used to malign somebody of a national stature whose primary target was the father and son.

Taking his claims at face value, another angle surfaces – the Radovan’s suspicion that this is the handiwork of people supporting the administration candidate Gilbert ‘Gibo’ Teodoro.

The lawyer makes no reference about  suspicions that he is an operator of the Nacionalista Party of Sen. Manny Villar.

The brouhaha is far from over, it seems.

From Mr. Radovan also comes this missive to yours truly:

I respect you as a journalist and the respect remains. I am just surprised why a probinsyano -based lawyer would be USED to malign somebody of a national stature. There are so many sophisticated manila based political operators who have sterling credentials from ivy league university destined by fate to do harm on fellow humans so why pick on me.

If I were to redirect you on the piece of that trash article, you will note through a meticulous study that while I am bannered in the headline which will surely catch fire, the real target of the innuendoes are my political bosses – former gov. enverga and his son, Cong. Mark Enverga. The contents would not lie…it traces allegedly the conflict between the Tanadas and the Enverga from way back due to electoral exercise.

It is a matter of local politics. Why? Who will benefit? I surmise it came from the woodworks and intelligence apparatus of the green camp of former Sec Agnes Devanadera who is rating poorly in the congressional race against Cong. Enverga here in the first district of Quezon.

The psych report is only a collateral issue to attract readers on the on going political exercise at my expense.

In law, he who accuse somebody rest the burden of proof. I can’t offer any explanation as I am not the source of that report. Napaka bobo ng gumawa ng script na ito. Sorry to say. Pang showbiz lang ito.

Thanks kuya Ding.

What should we make of this?  It appears to me Mr. Radovan has be instructed to clear the NP by invoking local politics in Quezon is the cause of this brouhaha.

Oh brother.

During the 2000 US presidential elections, it was however Al Gore, a presidential candidate, who emerged as the statesman. He won the popular vote but lost the electoral vote of Florida when the US Supreme Court blocked the Florida recount and with it the required number of “electors” he needed to clinch the presidency. But Gore ended the ensuing constitutional crisis when he conceded the election despite his public disagreement with the partisan decision of the Court in favor of George W. Bush. In the end, Bush had to wage two wars to legitimate his controversial ascension to the US presidency.

There is a looming constitutional crisis in the Philippines of similar consequence because of a threatened “midnight appointment” involving the Chief Justice of the highest court of the land. For President Arroyo, a corresponding degree of statesmanship would have required her to just be happy with her government serving as no more than a “caretaker” during the last 45 days of her presidency to allow for the smooth transfer of power. For the Philippine Supreme Court, there was an ample opportunity (in the controversial De Castro case promulgated last week regarding the appointment in the offing) to have opted for the pragmatic stand of not doing anything with the various petitions before it without violating any law or the Constitution until the incumbent president’s term expires, or better yet of simply dismissing the cases as suggested by the better opinion of Justice Nachura in the same case for “not (raising) an actual case or controversy ripe for judicial determination.”

Unfortunately, Arroyo seems to have taken an unconventional, nay, (theretofore) forbidden, route if not out of spite then because of self-protection; on the other hand, the all Arroyo-appointee majority in De Castro has chosen to be political and partisan by ignoring established precedents and the plain language of the Constitution as if ordinary mortals are too dumb to divine the legal gobbledygook it employed to skirt around the constitutional ban against the odious practice of midnight appointments.

Recall that when President Arroyo first made public her desire to choose a chief justice by way of midnight appointment, the judicial precedent as had been enunciated by the Supreme Court in the Aytona case considers such an appointment to be an abuse of the prerogatives of the President, the Constitution, adopting the Aytona decision, expressly bans the practice in unmistakable terms and the law of the land for twelve years as affirmed in the Court’s ruling in Valenzuela has been to the effect that the constitutional ban covers members of the judiciary and a violation thereof could be “considered an election offense.”

