The Social Weather Station released its latest survey, and here’s an extract from their press release:
Senator Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III took the top spot in the people’s three best successors to President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in 2010, according to the Third Quarter 2009 Social Weather Survey, fielded over September 18-21, 2009.
Sixty percent gave Sen. Aquino’s name in response to the question, “Sa ilalim ng kasalukuyang Konstitusyon, ang termino ni Pang. Arroyo ay hanggang sa taong 2010 lamang at magkakaroon ng halalan para sa pagka-pangulo sa Mayo 2010. Sinu-sino sa palagay ninyo ang mga magagaling na lider na dapat pumalit kay Pang. Arroyo bilang Presidente? Maaari po kayong magbanggit ng hanggang tatlong sagot.” [Under the present Constitution, the term of Pres. Arroyo is up to 2010 only, and there will be an election for a new President in May 2010. Who do you think are good leaders who should succeed Pres. Arroyo as President? You may give up to three names].
The next most popular successor was Sen. Manny Villar, who was mentioned by 37%.
Aquino and Villar were followed by former Pres. Joseph Estrada at 18%, Sen. Francis Escudero at 15%, and Sen. Mar Roxas at 12%.
The survey found Vice-Pres. Noli De Castro mentioned by 8%, Sen. Loren Legarda by 5%, Defense Sec. Gilberto Teodoro by 4%, Sen. Panfilo Lacson by 2%, and Makati Mayor Jejomar Binay by 2%.
At 1 percent each were MMDA Chairperson Bayani Fernando and Brother Eddie Villanueva.
Six percent could not give an answer, and 4% had no one to recommend.
The accompanying illustration, however, is more illuminating:
The question of the public’s own shortlist of successors for presidency has been tracked for two years now. Over that time frame, some names have remained in the running, and new ones have been added by the respondents. An interesting take on the results reported over the past two years can be found in Atheista.net’s It’s Time To Coin A New Term: Getting Roco’d, particularly in relation to two potential candidates, Loren Legarda and Francis Escudero.
Regarding Legarda, Atheista has this to say:
The sidelight perhaps is Loren Legarda. She probably won’t run for president; nor has she any chance of winning the top office for the rest of her life, but for a stretch of time from September 2007 to February 2009, Legarda was actually within striking distance of the top spot. This is reminiscent of the late Raul Roco’s performance in surveys prior to 2001 wherein he was constantly topping polls. While it was clear that Roco did himself in with the exposure of his lackluster political machinery, dodgy choice of senatoriables and *ugh* running mate; it is unclear what Legarda did to sabotage her own chances.
A lot of people hated Legarda for flip-flopping on Gloria – and ironically, this is despite the already growing hatred for the GMA Administration back in 2004 — but she still managed to bag 44% of the respondents’ votes of confidence back in 2007. I guess that only means that the 2004 incident was not the reason why she was dropped. The only hypothesis I could offer is that her supporters identified with Noynoy Aquino and Manny Villar – the two candidates whose popularity rose as hers was plummeting.
And here’s Atheista on Francis Escudero:
One interesting sidelight is how surprisingly bad Chiz Escudero’s showing has been. Despite topping the recent senatorial polls and taking every opportunity to spew out empty words on television, Escudero’s preference ratings have stayed pretty much the same over the last 2 years. There is no momentum at all. I won’t even be surprised if he finishes a distant third (or even fourth) when all is said and done. Joseph Estrada might even erode his chances of a third spot finish (not that it matters!) since Escudero’s base of support is supposedly the youth – a demographic that is also captured by the Aquino juggernaut.
Personally, I think the survey results are useful not in terms of presenting a snapshot of how voters might vote, were elections held today, but rather, who, in the public mind, are the real contenders at this point in time. I’ve suggested in the past that we’re seeing a return, in voter attitudes and orientation, towards seeing the presidential contest as a two party fight, which is a more natural order of things as far as a presidential system with no runoff elections is concerned.
From this perspective, the fight for the presidency is between Benigno Aquino III and Manuel Villar Jr. The other candidates will determine who gets to shave off votes from the leading contenders and who ends up losing more votes to the minor candidates more than the other.
My take is that when the respondents get to that third possible choice, they end up naming their father, mother, wife, uncle, mayor, themselves! or some other unknown that together with everybody else’s third choices usually make up to half of the SWS data!
But as it should, the data does add up to 300% in all columns. I have a theory I cannot prove, that it is actually the second placer in these SWS polls that represents a kind of plurality choice. Noynoy has come out of nowhere (less than 0.14 percent!) to take a whopping –but sympathy confounded–60%.
Now there’s a graphic in the entry that’s quite interesting. Philippine Commentary for some time has been pointing out that what gets lost in all the reporting and commentary on the SWS surveys is the percentage of undecided voters or those who decide on no choices whatsoever:
The Chart above does not include the present survey, the first one which has Aquino manifesting himself as a top-of-mind choice among respondents as a potential president. If you remember the surveys, prior to the Aquino phenomenon, had Villar as the front-runner; in fact it seemed entirely possible he’d reached the critical 25% threshhold political pros considered the make-or-break level for a presidential candidate: it’s what would mark a candidate as the man to beat in a presidential election in a multi-candidate race.
There were questions raised about whether or not Villar’s reaching the crucial 25% level in the surveys represented his peaking too early or not; this question was complicated by the entry of Aquino, and initial survey findings of his obtaining startlingly high figures not only in Luzon, but the Visayas (Lito Osmena’s privately-commissioned Cebu survey) and Mindanao (Rodrigo Duterte’s privately commissioned Davao congressional districts survey).
