Demolished truth

“BOARD JUNKS ouster move vs. Luciano.”
So read the text message I received late afternoon of June 22.
With the newsman’s nose for intrigues, I naturally raised the issue the following day at the media conference called by Clark International Airport Corp. Executive Vice President Alexander Cauguiran.
“Nothing of that sort happened,” was the EVP’s curt reply.
No junking? But was there a move during the board meeting to oust Victor Jose “Chichos” Luciano from the CIAC presidency? I persisted.
“Absolutely nothing,” a visibly irked but definitive Cauguiran insisted.
At the subsequent media interview with Luciano – a spit away from Cauguiran’s office, the beleaguered CEO said there indeed was a document calling for his ouster that was passed around the members of the CIAC board during their meeting but it did not prosper as only one member signed it.
So did Luciano see the document and the lone signatory?
“I did not see it but I was informed about it.” That was his pained reply.
So who was the lone signatory?
“You should have asked EVP Cauguiran.”
Worse than a chicken-or-egg proposition there, Luciano affirming what Cauguiran was absolutely negating.
So Punto’s ace reporter Joey Pavia called CIAC Board Chairman Nestor Mangio.
“Yes, there was a resolution calling for the resignation of President Luciano. I signed it. So did EVP Cauguiran,” Mangio told Pavia.
“Yes, it was not pursued after CIAC Board adviser General Abaya proposed that an independent body be requested to thoroughly investigate the case before such resolution could be addressed,” Mangio furthered.
One incident. Three versions. Obviously someone – if not everyone – is lying here.
It is not only in that account of the CIAC board meeting that truth was apparently demolished.
Even the power point presentation (PPP) of Cauguiran during the media conference was shot full of apparent lies.
The fifth frame of the PPP read: "4. Documents submitted by PPGS and EMD reveal that 3Aeta organizations sought the intercession of high-ranking officials in the Office of the President of the Philippines in requesting P/CEO VJIL to donate to them pre-identified scrap materials and the demolition of 17 old structures within the Civil Aviation Complex in order to generate funds for their various livelihood programs."
The tenth frame read: "CDC issued the corresponding Demolition Permits to the following aeta organizations:
Bamban Aeta Tribal Association or BATA for the demolition of 4 structures (Bldgs. 7140, 7246, 7257, 7208)
Association of Barangay Chieftains of the Aetas in Pampanga for the demolition of 8 structures (Bldgs. 7247, 7288, 7289, 7300, 7191, 7252, 7253, 7235)
Aeta Tribal Community Vendor Group for the demolition of 2 structures (Bldgs. 7190 and 7268)."
Clearly, four structures to BATA, eight to the ABCAP, and two to the ATCVG total to only 14 demolished structures. As there were “17 old structures” recorded as having been demolished, where did the remaining three go?
A staff at the CIAC engineering department was hurriedly summoned and hurriedly wrote on a torn leaf from a notebook additional three buildings going to the ABCAP. An act worthy of a Mandrake pulling a rabbit out of his top hat.
Truth again was apparently scrapped in the accounting of the proceeds from the sale of scrap materials from the demolished buildings.
One Josie Gomez, the self-appointed “agent” of the Aetas said she had already given the tribesmen some P9.5 million from the proceeds.
The fact-finding committee headed by Mangio himself gathered that the “appraised value of the buildings from the prices that were quoted by the contractors and the advances given to the Aetas” reached about P33,518,009, “excluding contractors’ profit.”
The total receipted amount given to the Aetas was a measly P344,750. Add the cost of the 300 sacks of rice also given to the tribes at P1,500 per sack totaling to P450,000 and the sum total would only be P794,750.
A total of P32,723,259 is missing. A whopper there! Somebody’s made a killing!
And Luciano since Day One has been saying the buildings had “absolute zero value in the CIAC books.”
It looks to me that it is Truth that has absolute zero value in the CIAC books. So where lies Truth then? At the rubble of those demolished buildings.
Shame.