One is therefore hard put to find any cogently compelling reason for Arroyo to even conceive of defying the ban (and for the majority in De Castro to join the fray by unceremoniously allowing Arroyo the slack she needs) other than as Manolo Quezon colorfully puts it “to bring the candidates down to her level” (of illegitimacy) and force them “to walk a tightrope suspended over a tar pit” with the perceived sinister expectation that the new president would, at the very least, start off as a diminished chief executive.

Noynoy has apparently seen the early warning signs and although only a presidential candidate himself, he has exhibited a nuanced cageyness of a potential president which he directed to the incumbent president and indirectly to her appointees in the Supreme Court by telling both not to cross the political boundaries to protect the legitimacy of the office of the president, the fragile judicial system and the constitutional values we have tried to piece together since the Marcos years.

Months before the promulgation of the De Castro decision, Noynoy, as if acting to issue a threat of a presidential veto of a proposed law repugnant to the Constitution, had reportedly indicated that if elected president, he “will not recognize a chief justice appointed by the outgoing president, contrary to the constitutional ban on appointments during the wee hours of her presidency, and contrary to propriety, delicadeza and precedence.”

Regrettably, like the “Supreme Cowards,” the sticky tag the late Vice President Salvador Laurel had put on the high court in the infamous Javellana case that validated the Marcos dictatorship, the majority in De Castro has dared to put at stake its own legitimacy – well, arguably for the long term, before the “court of history.” Yet recall that, unluckily for the fawning Marcos-era justices, Cory Aquino did not wait for corrective measures to be carried out by the verdict of history alone. She had in fact an easier task turning forthwith the current tide of illegitimacy: she reconstituted the Marcos Court to start afresh.

Now, if Noynoy were to become president, and the Marcosian scheme to install a supposedly hostile chief justice materialized, what can we speculate are the choices available to him?

One possible choice is to hold accountable Justice Bersamin who penned the majority opinion in De Castro and the other justices who concurred with him for culpable (intentional) violation of the Constitution via the impeachment process. This is something easier said than done since even now Arroyo who is likely to win a congressional seat in a Pampanga district is consolidating her congressional loyalists for her to grab the speakership of the House, the agency constitutionally charged with “the exclusive power to initiate all cases of impeachment.”

Another is for Noynoy to make good his pre-De Castro threat to ignore an Arroyo-appointed chief justice and appoint his own. This is an equally difficult choice considering that the presidential power of appointment as regards the members of the Supreme Court and judges of the lower courts is now shared by the President with the Judicial and Bar Council from whose list of nominees the President shall make the appointment. The Council may decide not to prepare the list if it so deems no vacancy exits there being a current sitting chief justice appointed by Noynoy’s predecessor.

Next is for Noynoy to nail Arroyo and Justice Bersamin et al as conspirators with criminal prosecutions for election offenses related to the violation of the constitutional ban. This does not look to be a cakewalk either because pursuant to the Constitution, the prosecution of such offenses in now under the jurisdiction of the Commission on Election, an independent constitutional body (whose partiality, or at least of a division of it, for Arroyo is highly suspect).

It would seem that one of Noynoy’s best bets is to do a Cory, that is, fire the members of the Supreme Court, and start afresh too. But lo, to come to this, however, requires People Power, a phenomenon that as the Lady in Yellow herself has experienced is not easily summoned owing to the fact that the Great Beast has an unpredictable mind of its own. Moreover, to be legitimate, People Power is resorted to always as a power of last resort.

Where would these leave President Noynoy now?

Very generally and briefly, my thoughts are: first, other dominant events and influences not being present, for Noynoy to do a political settlement within himself ala Al Gore, the statesman, to spare the Republic from being enmeshed in another difficult political crisis, and then work as hard as a carabao like Barack Obama using all the tools of democracy available to him (such as plain-vanilla persuasion to build a stronger coalition of supporters) to lay immediately the foundation for major political and societal reforms.

Yes, through patience and persistence the job can get done. Yes, we also can.

What are you thinking?