Gloria’s options, 2

As the end of power approaches, Gloria, her family and her minions fear not so much the end of happy days, as they are of possible prosecution for crimes against the people. Some of the more glaring crimes I described yesterday. They have long counted the happy days, minus investment losses if at all, and have programmed the looting schedules. Scorched earth is a good description. They are trying to sell everything that can be sold, in the guise of a privatization policy, both crown jewels and baubles. With a 1.4 trillion budget and an economic “stimulus” program that a good bishop labelled “steal-mulus”, they have fortified their armory for pillage.

Her appointees in cabinet and below are preparing to get elected to various posts in 2010, whether as senators or congressmen, so as to afford some mantle of protection for whatever sins they may have committed. Note that only a few have moist eyes for local government posts, because such positions are vulnerable to presidential pressure. For if the elected president in 2010 runs after them, for reasons political or justiciable, they would not have the same kind of leverage that a seat in the legislature provides.

But end days are most horrible to contemplate from the vantage point of the current holder of supreme power. The Constitution secures a sitting president from prosecution for all crimes, but immunity lapses when presidential power is gone. As it was with Joseph Ejercito Estrada, who was hauled off to jail by hundreds of policemen on April 25, 2001, three months after he was toppled.

In the latter half of 2007, publisher Dante Ang, close to the first couple (as of that time at least), told me he would suggest to his principal that in 2010, she does not publicly endorse any presidential candidate. Instead, she could just give each of the “serious” candidates a billion pesos each in contributions, and more to the two top contenders as election day nears. If he said this in jest, he was deadpan. Of course I did not ask the stupid question of where the billions would come from.

These days the story in the House of the Bought is about how Joe de V was approached by Mikey the son and Martin the son of a Marcos crony and relation, who tried to “persuade” Manong Joe to “just be consistent with his long-held penchant for the parliamentary system”. They were not so interested in the number of votes, if at all other than his own, that Joe could add to their 178 signatures. They just wanted a patina of credibility, oxymoronic as that is, behind the multi-millions that they would have to put up to “buy” the margin between 197 and 178. Plan W is cha-cha, and the surreptitious conversion of government from presidential to parliamentary.

Joe de V now says that he was offered the speakership back, if only he would go along with walang kamatayang cha-cha. But he claims to have rejected them outright. Speaker Nogie fears his days are numbered, and if Joe de V does not bite, there is always Louie V or Martin R or whoever, to take up the lease. The Senate keeps saying they will not dance along, and tell us not to worry. But the game plan is not to get the senators to join a rump constituent assembly, but to have the numbers that would precipitate a case filed in the Supreme Court.

If a challenge, as it clearly will, is lodged before the high tribunal, there will only be three non-Arroyo appointees in the Court --- Chief Justice Reynato Puno, Associate Justices Leo Quisumbing and Consuelo Ynares-Santiago. The earliest Gloria appointee to the SC, Antonio Carpio has been showing independence and has refused to toady up to her. By June of this year or thereabouts, it is reasonably expected that only four, perhaps five votes can be counted upon not to pander to Gloria’s desires. And if defeat stares him in the face, not because of the preponderance of reason or principle, but because interpretation of constitutional fiat has become a function of pressure, “pera-pera” or both, then expect the chief justice to resign. He is not likely to relish the “Puno Court” being remembered in history for this perfidious decision.

And unless popular upheaval follows such resignation, then Gloria would have her way --- a submissive Court granting imprimatur to a constituent assembly without the Senate. Expect some senators to then acquiesce, rationalizing submission to the operative law of the land, interpreted by the Court. Now let me tell you a story:

A once-corpulent gentleman held a meeting early this year with two generals. He impressed upon them the plan to cha-cha, and wondered loudly about the probabilities of street demonstrations and protests, especially if the priests and pastors denounce what to him was “necessary to preserve the gains of the economy amid global recession”. Further he asked about the ability of “her” uniformed men to control the situation. From what I gathered, he was not too re-assured with the answers he got. Plan X would be about “controlling the situation”, to the point of precipitating disorder that would justify emergency rule.

So if civil society is able to muster enough strength in the streets, there will always be the police under Versoza (or his replacement), and the military under Gen. Delfin Bangit to be counted upon. Which is why cha-cha’s final push is so timed that public reaction will be reckoned with when there is a new CS-AFP and students are on vacation. And the Dona will have appointed two more new justices to the Court.

Would the realization that they will be robbed of their right to change the present leadership on May of 2010 drive the people into the streets in another display of people power, enough to get the soldiers to withdraw their support, as in Edsa 1 and Edsa 2? I am not a seer. In any case, that is Plan X.

If such should come to pass, and Gloria Macapagal Arroyo with the iron will and beyond shame, is able to survive, never mind the billions and billions of public monies she would trade in transaction after transaction, with the generals, with Congress, with the lord bishops of the numerous Church and denominational pastors, then she shall reign, forever and ever, or until the Lord above deigns it in his infinite mercy to end her mortal existence.

But if she and her advisers think twice, and are unwilling to push their envelope to the brink, unable therefore to cha-cha-cha, then the elections of 2010 will perforce have to push through. Thus will a menu of options present itself.