Demolition derby

FRENZIED. THAT is the demolition of 16 buildings at the Clark civil aviation complex, 14 in a period of one month.
“Dilapidated derelicts thoroughly ransacked. With absolute zero value in the CIAC books.”
So rationalized Clark International Airport Corp. President-CEO Victor Jose “Chichos” Luciano of the demolition, further ennobling his rationalization with the declaration that all the proceeds from the scraps went to the livelihood programs of the indigenous Aeta tribes of Bamban, CIAC not seeing a single cent of it.
But zero value? The scraps from the demolished buildings may not have any value in the CIAC books but, aside from the sentimental, they absolutely have million-peso value in some other books. Go, Chichos, ask any junk shop dealer.
Yes, in our banner story here yesterday, the value of the scrap derived from the 16 demolished buildings was put at between a low of P30 million to a whopping P192 million. There is money in those dilapidated derelicts, Chichos.
But he Aetas, the intended beneficiaries, claimed having received practically nothing. At least the president of the Bamban Aeta Tribal Association, Oscar Rivera, went on record saying: “What we got was P15,000 and 100 sacks of rice, and that was in 2009.”
So where did the rest of the money go?
Loose lips at the CIAC itself let loose rumors of P1- million cold cash finding its way to the individual campaign chests of six very fortunate mayors. The monetized scraps personally delivered by a ranking CIAC thief, er, chief of office.
No hearsays now but in a story here today, one Josie Gomez, a purported scrap dealer, introduced herself as the very “agent” of the Aetas in dealing with scrap buyers, and claimed she had turned over about P9.5 million to the Aetas since the demolitions began last year.
A total of P4.5 million of that amount, Gomez claimed, was spent for various projects, such as water pumps, scholarships and distribution of relief goods in the Aeta villages in Bamban.
Gomez also disclosed that contrary to Rivera’s claim of only P15,000 and 100 sacks of rice, he actually received “no less than P3.5 million” share of the proceeds from the sale of scraps of two demolished buildings.
Gomez’s declarations virtually exonerated Luciano from all allegations of anomalies arising from the demolition job he authorized.
We have to point out though that Rivera has called Gomez an “associate of Luciano.”
The same Gomez was exposed by Candaba Mayor Jerry Pelayo – in a report to CIAC Board Chairman Nestor Mangio – as having offered his son Patrick the amount of P450,000 just to allow the demolition of a building he wanted to use.
Pelayo has earlier accused Luciano of having ordered the demolition of two buildings in his leased area for a food hub.
Luciano may have found some solace in the declarations of Gomez but he would find no comfort but all misery in the continuing demolition job swirling about him.
Now labeled as the “Demolition Man” – that’s what the monikers “Boy Scrap and “Boy Bakal” sum up to, Luciano has to contend with the vitriolic ink of those poison letters and the venomous innuendoes and verbal assaults on his persona.
Already, a Ford Escape and a Toyota Fortuner are being tagged as “katas ng scrap, handog ni Boy Manyak.”So, ignorant us could only ask: Who own(s) those SUVs? Can they afford to pay for such pricey vehicles with their salaries, be they from CIAC or CDC?
It would be silly to still ask who Boy Manyak is supposed to be.
Yeah, it is not only the derelict and dilapidated buildings that are currently being demolished at CIAC, even characters – not necessarily dilapidated and derelict – are objects of the wrecking ball.
Yeah, demolition derby is the name of the game in Clark. Especially with this frenzy to hold on to positions, to clutch at straws, in the irreversible change of administration.
Irreversible? I maybe wrong there, what with a “Boy Kapit” or a “Boy Sipsip” at CIAC reportedly having already ingratiated himself with the incoming Aquino administration.
Oh boy!