Whether one doubts the usefulness or even methodology of the question SWS has been tracking for two years now, the question of whether or not Villar had peaked too soon, for example, or the percentage of support Aquino actually enjoys, can only be answered by surveys that ask potential voters to make specific choices based on who they’d vote for, were elections held that day.
There was a rider -a privately-commissioned set of questions- attached to the SWS September 18-21 Survey, which addresses the questions of who, specifically, voters would vote for, for the presidency, vice-presidency, and in terms of tandems.
Here are the results of that privately-commissioned rider set of questions:
Based on the above, Villar seems to have peaked; or at the very least, the entry of Aquino, whose national results are in harmony with previous location-specific surveys, and make him the front-runner, means the Villar campaign has to work doube-time; what I don’t know, because these were the only results provided me, is if there were other candidates reflected in the results or whether the rider limited the choices to the figures above.
The President and the former Senate President both had the same problem: much as they tried to entice the Vice-President to join them for the 2010 campaign, he turned both down. In Nobody Loves Me, Manuel Buencamino says the President was scorned once, but Villar’s been scorned twice: his efforts to entice both Senator Chiz Escudero and the Vice-President being rebuffed. Only then did Villar make noises about Senator Pia Cayetano being his (third) choice for Veep. Yesterday, there was talk that Wowowee host Willie Revillame would announce his entry in politics as Villar’s Veep, but it seems more likely that Revillame might instead head the Nacionalista senate slate.
The President did better in terms of having on hand what’s been widely-discussed as her personal choice as her successor, her Defense Secretary, Gilbert Teodoro Jr. (the choice of the President’s husband supposedly being the Vice-President). She did better because her defense secretary is a closer approximation of what she has put forward as her advantages as a chief executive: hard-working, highly educated, a reliable coalition player. His list of priorities and to-dos is in harmony with the existing administration agenda (more or less). And he isn’t shy about it.
And he’s been moderately successful in inspiring the faithful to work to ensure that the good times keep rolling on.
You’ll see that there was a bump (above, in blue) in the Defense Secretary’s being in the limelight when the Frankenstein coalition declared it intended to make him their official standard-bearer. the problem is whether that bump can be sustained; there seems to be the belief that simply because he’s been anointed by the President’s people, Teodoro’s campaign will not only take off like a rocket, but that it makes him, almost immediately, a candidate on par with, say, Aquino, or Villar or Escudero.
Today’s Inquirer editorial, The company he keeps, points out that much as Teodoro puts a refined face on the Frankenstein coalition, no one has any illusions as to what the coalition consists of, what it’s done, and what it will do if it stays in power. Which may account for the bump being much smaller than one might expect if Teodoro were to be weighed on his own merits. But the reality is his merits aside, the very viability of his campaign, such as it is, rests entirely on the very same ruling coalition that shares the President’s present lack of palatability to the public.
A friend did a similar search (annotated with red arrows, below) that suggests the endorsement of the party elders was a much-needed boost. All along, he’d lacked exposure even abroad (hence “gilbert teodoro soes not have enough search volume for ranking”), which had basically paid attention to Estrada and Aquino in the news.
Another search by my friend (below) shows how humdrum the campaign was until the entry of Aquino; and how the trajectory of Aquino (blue) suddenly puts what had seemed to be the gaining momentum of an Estrada comeback (in green) in stark comparison. If every candidate registers a momentary, steep, ascent upon announcing his candidacy, then Aquino’s set the threshold, which Teodoro’s obviously failed to seriously rival; put another way, Villar (red) and even Estrada (green), should they formally announce, are already at rates that could potentially mark Teodoro’s peak; they would pull away from Teodoro at his best and potentially intercept Aquino.
My own search is below.
The chart above suggests that the past year saw the Villar campaign (orange), well-oiled, chugging along; his closest rival being Chiz Escudero (green). Just when Villar was breaking away, Aquino (red) entered the fray; so almost immediately, just as Villar became the front-runner, he was displaced by Aquino, who took off like a rocket. But even then, Villar remains the leading contender to Aquino.
Contending for front-runner status, then, are Aquino and Villar; contending for rival to them, in turn, in Escudero. With the Vice-President apparently dropping out of the race, it will be interesting to see how his followers redistribute themselves among the other contenders.
However, Teodoro simply isn’t a real contender at this point, and it would be surprising to see him become a serious contender anytime soon. Anytime ever.
Then again, this has surely been plotted out and projected by the Palace. They know they will never have a frontrunner or even a truly viable contender. What they do have, is someone who acts as a consolation to the faithful, keeping them from getting too depressed. It also takes Teodoro out of action precisely when the more thuggish side of the administration will be required, going into 2010.
Teodoro is useful in simply taking the front-runner, Aquino, down a notch or two; by putting forward their non-candidate candidate, the administration simply fosters the (wrong) perception that somehow, their candidate’s on par with Aquino; it diminishes, in turn, Villar and Escudero.
Then again if you want to be pragmatic about it, it’s also like the story of the tar baby. Teodoro is the tar baby; if Aquino, like Brer Rabbit, makes the mistake of engaging Teodoro as if he’s a serious candidate, it bogs down Aquino in a fight along the irrelevant lines the Palace wants (”qualifications and experience” the same argument Marcos used against Cory; when the reason that Teodoro is below ground level in terms of public perception is that his qualifications and experience, such as they are, have been put at the service of the President and her Frankenstein coalition, which makes them as appealing as qualifications and experience doing book-keeping or money laundering for The Mob). Bogged down wrestling the tar baby, Aquino would then be fair game for Villar or Escudero to jump on his back -the real fight.
