The living and the dead August 9, 2006

LAST weekend was the first death anniversary of my good friend Raul Roco. I remember that he died a month after Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo apologized for her "lapse of judgment" in helloing Garci. By that time, Raul was already far too ravaged by disease to heed the cares of this world. But in light of everything that has happened since then, I kind of feel a greater sense of loss over his passing today than last year.

At the very least that is so because Raul's case bears directly on the issue of legitimacy. Every time I hear government officials say let's forget Arroyo's illegitimacy, let's just concentrate on her performance (the last time, of course, was during the State of the Nation Address, when every Arroyo minion sounded that call), I remember him.

As competence goes, as efficiency goes, as performance goes, few came better than Raul. Arroyo was, and is, not one of them. How did they fare before the 2004 elections?

Well, Arroyo ruled so badly -- her tenure was characterized by wheeling-and-dealing and corruption (to the bitterness of the Edsa People Power II forces that put her in power) -- she had to lie about her political intentions for after a couple of years, vowing before the grave of Jose Rizal she would not run for election in 2004. At the same time, Raul was doing a sterling job at the Department of Education. A year after he took over as education secretary, he had turned the department from one of the worst offices in this country, home to textbook scams and other atrocities, to one of the best, restoring to education the lofty name befitting it. Recognition of that accomplishment did not come from hangers-on and paid hacks, it came from the World Bank and other international bodies.

If being competent, honest and efficient were a natural claim to being president, Raul Roco would have been our president after 2004. Alas, there is one other thing that's needed to become so, and that is to be voted into power. Before competence comes legitimacy. Roco was not elected president. Neither was Arroyo.

To those who say that better that we have Arroyo because if we had Roco or Fernando Poe Jr. as president, we would have been politically orphaned before the spit could dry on their mouths after their inauguration speeches, I say this: Better a few months of purgatory or heaven than 10 years of hell. Or indeed who says the hell would end after 10 years?

At the very most, I feel Raul's death more keenly today because he answers the question of whether entertainers are better than "trapo" [traditional politicians] or "trapo" are better than entertainers. The answer is neither. Raul was living proof our choice of political leaders need not be confined to them.

He was not an entertainer-turned-politician, he was a lawyer-turned-politician. But he respected entertainers, or indeed artists. He had as much respect for art and artists as for law and lawyers and politics and politicians. He had no respect for the hacks in all ofthem.

And though he rose through politics by the traditional route, he never became a traditional politician, in all the malignant senses of that term, in the sense of being perfectly willing to sell one's mother to get ahead in life. I look at the current traditional politicians in Congress, notably the ones who jumped up and down like chimpanzees in the last State of the Nation Address, or its equivalent in sycophantic histrionics, and Ithink truly that lot wouldn't mind selling their mothers to get by. Never mind spouses and "kabit" [mistresses], they'd give them away free.

I know Raul would never have called "a Comelec [Commission on Elections] official" in the middle of the counting of votes even for the most innocent of reasons. He was a stickler for doing things the right way, the legal way, the moral way, which pissed off a lot of people in the process. Many called him righteous, a word meant to disparage but which has taken on new and louder moral resonance over time. I remember again his meeting with a political party before the elections and how he turned off its members when he lectured them about putting the country above self after they asked what was in it for them. He wasn't a realist in that sense, but in a country where realism has become just another word for opportunism, I don't know that he didn't do well to choose that path. He lost the presidency but gained his soul. What a profit.

He was by no means a saint. The rumors about his "personality flaws" were not all untrue. He could be irascible, impatient, impetuous. We had our own run-ins, particularly over media. He kept demanding that media be this and that, and I kept telling him that was just not how the thing worked, it paid better to woo them than to try to bludgeon them to submission. But looking back, it was a pleasure to have worked with someone who hewed to such high, if often unreasonable, political standards and asked the same thing from everyone around him. Especially in light of his fellow Bicolanos [Bicol region natives] currently pushing and shoving for the pleasure of serving a usurper. Winning and losing are curious words. Some people who lose really win, some people who win really lose.

In these days when the voters are being told to choose merely between "trapo" and entertainers, indeed where the public is being cajoled to prop up the traditional politicians who did not win the elections rather than the entertainers who did, and still indeed where the people are being told to prefer the vicious dictatorship of the traditional politicians to the profligate frivolities of entertainers, it is good to be reminded that we do not lack for other options. There are leaders out there, actual or potential, who are neither the one nor the other. There are leaders out there who are, or can, be plain good public servants. Raul Roco was one of them.

The tragedy of this country is not that seldom has it had choices. It is that seldom has it had the eyes to see them.

http://opinion.inq7.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=14205

No. 1 recruiter of the NPA August 8, 2006

WITH all that business of the overseas Filipino workers in dire straits in Lebanon and the money of the Overseas Workers Welfare Administration that failed to get their way, I never got to write about the horrendous killings that took place last week. I can't let that pass without bearing witness.