In good faith

JUDGMENT CALL. That was the terse, albeit long delayed, response of Clark International Airport Corp. President-CEO Victor Jose “Chichos” Luciano to the question by what authority 16 buildings within the civil aviation complex were demolished.
Judgment call arising from good faith, to be precise. With Chichos reading not so much the Riot Act as the mandate of the CIAC president to donate buildings without any authorization from the CIAC board of directors.
So Candaba Mayor Jerry Pelayo, there’s the authority to demolish you’ve long been asking CIAC to produce.
Chichos too produced a series of communication from the Presidential Management Staff, the National Commission on Indigenous Peoples, and the Presidential Action Center virtually pressuring the CIAC to effect the donation of dilapidated buildings at the area of the Diosdado Macapagal International Airport.
A June 23, 2009 letter from the PMS, signed by Secretary Hermogenes C. Esperon Jr., specifically stated that “the Office of the President has approved the request of Mr. Oscar Rivera, chairman, Bamban Aeta Tribal Association, for donation of DMIA’s old buildings (highlighting mine) and other old materials for their livelihood programs.”
There again, Kuyang Jerry, is the clarification of, nay, a contradiction to your allegation that Esperon allowed for the demolition of only one building.
“Dilapidated derelicts thoroughly ransacked. With absolute zero value in the CIAC books.” So described Chichos of the 16 buildings demolished. Not anywhere near the million-worth ascribed to them by some “anonymous engineer-contractor.”
Again, this contradicted the allegations of Kuyang Jerry that they were “still serviceable, needing but some refurbishment.”
And, no, Chichos stressed, there was nothing arbitrary in the choice of the buildings to be demolished. Only those identified by the Building and Utilities Regulatory Department of the Clark Development Corp. as “condemned” buildings were donated to the indigenous tribes.
“Sumusunod tayo sa proseso. Sa katunayan ay nagtanong pa tayo sa Commission on Audit kung ano ang magandang gawin ukol dito. Ang sabi nila basta wala lang perang lalabas sa mula gobyerno," said the self-professed stickler to procedure.
"No money ever changed hands. And there was no cost to the government. All of these are properly documented and the donations are part of CIAC's corporate social responsibility," he added.
CIAC’s CSR apparently encroached on the rights of Kuyang Jerry as investor when at least two buildings within his leased area were also demolished.
“Mayor Pelayo was given five hectares for his so-called Food Hub, at the the much-lowered cost of 50 cents per square meter,” Chichos explained. “For the past three years he has not made any improvement in his area. And he has not even paid for the rentals.”
So what about Kuyang Jerry’s reported payment of $24,000 to CIAC?
“That is but a security deposit we received in good faith from him,” Chichos retorted.
The man denigrated in some poison letters alternately as “Boy Scrap” or “Boy Bakal” strongly denied Kuyang Jerry’s allegation buildings intended for his Clark One-Stop Agricultural Market were demolished.
“No building covered in his contract was demolished,” Chichos averred. “Why, during the demolition, there was no formal opposition coming from Mayor Pelayo. It was merely verbal."
Verbal? Yeah, so very Pelayo. Chichos better prepare himself for some barrage of verbiage there. To be taken in good faith, but of course.