Which, to the truly pragmatically inclined, might suggest either or both are the actual Anointed Ones of the President, not Teodoro. The clue to see which might be the True Anointed is to see who, explicitly or implictly, gets the support of this man:
The one on the left, Ramon Ang of San Miguel, for example. The man in the middle, Eduardo Cojuangco, Jr. collects the dividends but no longer does the grunt work; the lady on the right, the President, presides over a coalition notorious for getting candidates to run, only to leave them in the lurch, without machinery or funding, once they’ve committed (ask Cesar Montano and Manny Pacquiao, both of whom were popular to start with).It’s interesting that the end days of her administration are focused on closing truly big deals (with San Miguel, for example).
A candidate like Teodoro, who starts off not even within striking distance of the leading candidates, is someone no administration will back up fully with its resources. Those resources would be better used to reclaim the Senate, for example, or maintain its existing bailiwicks on the local level. The only use Teodoro serves is a political tar baby.
But the Frankenstein coalition includes its group of business backers; and it will be interesting to see on whom they’ll be placing their bets. If they spread out their funding, that means the administration coalition’s history; if they continue to bet big, it will be in expectation of maintaining or even expanding, the benefits they’ve received from the President and her people. To see who they back, is to see the administration’s true Anointed One(s).
I’ve put together a comparative chart of presidents elected to office, so that readers can take a look at past presidential biodatas, for the purpose of evaluating those seeking the presidency in 2010. Lists like these, however, can’t reflect the changing attitudes and preferences of voters as to what they consider essential requirements for the presidency.
For example, there are basically two eras: 1935 to 1969 (the last pre-martial law presidential election) and post-1986 to the present. In the first era, Ramon Magsaysay, the lone non-lawyer prior to 1969, would be in many ways the major exception to the expectation of a long, sustained, record of public service beginning in local, then provincial, and legislative and executive positions. But in many ways he was the harbinger of our modern, post-party machine politics, and so ties in to the post-1986 trend Marcos helped launch by means of institutionalizing mistrust of lawyer-presidents.
Of the twelve presidents elected in national elections, the following observations can be made.
Education: seven were lawyers (all of whom were top ten in the Bar exams); two had degrees in economics; two had doctorates; only one didn’t finish college.
Pre-profession: Aside from their main professions, six had other professions/occupations, including two poets.
Military: Five achieved officer rank in the military.
Judicial: none served in the judiciary.
Legislative: three served as municipal councilors; eight have served in the lower house, with four serving as committee chairmen, and two of them as Speaker of the House; eight have been senators, and three have been Senate President, and two, Senate President Pro Tempore.
Executive: One has served as mayor; five have been provincial governors (including Magsaysay’s serving as Military Governor of Zambales); nine have held presidential or executive appointments in the bureaucracy or civil service; in addition, seven have held cabinet portfolios, with two each holding the National Defense and Foreign Affairs portfolios. Six have been elected Vice-President, four have succeeded to the presidency from that position (three by virtue of the death of the president, one by authority of the Supreme Court).
This entry was first published on August 12, but has been constantly updated. As much as possible, updates are to the timeline itself, updated every day; updates to previous dates are, as much as possible, cited in the latest date addition for easy reference. As a general note, concerning the two documented dinners of the President ($15,000 in Washington, DC and $20,000 in New York City,) the Philippine Peso equivalents for each are 720,152.14 and 960,202.85 respectively; at 50 persons in Washington and 15-50 persons, depending on the testimony, in New York, that comes out to $300 per head in Washington and to $400 to $1,333 per head in New York City. A range of $300 (14,412.27 Pesos) to $1,333 (64,037.14 Pesos) per head for the two meals.
The question then, is, are these reasonable costs per head? See Forbes Magazine’s 2008 article, The Most Expensive U.S. Restaurants, to see that neither are the DC resto, Bobby Van’s, nor Le Cirque in New York City, in the league of most expensive restaurants; yet the per-head costs of the President’s meals were on par with the reported costs of the truly expensive places: and this is because, as all the reports suggest, the costs of food were increased by the wine bills for each meal. And the dinners have triggered fierce criticism from the public because of the contrast the costs represent with assistance the President herself extends to poor citizens.
“Moderating the Feed”
On August 12, in a Publisher’s note, the Philippine Daily Inquirer pointed out the following:
TWO RECENT news stories and an editorial mistook an intellectual exercise for hard fact.
Yesterday’s editorial mistakenly attributed the alleged itemization of the Le Cirque bill incurred by President Macapagal-Arroyo and her party to the “New York Post.” In fact, the hypothetical itemization was done by columnist Manuel Quezon III in his blog on Aug. 8, and introduced as “a theoretical breakdown of how the presidential party could have racked up the bill.”
Our story on Aug. 9 reported that “The purported menu included caviar; such appetizers as lobster salad, wild burgundy escargot and soft shell crab tempura; main courses of black cod, halibut, Dover sole, saddle of lamb and prime dry-aged strip steak; and Krug champagne at $510 a bottle.” There was, in fact, no such menu, only a hypothetical list of ordered items.
