The Magellan Formula

"In the next three weeks before the 22nd, expect the audience of one to make a decision. It may no longer be 15-21. It may be a chosen-take-all."

 

In 2015, when Mayor Rodrigo Duterte started his “listening” tour, getting to know people from all over the archipelago and pushing for his federalist platform, he would start with a bit of history: “In 1521, when Magellan landed in the Philippines…”

We who were with him from the start of his getting to know the political terrain tour would always look amused when he begins with 1521.  “Mahaba na naman ang speech na ito,” we would say, and Rolly Macasaet, now chairman of GSIS, would start dozing off in a corner.

Now President Duterte has resurrected his favorite date, 1521, and hyphenates it into 15-21, a formula for solving the speakership squabble among his political allies.

Last Thursday night, preceding his supposed announcement of his choice for Speaker of the House, he said that he offered term-sharing to solve the impasse between the two Alans, Alan Peter Cayetano and Lord Alan Velasco.

I can  only surmise that the term share started as a 50-50 proposition: 18 months for the first, and 18 months for the next.  But somewhere along the line, one wannabe and his wife would not agree to term sharing, and wanted the whole hog.  The other, reports say, agreed, leaving his fate entirely to the President’s discretion.

So to sweeten the pot for the reluctant Speaker wannabe and his wife, the President offered the Magellan formula: 15 months for the first, and an additional three months, for a total of 21 for the next.

Alan Peter agreed, so the reports say.  Wen Velasco, the wife of Lord Alan, balked.  

And so, the exasperated President publicly stated last Thursday that he would no longer announce his choice on Friday the 28th.  Instead, bahala na kayong maglabo-labo.  Decide among yourselves.

How then would this play out?

Clearly, a bloody mess in the halls of the Batasan on Day One of the 18th Congress might spill over  to the afternoon session when Congress in joint session assembles to hear the President’s State of the Nation Address.

Would it be déjà vu for the last year of the 17th Congress when bloody drama held the President’s speech for two hours, maybe more, as the representatives of the people dickered over their desire to replace Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez with Speaker Gloria Macapagal Arroyo?

Maybe.  But cooler heads and wiser people in both the legislature and the echelons of the executive would now wade in, and they have three weeks to do so before the 22ndof July.

So let us analyze the President’s Magellan Formula: 15 months for Alan Peter and 21 months for Lord Alan.  The first agreed; the latter is still hemming and hawing.

The latter has pulled out all the stops to get the President to favor him, from being quite close to the incumbent Mayor of Davao who happens to be the President’s daughter, and who last year was supposed to have engineered the decapitation of Bebot of Tagum for Gloria of Lubao.

Add to that the party held (mismo!) in Malacañang with the President’s son, Congressman Paolo organizing the event.  And getting the billionaire president of the “marginalized” party-list parties to sign up in support of the gentleman from Marinduque. And to top it all, a premature announcement from PDP-Laban’s campaign manager in the last elections, Manny the Pacman, endorsing Velasco as the PDP-Laban’s candidate, complete with exhortation that the “president’s” party should be primus among the parties in coalition with the man in Malacañang.

That the announcement was done without prior consultation with the 80 or so members of the PDP-Laban came with a warning from the party spokesperson that those  who would not abide by the Pacman-announced party decision would be disciplined sternly. I wonder if he was authorized by his party president who was then in Europe to announce sanctions for those who would not toe the Pacman line.  Let alone the chairman of the party, the President of the Philippines himself.

If you are president, whoever you are, not even one as strong-willed as Duterte, and you propose a compromise between two who swear allegiance to you, and one spurns your proffer of compromise, the Magellan Formula to be exact, would you be so nice as to cavil to such intransigence?

Not any president, and certainly not Duterte.

He has given in to the entreaty of closeness to his kin, without antagonizing one who has kept the faith through all of the past three and a half years, and who delivered mightily in his city  and district to the President’s favored senatorial candidates, as against one who could not get his small province of a hundred thousand voters make Bong Go or Bato or Tol win with flying colors, even when he was uncontested for his congressional post.

Thus the Magellan formula.

In the next three weeks before the 22nd, expect the audience of one to make a decision.

It may no longer be 15-21.  It may be a chosen-take-all.

The depths of civility have been reached by a politician belonging to political ilustrado, “de buena familia” the elitistas would say.

Having lost his reelection to his vice mayor, he sends a wrecking crew to his office at city hall and strips it of most everything, from flooring tiles to plumbing to electrical wiring, making it thus uninhabitable.

He spent personal funds for those, he says.  Such crassness.  Getting reimbursement would have been an act of no class, especially considering that he is a third-generation Osmeña, grandson of a president and son of a senator. But destroying the facility, stripping it of most everything, is beyond words to describe.