Plundered anew

NINETEEN YEARS ago, what the wrath of Mount Pinatubo failed to destroy in the American-abandoned Clark Air Base human greed plundered.
So we heard of someone named “Hakot” – as we H-over minding Kapampangans say it – cleaned and cleared the once teeming bastion of American imperialism and decadent capitalism in the Far East not so much of the ash and sand that buried it but of anything of value that remained in it, not even the toilet bowls and sinks spared.
So we read of the most profitable of the novel enterprises that arose from the devastated base: the total demolition of damaged buildings, the scrap – galvanized iron roofing, wood panelings and ceilings, parquet and tile flooring, steel beams – contracted out to junk dealers.
Nineteen years hence, the buried military base has completely – like the proverbial phoenix – risen out of the ashes and transformed itself into the booming Clark Freeport.
Indeed, nineteen years have passed but the plunder of Clark has remained extant. The plunderers of a different breed, but their greedy way all too similar. That is if one is to believe all the talks arising out of the current scandals obtaining at Clark today.
As it was at the time of “Hakot”, so it is now at the time of someone monikered “Boy Demo” aka “Boy Scrap” – the demolition of buildings to make money out of the scrap materials.
The difference is that in the immediate Pinatubo period, only heavily damaged buildings already condemned as dangerous and unserviceable were demolished. This time, even highly serviceable buildings that need but minor refurbishing were being taken down to their very foundation.
Candaba Mayor Jerry Pelayo rued that it would take no less than P120 million to construct just one building similar to those demolished. His is a double lamentation with the wrecker’s ball smashing some of the buildings intended to be part of his proposed Clark One-Stop Agricultural Market that would have showcased the best produce not only of his melon, tilapia, and rice-yielding town but of the rest of Pampanga and Central Luzon.
Such wasted resources! Such wasted opportunities! And at what profit?
Sixteen buildings have been demolished as of last count, 14 only last month. Think of the millions of pesos saved there, per Pelayo’s computation.
Sixteen buildings gone to rabble. And the Clark International Airport Corp., in whose area of responsibility the buildings were located, claimed ignorance of it. So CIAC Board chairman Nestor Mangio himself admitted.
“It has come to my attention that several warehouse structures within the CIAC are being demolished…I understand we have not discussed this matter with the Board. May I know by what authority are these demolitions happening?” wrote Mangio to CIAC President-CEO Victor Jose “Chichos” Luciano early this month.
On whose authority were the buildings demolished? Pelayo has long been asking Luciano too.
The mayor also wanted to know: “Where did the demolition proceeds go? How did these scrap materials go out of the Clark gate? Who are the officials involved here?”
Questions I do hope our good friend Chichos will be able to answer – most convincingly – in a media conference scheduled as we go to press.
In the spirit of fairness, I shall devote the whole of my column for Monday on Chichos’ reply.
Until then, let me remind you that this here is just one part of the “continuing plunder of Clark.” Allegedly.

'Gin ginha'

MACAU -- Sweet as sweet can be. Swabeng-swabe as the drinking masters in the neighborhood sari-sari store back home are wont to blurt at the first sip of any wine or liquor alien to their pedestrian tastes.
The sherry wine of Portugal though transcends wining social classes, finding unanimity in judgment – superior – with even the most discriminating connoisseurs. Dom Pedro Alagos, at least, whom I know to have had a wide range of taste in wines, liquors, beers, down to tuba, basi and lambanog.
So teetotaler me – alcohol made me bloat and red all over so I avoided it like the plague – just have to take a sip of it – gin ginha (pronounced jin-jinya), it is called – if only to know and learn by taste what the buzz around it was all about. Hence I raised my glass with a toast to Dom Antonio Coelho, master chef of his eponymous restaurant along Ruo do Negosciantes.
Yeah, sweet as sweet can be this gin ginha, straight from an oak barrel. Smelled so good, tasted even better. So smooth to the throat, so pleasant to the tongue, that one sip deserved another, and another, and another, until my glass ran dry.
Yeah, I was ready and raring for my second glass when allergens took hold of my being – starting with a warm glow on the cheeks, on to hot flashes on the nape, down the chest, the arms, the hands, the legs, the feet. The loins getting a higher concentration, if not degree, of the heat. Then the throbbing between the ears, and the woozy feeling. Oh God, please don’t make me throw up before all these people.
Direct blasts of cold air from the van’s air conditioner were of little relief. Cold water splashes before dinner just intensified the heat.
Bottle after bottle of cold mineral water gulped down to dilute the alcohol in the gut. Ay, no gusto me. No buono appetito – as my obese Chavacano friend would always holler in his fractured Iberian lengua before meals: The gastronomic delight of cod fish, prawns, leg of lamb and suckling piglet not enough to even just whet the appetite.
A bottle of sparkling water perhaps? So suggested Dom Antonio Peralta of Miramar Restaurant.
Why not? I would have taken anything, even my own urine, if anybody suggested it as a cure to my alcohol malady.
Why not, indeed! Sparkling water worked fine and fast. Just one bottle was enough to bring back my old bubbly but un-toxified self. So I had a fill of the really delectable Portuguese meal.
So what can you say of gin ginha? Asked Senhor Joao Novikoff Sales, PR executive of the Macau Government Tourist Office, who served as our able and affable tour mentor. No tormentor, notwithstanding the homonym there.
Gin ginha? Ah, a woman is gin ginha. Beautiful, sweet and sensuous. Most appealing to the senses. But packing a wallop, aye, a kick in the loins to every male.
Gin ginha is most deservingly addressed as “Her Hotness.”
So on that night of June 3, 2010 in a Portuguese restaurant by the praia in Coloane, a new term entered the Pampanga media’s lexicon – gin ginha.
And for the duration of our Macau stay, gin ginha was the call, if not the order, of the day.