Our story on Aug. 10 reported that “The restaurant tab, purported copies of which have since circulated on blogs, showed that the Arroyo delegation had five servings of wild golden osetra caviar ($1,400), 11 bottles of Krug champagne ($5,610), and 25 orders each of the Chef’s Seasonal Menu and Tasting Menu (totaling $1,450 and $4,500 respectively), along with 17 other items.” There were no such copies circulating, only links and images from Quezon’s blog.
Based on these two stories, yesterday’s editorial criticized the presidential party’s insensitive self-indulgence. We stand by that assessment, however, since the original New York Post report is a fact. It read, in part: “Macapagal-Arroyo ordered several bottles of very expensive wine, pushing the dinner tab up to $20,000.”
The reality everyone’s confronted with here, is that nature abhors a vacuum. It’s no surprise then, that in the face of Press Secretary Cerge Remonde’s vacuous handing of the Le Cirque brouhaha, the public and press have had to seize on anything to compensate for official vacuity. isn’t something anyone should tolerate in government. Or perhaps it’s more appropriate to compare Le Cerge’s vacuousness to a black hole.
Surely, he has gotten all the facts; but once he has them, nothing apparently escapes –certainly, not the facts. A kind of destabilizing energy, of course, radiates from him, but it’s along the lines of that tried and tested political dictum of the administration –if you can’t beat ‘em, confuse ‘em!
The story begins on July 31, a few hours after the President was informed Cory Aquino had died, and she’d taped her bungled message to the nation (private media had to clean up the RTVM tape sent them, as the video showed the President, to put it diplomatically, displaying signs of relief and even levity during the taping). The press contingent was left in Washington while the President sped off to New York City.
Late that evening, the President had what would turn out to be that infamous Le Cirque dinner. It wasn’t officially announced; in fact it wouldn’t become public knowledge until the New York Post’s notorious Page Six gossip page reported it on August 7, although the first person to break the news was fashionista Bryanboy, via Twitter.
In contrast, every conceivable opportunity to portray the President as moderating her grief by engaging in the hard world of serving the nation, was lovingly covered, documented, and reported by RTVM –including working meals. This is important to bear in mind because at one point, Le Cerge insisted what they had at Le Cirque was “just like any other working dinner.” And emphatically denied the dinner had anything to do with the President’s wedding anniversary.
Later on, Le Cerge began to modify his story. In showbiz terms, “in fairness,” it has to do as much with the bumbling of the President’s other allies, as Le Cerge’s seemingly infinite capacity to do so on his own. He said 15-20 people dined with the President; Rep. Suarez later said no, it was more along the lines of 50 people (to bring the per unit cost down?): including American Secret Service agents as among the beneficiaries of the meal, which could lead to those agents being charged criminally or administratively for accepting perks from foreigners while on duty; so since then, it seems everyone’s tried to keep mum on who, exactly, was at the dinner.
Then Le Cerge insisted that Rep. Martin Romualdez paid for the dinner until Romualdez’s staff denied it, saying it was the congressman’s brother, Daniel, who paid for dinner –but not before the President’s own son, Rep. Mikey Arroyo, enthusiastically thanked Romualdez for paying. It’s a pretty boorish crew that accepts a dinner without bothering to find out who, exactly, was hosting it.
Le Cerge then said no one had fun, that everyone wolfed down their food in an hour; but Senator Lapid complained the dinner took ages and he was exasperated by all the cutlery and changes in courses.
So Palace has remarkably not taken the pains to correct two details widely reported in the press.
First, the total spent, reported by the NY Post at $20,000. No one has categorically denied that was the actual amount. At best we have Le Cerge remarking, early on, he though it wasn’t that much –but then he didn’t even know who really footed the bill, so obviously he’s not an informed source.
Second, there’s the impression the Le Cirque dinner took place on August 2, which would make it a kind of reward for the President’s hectic August 1 schedule. But it took place on July 31, but for the Palace to emphasize this would then focus attention on the distinct possibility she rushed to New York to make it to the dinner.
To keep up the confusion, the President’s dining pals inadvertently leaked all the other places the presidential party dined at: Wolfgang’s Steakhouse on Park Avenue (per Rep. Amelita Villarosa) after the St. Patrick’s Mass; and dinner that evening at Bouley’s Restaurant (per Rep. Hermilando Mandanas); the President’s husband, before she could snatch him away from the clutches of reporters, enthusiastically burbled he intended to take her to an “expensive restaurant” that night –it turns out, with the usual hangers-on.
The result is the President’s own people were the ones to point out the President made time for communal dining on three occasions and not just at Le Cirque, originally portrayed as a working dinner until everyone ended up admitting it was a wedding anniversary dinner –followed by a wedding anniversary lunch and yet another wedding anniversary dinner. None of these meals, until after the fact, were publicized.
Le Cergue then started making arguments like a circus freak: if it was really ostentatious, we should apologize, but it wasn’t, so we won’t -$20,000 being carinderia-style small change? Then he argued that if one invites the President of the Philippines to dinner, you wouldn’t have it at hotdog stand. King George VI who was invited to have hotdogs in Hyde Park by FDR, must be rolling in his grave. But then again GMA’s beloved Obama, too, has a déclassé liking for… chili dogs and burgers and indeed, his “beer summit” at the White House swept aside all American notice of his tete-a-tete with our president -who probably needed to console herself with wine at Le Cirque.
The President’s boosters have gleefully latched on to the media’s mistake of taking their cue from Jejomar Binay’s inadvertently confusing a theoretical computation posted on my blog for the actual bill, as a vindication of their hard-working president.