She could opt for the Dante Ang formula, but maybe Mike would rather she did not--- “sayang” the money. So she would anoint someone, maybe Gilbert Teodoro who fawns upon her (Plan Y-1). Or maybe Noli de Castro, who after all leads in the surveys, albeit marginally (Y-2). Who knows what the surveys tell come September or October?

Some of her advisers are pushing for a Noli-Jinggoy tandem (Plan Y-3). It will be billed as the “Unity” ticket, acceptable to those Tony Abaya describe as the “screaming masa”, and Justice Renato Corona (Reynato Puno’s likely replacement if he resigns) calls the “unwashed, the foul-smelling”. In a multi-cornered fight, that lumpen-attractive tandem just might win.

She could also bet along with new best friends, Danding Cojuangco and Ramon Ang. If it’s Chiz they prefer, and Chiz has respectable numbers, why ever not? There will always be a convenient reason for the young Chiz to rationalize his “submission” to the party, his “acceptance of the need to heal the wounds of divisiveness ” (Y-4D). The young Escudero can be relied upon to find the right words at the right moment.

If Erap allows Jinggoy to team up with Noli in a “poor man’s ticket”, that is the end of the father’s quest to retake the presidency he lost. That is also the end of a putative Erap-Loren ticket. But if Jinggoy does not bite, there’s always Vilma Santos-Recto, the husband of E-VAT Recto.

Would Manny Villar then run, and lose his billions? Maybe, and claim to be opposition. Gloria fears him not. If the revelations about C-5 and Taga cannot do him in, he is always open to transaction, at the right time (Y-5V). But then again, since the Philippines is such a “small town” where secrets and side deals cannot be hidden from public attention, the variables of Plan Y require that some potential “trouble-makers” be neutralized first.

Sometime in February, a governor of a dirt-poor province (still depressed despite billions poured into it by both Erap and Gloria, because funds go to deep pockets and not to projects) who is one of the occasional mouthpieces of the Dona and her cabal, was shopping for a “special operations” trickster against, whaddayaknow --- Mar Roxas! Surely the reason is not personal. Neither does it have anything to do with Mar having a Liberal Party candidate against him. All the politicos in his dirt-poor province are with Kampi or Lakas.

And in November last year, Gloria’s regime finally requested the US government, then under her friend George Bush, for the extradition of Cezar Mancao and Glenn Dumlao, eight years after the supposed murders of Dacer and Corbito, seven and a half-years since Mancao, Dumlao and Aquino were charged as participants to the crime.

The reading in the stinking palace is that Mar is not too easy to transact with, and in any case, will listen to those “traidores” in civil society who constitute his core support. And Ping has never been transactional (I have many stories about the efforts of La Gloria’s minions and emissaries, all rejected).

So for a quantum of caution against “flies in the ointment”, Ping is now the object of late-told diatribes, late-extracted “confessions”, with Erap becoming “collateral damage” instead of prime target, so that in the end, transacting with Erap can be facilitated.

See Plans W, X, and Y with all its variables? Every variable must be controllable, as per the Dona’s economics-trained mind and Machiavellian amorality.

But what if despite all the devious plans, a Ping or a Mar (now seemingly low in the surveys) should upset the applecart? Here comes Plan Z:

There is the computerization deal that non-techies Melo and his Comelec are pushing through. The same conglomerate that has bagged the Land Registration Authority computerization deal with Judge Bienvenido Ulep (a once-corpulent man’s nominee) and the Land Transportation Office computerization deal (which former LTO chief and now DOTC Asec-for-nothing Reynaldo Berroya presided over), is touted as best-qualified to supply some 80,000 counting machines.

For 11.3 billion pesos, we just may wake up on Election Day to find machines that do not work, machines that jam, laying the predicate to a declaration of “failure of elections”. No president or vice-president are elected. No senators are elected. No congressman or governor or mayor and their army of “sabits” in councillors and board members are elected. The Constitution says that in such an event, “Where no President and Vice-President shall have been chosen or shall have qualified, the President of the Senate or in case of his inability, the Speaker of the House of Representatives shall act as President until a President or Vice-President shall have been chosen and qualified” (Art. VII, Sec. 7, Para. 5)

Enter the “protectors of Gloria”. This is Plan Z, where Plan Y blends in.

“Ala-Berde”, old-time Manilenos would say. “Gulo” most everyone else would exclaim, which is “gubot” among the Bisaya. All hell breaks loose.

Tony Blair, in his expensive Manila debut, was asked, “When does a leader know it’s time to step down?”

Without much effort, Blair replied, “When you’re no longer doing the right thing --- when it’s just a job”.

But Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is a “workaholic”. She loves “the job”, never mind the “right thing”. She will hold on to the job, forever and ever, if she could.

W, X, Y, Z. It ain’t over till the little lady sings. And Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, husband of Jose Miguel Tuason Arroyo, daughter of Diosdado and Eva, brother to Diosdado Jr. a.k.a. Buboy, mother to Mike and Luli and Dato, and lola to various little others, is not about to croak any swan song.