Macau: Cultivating culture

I SET not a foot, aye, not even a toe, in any of the ornate and opulent casinos of Macau. And I am all the more enriched by that (non)experience.
Which goes to show that Macau is not all gambling mecca for the exclusive enjoyment of junketing high-rollers. Neither is Macau nothing less of a shopping paradise lost to all but the jet-setting super rich and superbly famous.
Too poor to gamble, too impoverished to shop, I immersed myself – along with the other press people, but of course – in local culture. There lay the enrichment gained from this journey.
Beyond the shimmering lights of the hotel-casino complexes lies the soul of Macau, the bedrock of its past – its living cultural heritage.
The Mater Dei church – all that remains of it now is the façade that serves as the very icon of Macau – at the very core of the Ruins of St. Paul, is a living witness to the spirituality of the Macanese. A tiny incense-choked ancient Buddhist temple at its rear, a testimony to religious co-existence, if not tolerance.
The network of cobblestoned avenida, ruo, calcada, estrada and travessa that meanders through a maze of tiny stores and shops, restaurants and homes ever opens to a largo, a tiny square, where stands a Catholic church.
The yellow-toned St. Augustine’s is up an escada at the end of Avenida da Praia, where a row of green-and-white colonial homes now comprise the Taipa Houses-Museum.
Yellow-hued too is St. Dominic’s, right at the heart of commercial shops, opening to Leal Senado Square.
Through the hilly greens and rock formations of Camoes Garden and Grotto where locals do their early morning tai-chi, where pets have their own W.C., that’s water closet, toilets in plain language, one comes to the Protestant Cemetery, where stands a quaint white chapel, where antiquated tombstones, circa 1700-1800 tell the story of valor, of hardships, of struggle in the opening of a new world to Europeans.
Some 200 steps from Camoes Garden stands St. Anthony’s where the Jesuits set their earliest headquarters. I did remember to pray to my patron saint whose feast day is June 13.
For all its churches, Macau makes a pilgrimage site. Not only to Christians but also to people of other faiths, teeming as it is too with temples honoring various deities. Small shrines are just about every street nook and cranny, with plaques, stones and statues representing different gods, and the ubiquitous burning joss sticks.
By the sea, along Avenida Sun Yat Sen stands the golden statute of Kun Iam, the goddess of mercy. The base of the giant statue is an ecumenical center for Eastern religions, open to worship, retreat and meditation.
Atop the Coloane Hill Park is the 19.99-meter high marble statue of the goddess A-Ma, the patron of seafarers. At the base of the hill is the A-Ma Cultural Village with a majestic temple atop a marble stairway.
There is a much older A-Ma temple around Barra Square near the Maritime Museum.
Speaking of museums, Macau – so it is bruited about – has the most number of museums per capita in the whole world. I got to see only two.
The Macau Museum at Mount Fortress some hundred steps from the Ruins of St. Paul gives more than a glimpse, aye, a sense of the history of Macau and the Macanese culture. I had fun trying to translate old Latin manuscripts of missals and Catholic rituals displayed along antique santos. Even as I reveled too in immersing – if only for 30 minutes – in the day-to-day life in Macau of the past via dioramas, audio-visual aids, and exhibits.
It was most opportune for us to experience the Refugio de Um Viajante (Traveller’s Home) exhibition featuring the masterpieces of George Chinnery, the “pre-eminent representative of the English fine arts in the East during the 18th and 19th centuries.”
And to be gifted – by our tour mentor, Senhor Joao Sales, PR executive of the Macau Government Tourist Office – with a number of prints of Chinnery’s obras primas is simply… wow to the max!
At the Handover Gifts Museum of Macau is a collection of Chinese art pieces in different media, mostly sculpture in jade, ceramic potteries and tapestries that represented the gifts of China’s various provinces to Macau in celebration of its handover by Portugal to China on December 20, 1999.
Outside the museums, art and artifacts find their niches in the lobbies of the hotels and casinos. At Grand Lisboa is a showcase of the finest – and most expensive – artworks and antiques in jade, ivory, and gold. At MGM Grand Macau is the Dalinian Dancer, a bronze statue by the surrealist artist Salvador Dali, behind the very reception desk is a modern abstract mural.
A taste of the performance art – not in the classical sense though of ballet or the opera but no less entertaining – is the Cirque du Soleil’s “ZAIA” at the Venetian Macao.
An emergent culture – extreme sports – has found its base at the Macau Tower. Sheer thrill is provided by The AJ Hackett Adventure: be it in the bungy jump from 233 meters aboveground at a speed of 200 km/h; the skyjump, also from 233 meters on a 20 second flight at 75km/h; the skywalk around the rim of the tower; and the mast climb – scaling the tower’s summit at 338 meters.
For the equivalent of P10,500 for the bungy jump, I preferred to just walk through the museums, the heritage sites and the art-laden hotel lobbies. For free. Yeah, being a culture vulture need not be expensive. Not even in Macau.