It’s the opposite -a deeper indictment of the President and her people: an honest mistake by media cannot be put on the same level as the disingenuous handling of the issue by the Palace, which has left press and public starved for facts.
The Timeline
So, in light of the above, the following timeline. Because events prove that those capable of providing the facts, of being proactive in the face of the public reaction to the New York Post’s revelation, themselves confused matters.
The day after the State of the Nation Address, President Arroyo and party (the party included the President’s husband; Executive Secretary Ermita, Defense Secretary Teodoro, Agriculture Secretary Yap, Foreign Affairs Secretary Romulo and Press Secretary Remonde; Speaker Nograles; and some 20 legislators) departed for their 72nd trip overseas, on 1 PM flight, PR 116, for Vancouver, switching to a chartered PAL flight to Washington, DC, according to the newspapers.
6:20 PM Scheduled arrival in Washington D.C. Venue: Andrews Airforce Base. The President, during the FILUSA dinner, will explain why they missed their scheduled arrival:
You know when we arrived in Canada a half an hour ahead of schedule, so I was so happy… Oh, we’ll arrive in Washington half an hour ahead of schedule instead combination of paper work and inclement weather along the way made us not leave half an hour ahead of schedule…
8:30 PM The President’s actual arrival at Andrews Airforce Base with what a Palace press release calls “a lean delegation of legislators and a number of Cabinet members.”
The President was billeted at the Willard Hotel. She occupied the Capitol Suite.
The President’s delegation includes-
Family:Atty. Arroyo, the President’s husband; the President’s sons, Pampanga Representative Juan Miguel Arroyo and Camarines Sur Rep. Diosdado Arroyo
Cabinet: Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita, Press Secretary Cerge Remonde, Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro, Finance Secretary Margarito Teves, Trade and Industry Secretary Peter Favila, Labor and employment Secretary Marianito Roque, Global Warming Adviser Heherson Alvarez, Solicitor General and Acting Justice secretary Agnes Devanadera, Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez, MMDA chairman Bayani Fernando, deputy presidential spokeswoman Lorelei Fajardo, Lupita Aquino Kashiwahara of Radio-TV Malacañang, Juris Soliman, chief of staff of Atty.Arroyo, and Remedios Poblador.
(The Ombudsman, according to former Justice Sec. Raul Gonzales, accompanied the President so that a reconciliation could be brokered with Solicitor-General Devanadera).
The President’s media team included Usec. Romeo L. Junia, press undersecretary, OPS; Asec. Maribel C. Dario, Asst. Press Secretary, OPS; Rosalinda Jacoba Coni, Advance MARO Project Officer, OPS-MARO; Rodrigo Del Agua, Presidential Close In Writer, OPS-PND; Jose L. Ogrimen, Jr., Special Assistant to the Press Secretary, OPSEDP; Exequiel Supera, Presidential Close in Photographer, OPS-Photo; Ruby Jane Villaverde, MAROCo- Project Officer, OPS-MARO; Janet V. Mariano, Advance MARO Project Officer, OPS-MARO; Luis Morente, Presidential Close in Writer, OPS-PND and Enrico Borja, Presidential Close in Photographer, OPS-Photo.
Senate:Senators Miriam Defensor Santiago, Manuel Lapid.
House of Representatives:Speaker Prospero Nograles, Jr., Marikina Rep. Del de Guzman, Pampanga Reps. Aurelio Gonzales Jr. and Anna York Bondoc, Manila Reps. Benny Abante and Zenaida Angping, Cebu Reps. Ramoncito Durano VI and Nerissa Soon-Ruiz, Camarines Sur Rep. Felix Alfelor, Quezon City Reps. Annie Susano and Vincent Crisologo, Bacolod Rep. Monico Puentevella, Batangas Rep. Hermilando Mandanas Deputy Speaker Amelita Villarosa, Leyte Rep. Martin Romualdez, Palawan Rep. Antonio Alvarez, Abra Rep. Cecilia Searez-Luna, Quezon Rep. Danilo Suarez, Malabon Rep. Alvin Sandoval, Pangasinan Rep. Rachel Arenas and Bohol Rep. Edgar Chatto, Surigao del Sur Rep. Francis Matugas, Iloilo Rep. Ferjenel Biron, La Union Rep. Thomas Dumpit, party-list Reps. Rodante Marcoleta, Catalina Leonen Pizarro, Godofredo Arquiza (with wife Remedios), Agapito Guanlao (with wife Socorro), Carissa Cosculluela (Buhay), Daryl Grace Abayon (Aangat Tayo). (Originally, 100 congressmen had wanted in on the trip.)
Local government:Gov. Tet Garcia (Bataan); Mayors Marides Fernando (Marikina) Nitoy Durano (Danao City).
The meeting with the President of the United States in the Oval Office includes the cabinet, such as the Secretary of Foreign Affairs, the Secretary of Trade and Industry, the Secretary of Defense, and the respective heads of the Senate and House of Representatives or their representatives. Recently, the Executive Secretary is also included. It is really the President’s personal selection which cabinet members are included. As a rule of thumb, that means a total of six including the President (1+5).
There has been much controversy about the limited number allowed in the Oval Office. Congressmen accompanying our President fervently believe that they have a “God-given” right to also meet the American President and, of course, to avail of a photo opportunity. . Even members of the press accompanying our President have had a similar presumption. Because of the strictures of protocol and US practice and failure to accommodate these demands, I have incurred in the past the ire of our venerable legislators and pundits.