Frankly, I don't know what's happening to us. Three deaths were recorded Monday last week and, in Metro Manila at least, I never saw lamentations being sent to the heavens or people taking to the streets in violent protest. Is it possible we now think it's perfectly normal to butcher activists and journalists and the planet does not stop spinning on its moral axis when these things happen? Have we sunk to the level of animals, unmindful of the plight of others, concerned only with our ragged efforts to survive?

The official government propaganda is that these murderous efforts are being taken to end once and for all a scourge of democracy in a record two years' time. It is wrong on both counts: on the scourge and on the timetable.

If the current murder spree proves anything, it is that you will not find the scourge of democracy in the victims, you will find it in the perpetrators. That is patent in one of the (intended) victims on that bloody Monday, Dr. Constancio Claver, who was ambushed on the national highway in Tabuk, Kalinga, in broad daylight. Claver had just driven his 11-year-old daughter to school when the attack took place. He survived the attack but his wife, Alice, did not. Their 7-year-old daughter was unharmed but remains in shock. Claver himself was treated for multiple gunshot wounds.

Doesn't your blood just boil at this atrocity? It's the worst nightmare of all. Every time I read about someone being gunned down in front of his children, I do not think of those who die, I think of those who see them die. Psychologists say it leaves a lasting scar in the mind. I myself think it's a wound that never heals, the blood continues to spurt at unguarded moments. But for this to happen to a 7-year old! I can't see that Claver can be happy to have survived. He has been murdered several times over.

And what was his crime? Nothing more or less than to belong to the Bayan Muna party-list group. Otherwise, he is a doctor who has foregone a practice in the city, or abroad, to minister to the needs of the dirt-poor of Tabuk. He is a "barefoot doctor," and one much loved by his community. Alice's burial itself drew a record 7,000 people, some from far-off villages. Grateful tribute to one who had been with them in times of adversity.

It does remind you of another barefoot doctor who spurned the call of an easy life, or indeed a luxurious one, to devote a life to tending to the wretched of the earth. He was Bobby de la Paz, whose name will continue to ring after all the other Filipino doctors here and elsewhere have become a hollow memory even to their kin. He was gunned down by Ferdinand Marcos' henchmen during martial law in the heart of Samar Island for the same crime as Claver. Then, as now, keeping the poor alive body and soul, flesh and spirit, was, and is, the most subversive thing in the world.

Look at the fallen, like Claver, and look at the standing, like Maj. Gen. Jovito Palparan and the multitude of grinning "trapo" [traditional politicians] assembled at the House of Representatives on the day Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo presumed to tell the nation its state, and ask yourself: Who is the scourge of democracy? Claver or Gloria? Alice or Palparan? The more than 700 dead activists, many of them students in the first flush of youth, or House Speaker Joe de Venecia and his cohorts, many of them still outright crooks in the twilight of their lives?

Which brings me to the part about ending the insurgency in two years' time. That was what Marcos advertised, too, when he wreaked a bloodbath upon this earth. He succeeded only in fanning it. It is the folly of tyrants and dictators to imagine they will weaken anything they call a scourge or enemy. They merely turn the thing they call scourge into salvation, they merely turn the thing they call enemy into friend. Tyranny and dictatorship are the magic wand that turns anything they find despicable into something lofty and honorable.

It's now a crime to join Bayan Muna? Then join Bayan Muna!

What makes the killings more damnable today than during Marcos' time isn't just that Marcos was at least elected twice before he became a dictator while Arroyo never was before she did -- though that is a humongous difference enough as it is. It is that Marcos came to power on his own while Arroyo became so because of us. We rested upon her shoulders our people-power dreams of a vibrant democratic life, the very thing she is now "salvaging" with abandon.

But in the end, during Marcos' time the US Department of State itself became alarmed at the strength of the insurgency, almost single-handedly fanned by Marcos himself. In the end, we ourselves will be alarmed by the fury of the insurgency, almost single-handedly resurrected by Arroyo herself. What the US called Marcos then, we might call Arroyo now:

The No. I recruiter of the NPA.

http://opinion.inq7.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=14003

Close-open August 7, 2006

THERE’S ANOTHER CASE THAT INVOLVES cheating in this country of liars and cheaters. It was brought to my attention recently by some friends of mine. It’s a weird turn of events that threatens the integrity of the Supreme Court itself if the weird turn isn’t stopped dead in its tracks. I was about to say, such as there’s integrity left in the Supreme Court, but that institution has redeemed itself of late with remarkable, and quite unexpected, universal condemnation of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s dictatorial drift.