Macau: A taste of luxury

OPULENCE. That makes the first impression of Macau. Principally arising from the architectural grandeur of its hotel-resorts and casinos, like the Venetian Macao exuding like atmosphere as the Italian original, from the Piazza di San Marco down to the gondolas with their gondoliers belting O sole mio.
Then impacting out of the hotel-resorts’ lavish appointments, such that at the Four Seasons Hotel Macao with its European and Chinese design fusion of handmade blue tiles and carved wood, hand-painted silk and crystal chandeliers, and equally luxurious services, from five swimming pools to state-of-the-art gym, spa and salon, and the finest-dining restaurants including Zi Yat Heen, one of just two restaurants in the whole of Macau awarded with two stars by the Michelin Guide Hong Kong-Macau 2010.
Mediamen from Pampanga and Baguio on a familiarization tour of Macau were uniformly overwhelmed by the luxurious appointments of the individual rooms they stayed in at Four Seasons Hotel Macao: an intimate dining nook; giant flat TV and a glass writing table; two toilets, separate shower room and bathtub, with its own wall-mounted television and only the best – L’Occitane en Provence – to pamper the body; a glorious bed – and these were only the hotel’s deluxe rooms. See the suites – and weep, for not being born rich.
Four Seasons Hotel Macao is enough to make one cry in ecstasy: “Oyni’ng bie” – the Kapampangan take on the Italian la dolce vita. Ah, how truly sweet is life among the Macanese.
Just as luxurious is Sofitel Macau at Ponte 16, where we spent our third and last night in the former Portuguese outpost. Its lofted one-bedroom avant garde suite is a guy dream come true, a playboy den with seduction lurking in every corner, truly worthy of a Hugh Hefner.
Truly, the hotels are tourist attractions unto themselves. And then there is the free – yet still so luxurious – entertainment they offer. Not only for hotel guests but for everybody, even strays, to enjoy.
At the open-area fronting Wynn is Performance Lake with its plumes of water and tongues of fire dancing to the musical beat of Broadway, pop and classical. Yes, it is something very similar, albeit on a less-grand scale, to Vegas’ Bellagio’s water show.
Inside Wynn is the Tree of Prosperity – with branches and leaves shimmering in gold – that rises from a golden vault to meet up with a crystal chandelier descending from the ceiling carved with Chinese astrological symbols. The Tree takes in all the colors of the four seasons in a light and music performance lasting but seven minutes. Enough for the casino-going crowd to earn all the luck.
In the City of Dreams – the triune of Crown Towers, Hard Rock and Grand Hyatt hotels – is The Bubble, a multi-media theater that has its dome for screen. Here the Dragon’s Treasure show tells of the mythical creatures in power struggles for a prized pearl. Or so I made out myself of the stunning visuals and spectacular sounds that completely overwhelmed me.
Of the MGM Grand Macau-Central Plaza’s “Light and Sound Tribute”, I cannot relate as I was not able to watch it. “Enticing” was one review I read of it.
Nothing spectacular but satisfyingly good for whiling time between appointments are the dance numbers at the lobby of Star World. The leggy Caucasian dancers in Brazilian tangas are just too willing to do the samba and the cha-cha, or to be photographed abresiete with anyone interested.
The King of Rock lives at the Sofitel Macau at Ponte 16, if only through videos and sounds in the hotel’s MJ Gallery. The bejeweled glove and socks along with some of his fedoras are the prized items on display there.
A luxury for the budget traveler: Moving around Macau is absolutely free. Just don’t take taxis. Coaches and buses of the hotel-casino-resorts regularly make rounds all around special points of interest in the territory.
Moving around the city is absolutely free – this too from the perspective of vehicular traffic. A three-minute jam at a minor road in the old quarters of Macau was the worst “gridlock” I experienced there.
Now, ain’t that luxury too?