Turning now to the US visit this week of President Arroyo, I am informed that some 30 members of Congress are going to Washington “at their own expense” to accompany her. The problem with this is that it gives rise to a perception of extravagance and ostentatiousness from a developing country. This additional entourage really has no added value to the President’s delegation for a meeting in the White House. To be precise, they have no role to play. All they do is encumber our embassy staff in Washington with the burden of finding “things” for them to do so that they can justify their own travels to the press and their constituents. Dyahe!!!
Asked what the House of Representatives delegation would do in the US, he said the congressmen would attend meetings in New York City. He did not specify the meetings, however.
”In New York, there will be a lot of meetings about the economy anddiscussions on possible legislations that will produce win-winsolution to both America and the Philippines,” Nograles said in a text message.
”It’s work and meeting here for all of us, the schedules are hectic,” he said.
Be that as it may, the Philippine delegation this time was billeted at the much larger Willard Hotel instead of at the 220-room Four Seasons Hotel where it stayed in May 2008 when Mrs. Arroyo was invited to the White House by President George W. Bush.
Officials said it was an event organized and attended by FILUSA members at their own expense and initiative. The President, however, seems to have indicated the dinner was a government initiative:
Thank you very much for coming despite the very short notice and thank you for waiting.
A backgrounder (July 22) on FILUSA, from Yen Macabenta:
There was also a “newly-organized” group called Fil-USA, purportedly established to spread the word about the accomplishments of the Arroyo administration. Needless to say, we’ve never heard of Fil-USA.
July 30
The President’s planned activities for the day had tentatively included meetings with national intelligence director Adm. Dennis Blair and Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee; lunch with leaders of the RP-US Friendship Caucus; coffee with Sen. Harry Reid; and a forum on the Coral Triangle by the National Geographic Society. Other reports prior to the President’s departure mentioned the President was slated hold talks with officials of the Millennium Challenge Corporation and representatives from the US Veterans’ Affairs Office before dining with members of the Filipino community.
The Voice of America reported the President was expected to meet with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.
The following meetings were documented by government media, as having taken place in the President’s hotel room, it seems in rapid succession.
10 AM Meeting with Admiral Dennis Blair, Director of National Intelligence (Venue: Capitol Suite, Willard Hotel)
10:30 AM Meeting with Sheila Jackson Lee (Venue: Capitol Suite, Willard Hotel)
A call by Jeffrey Schafer, Citi Group Executive Director for Asia Pacific & Former Assistant Secretary of Treasury:
A courtesy call by Former Senator Ted Stevens:
The President, accompanied by Speaker Nograles, then called on Speaker Nancy Pelosi at the US Capitol:
12:30 PM During a luncheon reception the President conferring the Order of Lakandula on various members of the RP-US Friendship Caucus in the Veterans Committee Room, Cannon House Office Building:
The President apparently had time to return to the Willard Hotel to change costume from blue to red.
3-4 PM President Arroyo meets with President Obama for half an hour to 45 minutes in the Oval Office, followed by a brief press availability (according to Ellen Tordesillas, the Secretary of Finance was bumped off the meeting to accommodate presidential factotum Remedios Poblador; while the Secretary of National Defense got bumped off so that Global Warming Adviser Heherson Alvarez could make it).
Obama mentioned the Philippines was ASEAN Coordinator with the United States. Palace announced it as token of esteem by the American president. Diplomatic sources later clarified to Ellen Tordesillas (veteran of the Department of Foreign Affairs beat) that when President Arroyo was designated coordinator for Asean, it was in keeping with established practice. According to Tordesillas (in an e-mail to me),
The chore of coordinator with Asean dialogue partners is by rotation in Asean. Last year, for example, the Philippines was coordinator for Asean-Russia. It was Thailand that was coordinator US-Asean last year. Philippines was vice-coordinator to Thailand. New designations were decided last July, during the ministerial meeting in Phuket, as part of Asean’s housekeeping.
6 PM Stakeholders’ forum on the Coral Triangle (Venue: Grosvenor Auditorium, National Geographic). The President went to the National Geographic Society to give a briefing on the Coral Triangle.
7:30 PM Philippine Media Interview – Joe Taruc (Manila), Rey Langit, Jennlyn Kabiling (Washington): President Arroyo and party then return to the Willard Hotel where she records some press interviews.
9-10 PM (?) Only on August 12 would the public find out that the President had dinner at Bobby Van’s Steakhouse in 15th St., NW. As The Washington Post’s Reliable Sources blog would post at 1:o2 AM EST on August 12,
The group took over one of the restaurant’s private rooms and dined on lobster, steak and fine wines; at the conclusion of the meal, an unidentified woman opened a handbag stuffed with cash, counted out bills and paid the $15,000 tab — which included a generous tip.
The dinner would be confirmed, on the record, by a congressman, Danilo Suarez, and by one anonymous source on August 12-13 when the story broke. It would take Rep. Suarez some time to realize he actually invited the President to have dinner and paid for it.
July 31
What were documented were the following, all at the Willard Hotel.
10:30 AM A courtesy call by Attorney-General Eric Holder:
11 AM A courtesy call by Transportation Secretary Ray La Hood:
This was immediately followed by the signing of a Memorandum of Understanding, again, with La Hood:
A courtesy call by the US Trade Representative, Ron Kirk:
1:30 PM A courtesy call by Senators Daniel Inouye and Daniel Akaka to receive Presidential Citations:
2 PM A courtesy call by Veterans Affairs Secretary Shinseki:
Afinal courtesy call by Nicola Goren:
4 PM President Arroyo is advised that President Aquino has died. She asks for confirmation.
4:30 PM President Arroyo meets with Secretary of State Hillary Clinton at the Willard Hotel in Washington for 30 minutes. Confusion surrounded the meeting, with some officials insisting it had been canceled hours after the meeting took place. Clinton was informed of Aquino’s death not by the President, but by a Filipina reporter.
