Gatecrasher

FROM THE July 7, 2011 issue of the Philippine Daily Inquirer, incorporated in the news story Erin Tanada left out of LP Senate list but he’s still hoping on page 9:

THE YOUNGEST son of Sen. Manuel “Lito” Lapid met Friday with the Pampanga chair of the LP to discuss how he could sign up as a party member.

Accompanied by his older brother, former Pampanga governor Mark Lapid, Maynard Lapid held a closed-door meeting with San Fernando City Mayor Oscar Rodriguez who is also the provincial chair of the LP.

But while Maynard, 28, declined to give a statement, Mark Lapid said his brother was looking at probably joining the LP though he has not yet finalized his plan to run for vice governor.

Tarpaulins

However, tarpaulins featuring Maynard have already been put up in the fourth district of Pampanga, a bailiwick of the Lapids.

Rodriguez confirmed the talks and said: “[Maynard] wants to apply as a member of LP … He also said he wants to run for vice governor.”

A source in the Lapid camp said Maynard would announce his political plans on Aug. 21, his father’s birthday.

“Maynard will run as vice governor, with or without a tandem,” said the source, who asked not to be named for lack of authority to speak on behalf of the Lapids.

Mark said Rodriguez appeared to be aiming for Pampanga’s third district, which he served as representative for four terms before running for mayor of the Pampanga capital in 2004.

Maynard finished a management course and is working for a master’s degree in public administration. He is said to be a green-card holder and the favorite son of Senator Lapid’s wife Marissa, who is facing charges of dollar smuggling in the United States.

Frustrated murder suit

Maynard had his own brush with the law in 2011 after a man he encountered in a bar in Angeles City sued him for frustrated murder. The young Lapid is also an actor. His last movie was “Tatlong Baraha” where he starred with his father and brother in 2006. With a report by Tonette Orejas, Inquirer Central Luzon

LEAVE IT to the intrepid Tonette.

In seven short paragraphs, she laid down one moral dilemma that could well unravel the leadership of the Liberal Party in Pampanga, if not altogether sunder the party itself.

Party provincial chief Rodriguez is the very face – from local ground up to global level – of the performance governance system propounded by the International Solidarity for Asia and generally accepted as the standards by which all public administration must be measured.

Thus Rodriguez makes the very embodiment of the core value of the Aquino administration that – by transference – comes about too as that of the Liberal Party that the President heads: the matuwid na daan.

Likeness in visions and ideologies, oneness in principles and praxis makes the essential element bonding men – and women – into an organization, political party, NGO, PO, GO or even just some social club.

It is on that ground where lies the moral dilemma threatening to impact – if it hasn’t yet – the LP in Pampanga.

What will a Lapid membership make of the LP?

What Rodriguez was, is and presumably will still be, Lapid was not, is not and will never be. Totally antithetical there.

There is absolutely nothing matuwid with the issues barnacled to the Lapid name: alleged dollar smuggling with the mother, the alleged plunder of quarry collections with the father and son governorships, a case – albeit, dismissed, I supposed – of frustrated murder with the aspiring LP member.

While we concede to the truism that politics make strange bedfellows, we still have enough respect and esteem for Rodriguez to remain steadfast on what he had always stood, sacrificed, suffered, and struggled for.

Past Rodriguez, there is Among Ed Panlilio – ill-starred provincial standard bearer of the LP in 2010 – whose own sacrifice – taking leave of the priesthood to enter politics – in 2007 was to fill a moral vacuum in the provincial government, the governorship contested then by what moralists termed as the representations of the twin evils of illegal gambling and plunder of the quarry industry.

A moral crusade, Panlilio called his runs for the Capitol. His term from 2007 to 2010 of conscience-driven governance managing to prove his contention of shenanigans in the quarry collections – his grand total of P588,155,000 in three years serving as solid evidence against the Lapid father and son’s combined total of P121,183,000 in six years, 2002 through 2007. Therefrom sprang a case of plunder against the Lapids before the Ombudsman.

How do you now suppose the morally upright Panlilio take wearing the same colors as, sharing the same stage with the upstart Lapid?              

Bluntly, to Panlilio’s holy water, Lapid – by himself and by his very name – is oil sludge.  

So, will party purity be upheld in the LP? Or will it be overruled by expediency and exigency, as in the junking of the loyalist Jimmy Lazatin in favour of Ato Agustin for vice mayor in Rodriguez’s own city?

A different case here maybe. As seasoned political observers as well as street-smart kibbitzers see nothing expedient nor exigent in having this Lapid in LP, moreso in fielding him as party candidate for vice governor.    

Still and all, politics is the art of the possible.