(Cebu Pacific flies Clark-Macau-Clark every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. Additional information can be sourced from the Macau Government Tourist Office, mgtophil@info.com.ph)

Post priesthood

IF HE indeed loves the priesthood so much, as he professes, he should forsake it altogether.
A paradox there, worthy of your philosophical studies with the Dominicans, I told a seminary senior as he mused over the dispensation case of suspended- priest-now-gubernatorial-loser Eddie T. Panlilio.
By leaving the priesthood, Panlilio would even serve as an instrument to its strengthening as an institution. If he so insisted in returning to it after his indulgence in purely partisan politics, Panlilio would be demeaning, nay, desecrating the priesthood.
So, it’s “Save the Priesthood, Keep Panlilio Out”?
If you so put it bluntly. Just think of the consequences of a Panlilio returned to the priestly ministry:
What will now prevent other priests from seeking dispensation to engage in purely lay activities, break their vows, and then after finding it not to their liking would return to the priesthood?
Yeah, like I once wrote the priesthood reduced to a trapo, a rag, discard it when not in use, reclaim it when needed.
How will the nearly half a million who voted for Baby Pineda whom Panlilio accused of having been paid, take anew to a “Rev. Fr. Panlilio”?
Panlilio has caused too wide a division among the people of Pampanga – the good, who voted for him; the evil, who supported his opponent – that his return to the priesthood would further aggravate.
Panlilio has caused too wide a chasm among the clergy, not only in Pampanga but even in the Philippines that his return to the fold will cause more dissension.
I am most certain these thoughts are principal in the minds of those who make up the panel that studied his dispensation case here and were forwarded to the Vatican. Yes, your book Reverend Governor too, I heard, made it there too as a reference document.
Given that Rome will approve the dispensation, what do you envision for a post-priesthood Panlilio?
He ran under the wing of the Liberal Party. The incoming President is the LP standard bearer, so he can just angle for a government post.
Yes, Panlilio – with his acclaimed honesty – will be good in graft-ridden government agencies. Like the Bureau of Customs.
So honesty aside, has he what it takes to make a good commissioner, like say basic know how on tariffs, export-import duties?
Well, he can make – again with his publicized honesty – a good chief of the Bureau of Internal Revenue.
Same concern, the need for a thorough knowledge of taxation laws there.
Okay, how about Secretary of the Department of Public Works and Highways. Surely, his having removed SOPs in the bidding of construction of roads and bridges will serve him, and the country, in good stead there.
Yeah, like accomplishing the cementing of 20 kilometers of roads in his first year in office, which would translate to less than a kilometer of cemented road for each of Pampanga’s 20 towns and one city.
There is one government post best fit for Panlilio. It was Don Robert David, also an ex-seminarian, that intruded in our exchange over espressos and cappuchinos at Starbucks SM Clark.
The Don declared: Panlilio can be named Philippine Ambassador to the Holy See.
Yes, in the Vatican, with his penchant for dividing people and institutions, Panlilio may yet succeed where the various heresies, cults, movements failed – dividing the Holy Roman Catholic Apostolic Church. So sneered our seminary elder Don Luisito.
It is still in the field of religion that Panlilio can find most fulfillment, post-priesthood, post-governorship. He can start his own church, with his most trusted ally, Atty. Vivian Dabu as co-founder. He can call it the P-D ministry.
Panlilio-Dabu ministry? You’re getting too personal again.
No, bobo, the acronym stands for Pentecostal Dispensation church. It’s all about dispensing healing prayers from the Holy Spirit. As in: “Come to me all you who are sick and afflicted, and I will pray for you.”
So you think Panlilio-Dabu can attract enough souls to comprise a decent congregation?
You yourself have said it often: E mu tatasan ing kamulalan da ring Kapampangan. Do not underestimate the gullibility of the Kapampangan.
Three cups of espresso make me drowsy.