5:30 PM An hour after her Clinton meeting, the President then tapes an official message on the death of Mrs. Aquino:
(The original version sent media outfits includes the President breaking out into a big smile after concluding her message, but media outfits suppress this out of deference to the President.)
For her message, the President put on a grey suit.
7:30 PM (?) The President then left the media contingent behind in Washington and went ahead of schedule to Andrews Airforce Base, for a flight to New York City, her haste in doing so subsequently making sense to some observers only in terms of her having to keep an appointment to dine at Le Cirque.
She was reportedly brought directly to her New York billet, the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel. The President occupied the presidential suite, though reports of the suite rate at $3,500 a night remain unconfirmed (a 2002 article cites the presidential suite at $7,500 a night). Also unconfirmed is that 60 other rooms were booked for Filipino officials/staff at $990 a night.
A news item, Arroyo orders 10 days of mourning details the President’s options at the time (as relayed to reporters left behind in Washington DC):
Upon arrival at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York, the President was met by top Cabinet officials led by Ermita, who advised her to cut her trip short.
Ermita said Arroyo could afford to skip the rest of her trip—stops in Chicago and Guam until Aug. 5—because her scheduled meetings with Filipino-American organizations could be moved to another time.
A press conference is scheduled at 11 a.m. Saturday (11 p.m. Sunday in Manila), where Ermita will report on the President’s return date…
While she was pondering on cutting her trip short, Arroyo signed Proclamation 1850 setting a period of national mourning from Aug. 1 to 10, with all flags to be flown at half-staff at all government buildings and installations in the Philippines and abroad.
Ermita said Arroyo could afford to leave for home on Saturday night (when a dinner party with FilUSA at the Newark Sheraton was scheduled) or Sunday morning (when she was to attend Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral).
She was scheduled to leave New York for Chicago on Aug. 3.
It was on the evening of her first night in New York City, that the President and party had dinner at Le Cirque. (One member of the President’s party later said the dinner was originally planned somewhere else; see this interesting comment by Market Manila on the logistics of the variously-mentioned dining venues that have emerged in the news.)
Ermita said Mrs. Arroyo would be canceling her trip to Chicago, San Francisco and Guam and would fly directly to Manila from here on Monday.
Ermita said the party was scheduled to arrive in Manila before dawn Wednesday in time for the funeral rites for Mrs. Aquino.
Meanwhile, a full day of courtesy calls.
Coca-Cola executives pay a courtesy call on the President in her hotel room:
Chardan Capital Bank executives call on the President in her hotel room:
Market America executives call on the President in her hotel room:
Dr. Vassilis Morfopoulos, Managing Director of Basic International Development Corporation, called on the President in her hotel room:
The President then had a working lunch -in a private room, of the Peacock Alley, of the Waldorf-Astoria- with Hedge Fund executives, but documented by RTVM:
Apparently having decided not to leave for Manila just yet, the President made a FILUSA appearance at the Newark Sheraton in New Jersey (uncontroversial, because publicly announced ahead of time):
It’s entirely possible FILUSA event in New Jersey was along the same lines as the FILUSA event in Washington -organized by the Philippine government.
The only thing that marred the President’s dinner was that the Philippine press contigent boycotted the dinner due to the hostility of one of the FILUSA top honchos, as reported in the Philippine Star:
FILUSA was organized early this year by pro-Arroyo sympathizers and claim to have chapters in Maryland, Virginia, New York, New Jersey and California.
When Mrs. Arroyo and Obama had talks at the Oval Office on July 30, the day after her arrival in Washington, FILUSA members rallied in front of the White House shouting slogans in support of her, while a much larger anti-Arroyo leftist group taunted her for being a US lapdog.
FILUSA organized a dinner for Mrs. Arroyo in Washington in recognition of her being the first Southeast Asian leader invited by Obama to the White House and the President was effusive in singling out organizer Jacqueline Lingad Ricci for praise.
While the President was in New York, she motored to New Jersey for another FILUSA dinner in her honor.
At the New Jersey dinner Ricci confronted one of the Filipino reporters covering the event and lambasted him for “lying” in his reporting and yet “wanting to eat our food.”
The reporter walked out and, in solidarity, all the other reporters followed him and boycotted the event.
The President also recorded an interview with CNBC:
10 AM President Arroyo attends Mass at St. Patrick’s Cathedral for President Aquino, but Archbishop Timothy Dolan, according to the Inquirer also mentions from the pulpit that the High Mass was also to celebrate President Arroyo’s 41st anniversary.
The President is frosty to the media when asked for further comment on Mrs. Aquino’s death.
At this point, having been advised of potential travel plans on July 31, the Manila Bulletin reports the President announced yet another change in her travel plans, this time, for a side trip to Silicon Valley:
Mrs. Arroyo, who arrived here from Washington, DC last Saturday, is scheduled to take a chartered flight out of New York City on Monday afternoon and proceed to San Francisco, CA and then to Manila. The revision in the President’s flight does not change the arrival date in Manila on Wednesday.