But enough of the mystery. The case concerns the ownership of a 34-hectare property in Quezon City, beside Ayala Heights. On June 24, 1998, the Land Registration Authority ruled that the tract of land belonged to Homer Barque and his heirs and not to Severino Manotok and family who had been laying claim to it. Indeed, the LRA found that the Manotoks’ title was “sham and spurious.”

The case found its way to the Court of Appeals for adjudication. And the Court of Appeals likewise affirmed in full the findings of the LRA. It reiterated that the title held by the Manotoks was “sham and spurious” and the Barques’ title, as held by heir Teresita Barque Hernandez, “genuine, authentic and existing.”

The Manotoks brought their case to the Supreme Court and once again the Supreme Court, in the form of the Special First Division, upheld the LRA and Court of Appeals. In its Dec. 12, 2005 ruling, the Court affirmed that the property belonged to the Barques. The lawyers of the Manotoks filed a couple of motions for reconsideration but they were denied by the Supreme Court. In its June 19, 2006 resolution, the Court trenchantly said: “The Second Motion for Reconsideration is prohibited pleading … In addition, petitioners failed to cite any compelling reason why this Court should disregard the above rules but merely reiterated the very same grounds relied upon in their First Motion for Reconsideration .… No further pleadings will be entertained. Let entry of judgment be issued.”

It’s easy to see why the LRA, the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court had no trouble in ruling on the case. The documents possessed by the Barques are ironclad while those possessed by the Manotoks are, well, to quote the LRA and the courts, sham and spurious. The Manotoks’ title cannot even accurately pinpoint the location of the land, and their Deeds of Conveyance dated 1974 were notarized by a notary public who, according to the Manila RTC clerk of court, “has not submitted his notarial report for the whole year of 1974 up to the whole year of 1976.”

So one would think that all’s well that ends well, an attempt at claiming another’s property is happily foiled, something that doesn’t always end this way in this country. But now comes the strange part, or the weird twist. This has come in the form of two things, both attempting to open with chicanery what justice has shut.

One is an attempt by people in media to discredit the current owner, Teresita Barque Hernandez. Hernandez has been accused of being too impoverished—she is a college teacher—to possibly own such a tract of land. She apparently does not have a tax account number and is merely renting the place she is currently living in.

Two, and more insidiously, is the attempt by former Justice Florentino Feliciano to reopen the case through the backdoor by writing the Chief Justice et al., pleading for the case to be reopened with the Supreme Court sitting en banc—that is, with all the justices present and not just those of the First Division. His arguments rehash the same arguments in the failed motions for reconsideration.

The first is plain wrong, and not a little idiotic. The plain wrong, Hernandez has proven with something whose importance her detractors can’t seem to comprehend, which is documents. She does have a cedula and tax account number, she does own the property she lives in, and she does run small businesses. And yes, she was a college instructor in various schools from 1969 to 1990.

What makes the argument idiotic is that it in fact clinches the case for, and not against, Hernandez. If she isn’t rich, then clearly she had no money to help the LRA, the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court see things her way, as the rich in this country are wont to do. If she won the case, it could only have been because the evidence was so glaring even the cynical and corrupt would have balked at trying to twist it. By contrast, all that the opposite idea—that the Manotoks are people of means—suggests is not that they own the property but that they have the means to persuade people in media (I refuse to say journalists) to preach so.

The second has no place in anything remotely to do with law, and it is breathtaking that any lawyer, let alone a former justice, would attempt it. It violates ethics, etiquette and just plain decency. The rules of the Court are clear: You may plead for the Supreme Court to sit on a case en banc rather than just as a division only before any division rules on the case. Not after. Otherwise no case ever gets done. Otherwise you make a travesty of the words, “final and executory.” That was why the Court threw away the earlier pleadings for reconsideration: They are, to use its own words, “prohibited pleadings.”

What madness persuaded Feliciano to go against the very things he was sworn to uphold not too long ago, I leave him to say. “Older and wiser” is not a phrase that seems to apply to the people of this country. Will his former fellows in the Supreme Court go along with him? Well, if they do, I will have only one advice to give readers thenceforth, which is that they take either to the hills or abroad, Jovito Palparan and Lebanon notwithstanding.

They will find neither justice nor a future here.

http://opinion.inq7.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=13809

Before and after August 3, 2006

I GOT this letter in my e-mail, sent to the Inquirer editor in chief by Philippine Health Insurance Corp., or PhilHealth:

"We wish to emphasize that there is no truth to what Mr. De Quiros claimed that the P530M was transferred by the Owwa [Overseas Workers Welfare Administration] to PhilHealth in 2004 for 'patent electoral purposes.' In fact, the said amount was transferred to us only in March 2005, long after the national elections in 2004. The first tranche worth P300M was transferred on March 16 and the second and final tranche worth P230M was transferred on April 15."