Fools lose

SO TRITE a statement that it has become a truism: Nobody, absolutely nobody, loses elections in the Philippines, it’s one wins and the other is cheated.
Thus, the Liberal Party’s Eddie T. Panlilio’s incredulous claim that the 488,521 who elected into office Gov. Lilia “Nanay Baby” Pineda were “bought” for P1,500 each, his own relatives in Minalin town not excluded from his sweeping hallucination. Vote buying is a form of cheating, right?
Thus, the Liberal Party’s Jose “Pol” Quiwa III finding mathematical improbability – a euphemism for cheating – on the “impossibility” – something askance in the increase in the degree of probabilities there – of his getting a measly 10 percent of votes in all 158 precincts in the third district of Pampanga.
The final count of the Commission on Elections for the third district congressional race is: incumbent Rep. Aurelio Gonzales with 195,651votes against Quiwa’s 24,640, an avalanche of a difference of 171,011.
How, in Barangay Sindalan in the City of San Fernando, his self-claimed bailiwick, Quiwa could muster even less than 10 percent of the vote he could not fathom. Hence, his filing before the House of Representatives Electoral Tribunal an electoral protest against Gonzales.
I just wonder what means the HRET would have in its possession to make Quiwa fully comprehend what really hit, er, devastated him.
Thus too, Representatives Matias Defensor of Quezon City, Ace Barbers of
Surigao del Norte and Munir Arbison of Sulu, and Laguna Gov. Teresita Lazaro storming the high heavens, er, the high ceiling of the House, with cries of fraud and incredulous claims of having been offered by shady characters, in exchange for cash ranging from P10 million to P1 billion, of guaranteed poll victory through machine-switching or electronic vote manipulation.
For crying out loud over this patently criminal instance only after they lost, these characters, the honorable that is, deserve neither tea nor sympathy but denunciation and ridicule.
Yes, we agree this time around with election lawyer Romy Macalintal scolding these whiners for their “sins of omission.”
Said the President’s former lawyer and Panlilio’s one-time pro bono counsel: “You really deserve to lose the elections if that’s what you did. You do not deserve to be elected. You do not have the right to say that you are looking after the welfare of our nation. Because if you have concern for our country, that would have been what you did—have them arrested.”
And his clincher: “It’s a good thing they did not pay up. If there were some who did, they are stupid. They were just duped.”
Yeah, reminding us of one more trite but tested Filipino truism on categorizing people: manloloko, the conman; nagpapaloko, the fool; and luku-luko, the crazed. All coming out of the woodwork most prominently during elections.
I remember one candidate who had everything stacked in his favor in his run for the congressional seat in the first post-EDSA elections. He lost by less than a hundred votes.
To everyone he met after the polls, he appealed for sympathy with a uniform statement: “Me-pirayit ku. (I was cheated).” This went on and on for months until he met another loser, a perennial one at that, who sneered at him: “Nung eka mamurit-murit, bakit ka pepapirayit? (You fool, why did you allow yourself to be cheated)?”
Yeah, you can’t fight cheating? Be a fool: run and lose.