The allegations of corrupt official activity that have been made against the mayor of Makati City is not the first such allegations that have been made against that Makati official. In point of fact, the corruption allegations that have been leveled at Jejomar Binay Jr. is by no means the first time that the chief executive of the Philippines’ leading financial center has been indicted for corruption or placed under a cloud of suspicion for allegedly having stolen public funds.
Makati City, which might as well be renamed because its phenomenal rise has almost entirely due to the Ayala conglomerate’s development work, has had four mayors in the last half-century. The past mayors were Maximo Estrella, Jose Luciano and Nemesio Yabut Jr.
Max Estrella, a portly man of less than fair complexion, was mayor of Makati during most of the 1960s. Estrella ran Makati – then a municipality – like a private fiefdom. He dispensed goodies right and left and was the original KBL (the first letters of the Filipino words for wedding, baptism and funeral) man. Like mayor Binay’s father, Vice-President Binay, Estrella tried to attend every K, B and L in the wealthy municipality. Given his immense popularity among Makati’s low-income population, Estrella handily won re-election in 1963 and 1967.
Estrella’s political opponents, particularly the Makati Citizens’ League for Good Government, sought ways to remove him from office, but without success. Without success, that is, until the government of Makati entered into a contract for the installation of mirrors at all major Makati street intersections. Suspicions of overpricing were investigated and subsequently criminal charges were filed against Estrella and the members of the municipal council. Found guilty by the court, Estrella was removed from office and went to jail.
Vice-mayor Jose Luciano succeeded to the mayor’s chair. With the end of the Estrella era, Makati’s citizens thought that a better, brighter day had begun to dawn on their municipality. They expected that there would now be less talk about – and a reduced incidence of – corruption within the municipal government. Their expectations proved to be forlorn, for before very long rumors began to circulate about hanky-panky in the Luciano administration. The rumors, though strong, were never validated, and Luciano went on to finish his term.
In the succeeding election, Luciano was defeated by Nemesio Yabut Jr., who owned the successful customs brokerage firm Guacodo. Mesio Yabut was not a KBL type of local executive; on the contrary, he projected a tough-guy, no-nonsense kind of image. This meshed with the authoritarian regime that President Ferdinand Marcos imposed on the nation less than a year after the start of Yabut’s term.
Yabut was in office for a long time because no local-level elections were held during the remainder of the Marcos era, which ended in February 1986. Yabut ingratiated himself with Ferdinand and Imelda Marcos, and he came to be regarded as the Marcoses’ man in Makati.
There was a lot of talk about corruption in the mayor’s office, but, because of the widespread impression that Nemesio Yabut was close to Malacanang, the prevailing general atmosphere of media repression and Yabut’s tough-hombre reputation, no investigation were ever conducted and no charges were ever filed.
When the Edsa Revolution came, all of the nation’s local officials were removed from office and replaced by officers in charge by President Corazon Aquino by virtue of the powers bestowed upon her by Revolutionary Constitution. Yabut was replaced by Jejomar Binay, a human rights lawyer who had actively participated in the EDSA Revolution.
The rest, as the cliché goes, is history.
The Binay family has been in power in Makati – now a city – ever since, with Jejomar Sr. being succeeded, first by his wife and later by Jejomar Jr. A Binay daughter represents one of Makati’s congressional districts.
As the above account shows, today’s corruption allegations against Jejomar Binay, pere et fils, are nothing new. The reputation of the mayorship of this country’s leading financial center has been tainted by corruption – one conviction and an endless stream of allegations – during the last 50 years.
Will vice mayor Romulo Pena, if he manages to dislodge the Binays, change the manner and direction of the administration of Makati’s affairs? Let me answer the question by saying, simply, that there is a lot of honey in this country’s second richest city hall.
E-mail: rudyromero777@yahoo.com