Two weeks after the President’s latest Sona, and people are still coming up to me to complain about the chaotic opening hours that day at the House, when Congresswoman Arroyo was prevented from jointly presiding over the event as the congressmen’s new choice for Speaker.
Those televised images of her having to shout to her colleagues from the podium because her microphone had been rudely cut off, have gone viral with all sorts of disparaging or entertaining captions attached to the meme.
And other images of her waving to the crowd from the podium, while Ilocos Governor Imee Marcos does the same from the floor, spawned a new bogeyman, the “Marcos-Arroyo-Duterte-Estrada” team-up, which the yellows will now use to try and revive public support for their discredited cause.
The blame for this contretemps lies squarely with the camp of former Speaker Alvarez—from his daughter who impudently made off with the ceremonial mace, to the House functionary who cut off power to the mikes, to Alvarez himself who had the nerve to keep Duterte cooling his heels for over an hour in the House holding area until things were sorted out.
We cannot until now fathom why Alvarez descended to such depths. The so-called coup against him was actually precipitated by a last-minute appeal by the influential mayor of Davao City to Mrs. Arroyo, who has always been reluctant to take the position. If Inday Sara feels this strongly against Alvarez, that is his fault alone, for casting aspersions earlier on the lady’s loyalty to her own father.
And if Alvarez thinks himself a paragon of loyalty to Duterte, why did he deliberately try to damage the credibility at the very start of his incoming replacement as Speaker, an essential ally in any president’s legislative agenda? If Alvarez is now saying he feels betrayed by his colleagues in the House, he ought to ask himself first if he did what’s best for the President during his last few hours as leader of the House.
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Just two weeks after, and already the new Speaker has been making the right kind of waves. She’s been turning down outside appointments in order to focus on next year’s budget. She assured opposition congressmen that they would not be denied budget allocations for their constituents. She even suggested at least five counter-inflationary measures (not described) in a closed-door session with Duterte’s economic team.
On the matter of Charter change, she agreed to separate voting by the Senate in a constituent assembly, which the House had been opposing. It’s a concession that we would have expected the senators to welcome with equal graciousness.
But that hasn’t happened at all. Instead, the senators almost uniformly dismissed her concession as a “mousetrap:” Nothing but a ploy to get Con-ass started, after which somebody will challenge the separate-voting rule before the Supreme Court, which will then rule against the senators and force both chambers to vote jointly instead.
This is a byzantine concoction of a theory that is apparently intended to excuse spinelessness. This lack of spine also explains the reluctance of most senators—including many self-styled Duterte allies—to support a federalist charter, or to pass the second of five tax reform packages.
In certain cases, personal antipathy to Speaker Arroyo is also involved. Senator Grace Poe still can’t get over the canard that her late father was cheated out of the presidency in 2004, despite the incontrovertible fact (you can Google it) that every survey two weeks before the polls, and then during election day itself, had FPJ behind by three to five points.
As well, Senator Ping Lacson is still smarting all these years after he had to flee the country ahead of murder charges filed against him under President Arroyo. Lacson ought to be more circumspect about whom he’s throwing stones at, since he continues to be hounded himself by all sorts of ugly rumors (all of which of course we can only surmise are totally baseless): Kuratong Baleleng, Dacer-Corbito, Kim Wong.
The big tent that Duterte is trying to pitch for the sake of national unity can open wide enough only if everyone under it observes a modicum of humility about their own, and each other’s, personal histories and circumstances. Alvarez already failed that test; we can only hope the President’s senatorial allies don’t.
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Now on the bright side: Budget Secretary Diokno happily reports that government outlays for infrastructure and other capex totaled P353 billion for the first half of this year. This was 4.3 percent ahead of budget and 41.6 percent over the same period last year. Likewise, total government spending of P1.6 trillion was up 2.2 percent over budget and 20.5 percent over last year.
Diokno crows that “the performance of government spending is unprecedented, because we are ahead of the program for the first time in history.” We hope that at some point in the near future, people will actually start seeing and feeling this progress—in much the same way that the sight of all those construction cranes atop buildings during the last couple of years under FVR inspired me to come home from the States two decades ago.
Also on the bright side: We’re bemused by all the news reports we’ve been reading lately about former President Aquino shooting his mouth off on basically everything under the sun—from Dengvaxia, to submarine oil exploration, to China policy, to Arroyo’s prospects as Speaker—you name it, he’s got an opinion about it.
This newfound loquacity may have something to do with the feel of a jailhouse noose tightening around PNoy’s neck—as his cutouts in the Ombudsman and Supreme Court are being replaced, as Janet Napoles gets closer to spilling all the beans about PDAF scams, as Dengvaxia victims mount in number, as DAP and Mamasapano and Luneta and missteps on China and who knows what else, all cry out louder for a proper reckoning.
Aquino now seems to have taken a page out of Leila de Lima’s playbook and is setting himself up to be a “victim of political persecution” because of all his anti-administration comments, once the axe finally falls on him. It’s a strategy that may work, but only until the trial actually begins and the evidence starts seeing the light of day.
To Leila and her erstwhile boss: Good luck with that.
Readers can write me at gbolivar1952@yahoo.com.