The letter is signed by Lorna Fajardo, acting president and CEO. The rest of her letter enumerates the things PhilHealth has done for the overseas Filipino workers (OFWs) since their Medicare funds were entrusted to it. "We invite Mr. De Quiros to visit us at his convenience so that we can show him our records pertaining to the transfer of the Owwa Medicare funds."

I have no need to visit your office at my convenience or inconvenience. I am absolutely certain your records will bear out the fact that you received the checks only last year. Accounting hat tricks are the easiest thing to do in this country. None of that supports your argument that, one, Owwa Medicare funds were not used for purposes other than what they were intended, which was health care for the OFWs, and, two, that theywere in fact used to fund Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo's election campaign. If anything in my contention is wrong, it is probably only the word "patent." The use of Owwa money by PhilHealth to campaign for Arroyo wasn't just patent, it was blatant.

The very proposal for the transfer of the funds was premised on it. The proof of it is quite literally in black and white. The proposal was made by Francisco Duque, then-president and CEO of PhilHeath, on Nov. 20, 2002. He said in a memo to Arroyo: "Respectfully submitted herewith for her Excellency's consideration is an Executive Order which shall effect the transfer of the Medicare functions and the health insurance funds from theOwwa to the Philippine Health Insurance Corp.. The rationale for the transfer is discussed at length in the attached Executive Brief."

That brief gets to the heart of the matter: "It is respectfully requested that the proposed executive order be approved by her Excellency before the year ends. The proposed transfer will have a significant bearing on 2004 elections . May I ask that we meet personally? My direct line is 09178132072 or 6181684."

I can only hope Duque hasn't yet changed numbers so the OFWs can tell him what they think of what he did.

But there you have it straight from the horse's mouth -- my profoundest apologies to horses. Duque's justification for the fund transfer is about as innocent as Arroyo's conversation with then-commissioner of elections Virgilio Garcillano. Of course, the part about it having a significant bearing on the 2004 elections can always be bent to suit harmless interpretations. Arroyo's own conversations with Garci have undergone thatmetamorphosis. The part where Garci tells Arroyo "'yun hong pagpapataas sa inyo. maayos po naman ang gawa nila" has been interpreted facetiously as Garci telling Arroyo that the shoemakers who made her elevator shoes did a good job.

Fortunately for Duque, he realized that things written down on paper can be very incriminating and decided to leave further explanations verbally in private. Unfortunately for Arroyo, she never realized how phone conversations with "a Comelec official" can be very incriminating and called up Garci again and again.

Arroyo did sign the executive order -- numbered 182 -- not before the end of 2002 as Duque suggested but shortly thereafter, on Feb. 14, 2003, well before the May 2004 elections. And the Owwa passed Resolution No. 005 "approving the transfer of P530,382,446 from the Owwa Medicare Fund to PhilHealth" on Feb. 2, 2004, still well before the May elections. Corazon Carsola, the only land-based representative who refused to sign the resolution, said shortly later on March 15, 2004: "Since the start, I have always been against the transfer of the Medical Fund to PhilHealth. I feared that transferring the fund to a business-oriented entity would in the long run prove detrimental to the future of medical services to the OFWs."

She was right. The transfer proved detrimental to the OFWs' physical health even as it proved beneficial to Arroyo's political one. Owwastopped the medical reimbursements of OFWs on Jan. 16, 2004. The dating of the checks, which was after the elections, and the amount, which is P530,000, do not exculpate PhilHealth, they only laud the efforts of the migrant groups to expose the iniquity. Duque's original request was for the entire P4 billion Owwa Medicare fund. That met with violent protests from the migrant groups and several lawmakers, which led to the amount being scaled down. As to the checks landing in PhilHealth's coffers onlyafter the elections, they can say anything they want but Executive Order 182 and Owwa Resolution 005 guaranteed them the money well before the elections.

The final proof of the pudding is in the eating. Or specifically in this case in the completely inedible cards that PhilHealth issued voters before the elections. Indeed before the official campaign period, a patent -- there's that word again -- violation of election rules, though that would be the last thing to bother them. Unlike before, where PhilHealth cards did not carry the picture of any politician, the cards that were handedout before the official campaign period carried the picture of Arroyo cradling an infant. You wondered who the beneficiary was since Arroyo dwarfed the recipient -- by itself a feat worthy of Ripley's -- until you realized that indeed the card accurately depicted its true beneficiary.

But as Burns says, the best laid plots of mice and (wo)men oft go astray. Sublimely ironically, all this went for naught. In the end, Arroyo still had to hello Garci.

http://opinion.inq7.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=13154