“Are you going with us to Silicon Valley? Are you going with us to San Francisco? We still have a last event in Silicon Valley signing,” she asked reporters after a church service at the St. Patrick’s Cathedral here.
Reporters, who have complained about the lack of transparency in the President’s itinerary in the US, told the President that they would not be able to join the hastily arranged San Francisco leg.
Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita earlier said the President’s plane will just land in San Francisco for refueling.
Incidentally, the use of a chartered jet contradicted the reasons given by Cerge Remonde, in the wake of criticism that the President was obviously not doing any rushing to get home as soon as possible. See this Philippine Star report:
Mrs. Arroyo’s only public engagement on Sunday was to attend mass at St. Patrick’s which had been scheduled before news of Aquino’s death broke.
Filipino community leaders said Mrs. Arroyo would have made more impact had she headed to the airport after mass and .boarded a flight for Manila.
But Sunday was the 41st anniversary of her wedding to First Gentleman Mike Arroyo so the guess was that she wanted to celebrate the event on the ground rather than aloft.
Press Secretary Cerge Remonde said President Arroyo could have flown anytime she wished had she been on a chartered flight, but she was on a commercial flight to save on costs and had no control over flight schedules. But she has decided to curtail her trip and cut the Chicago, San Francisco and Guam portions out.
But she took a chartered flight to make a side trip to Silicon Valley after all.
The same Bulletin report had the President’s husband (before his wife corraled him to stop him from talking further to the media) saying,
He said he gave President Arroyo a bouquet of roses and was expected to host a dinner at a fancy restaurant last night.
(”Last night” referring of course, to the nightof the day the interview was given).
12 Noon (or thereabouts) Wedding anniversary lunch at Wolfgang’s Steakhouse on Park Avenue near the Waldorf-Astoria where the President was staying.
8-11 PM President and party have dinner at Bouley’s Restaurant, and judging from what the President’s husband told the Bulletin, at the First Family’s expense. This would be mentioned, first, by Rep. Hermilando Mandanas on August 11 and confirmed by Rep. Bienvenido Abante on August 13.
August 3
President Arroyo reportedly departs New York for San Francisco in the late afternoon.
August 4
August 5
The President arrives and visits Cory Aquino’s wake.
August 6
August 7
8:04 AM Fashionista-blogger bryanboy is the first to Tweets:
from my friend in NYC: “President Macapagal-Arroyo’s dinner at Le Cirque here in NY cost the taxpayers of the Philippines $15,000!!!”
The New York Post’s infamous Page Six publishes its article on the President le Cirque shindig but reports the bill at $20,000:
The economic downturn hasn’t persuaded everyone to pinch pennies. Philippines President Maria Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was at Le Cirque the other night with a large entourage enjoying the good life, even though the former comptroller of her country’s armed services, Carlos Garcia, was found guilty earlier this year of perjury and two of his sons were arrested in the US on bulk cash-smuggling charges. Macapagal-Arroyo ordered several bottles of very expensive wine, pushing the dinner tab up to $20,000.
The article establishes the following:
1. The dinner took place “the other night,” relative to the publication date of the story, August 7.
2. The President was accompanied by “a large entourage” to “enjoy the good life”.
3. The President ordered several bottles of very expensive wine.
4. The dinner tab was $20,000.
Incidentally, there’s a curious item in Get It From Boy, on Gen. Garcia’s son turning his bail tracking device into a fashion statement! The Post story was picked up by New York Magazine, in cityfile and Grub Street.
Ellen Tordesillas blogs and Tweets about it close to midnight. She says Press Secretary Cerge Remonde confirmed the dinner took place.
August 8
I posted my entry Saint and Tippler with an image that attempted a theoretical breakdown of how the presidential party could’ve racked up the bill:
The theoretical computation, prepared by an accountant friend, was based on ongoing online discussions on how the President and her party could have run up a $20,000 tab. The choices were made based on the published menu and wine list of the restaurant. Unfortunately, within hours and over subsequent days, the image was circulated as a facsimile of the tab, which it was nor ever pretended to be.
1:05 AM A former senator gets an email (date/time: Saturday, August 8, 2009, 12:37 AM), with the following in it:
I’m overly sensitive today especially when I have learned from one of my patients who works as a waiter at a Filipino-French restaurant in New York, that GMA and twenty three of her entourage had a dinner that cost the Filipino taxpayers $40,000 during her recent state visit to the US. He claimed that their wine alone cost $16,000 and they paid in HARD COLD CASH. That is the cost of one dinner alone and how many dinners and lunches did they have during their stay in the US?
However, in no media reports would a “Filipino-French restaurant” or any bill amounting to $40,000 be mentioned, nor payment in cash while in New York.
11:44 AMManuel Buencamino raises the relevant questions concerning the $20,000 tab:
Did she pay cash or charge? Who actually settled the bill? I doubt the restaurant would gave the tab to Gloria and she whipped out a bag of cash or her Amex black card.
At any rate….
If the taxpayer picked up the bill then I object.
If she paid for it out of her own pocket then she must have an incredible annual income.
If the bill was paid by a friend then that falls under the ban of government officials receiving large gifts.
If the party went dutch treat, then I want to know who “advanced” payment.
1. Yes, there was a dinner at Le Cirque. Reps. Danilo Suarez and Deputy Speaker Amelita Villarosa said “she remembered dining at Le Cirque but not the details because she had several lunches and dinners during the trip.”
2. The dinner took place on August 2.
3. It was hosted by Rep. Martin Romualdez.
4. The Palace did not know how much was spent for the dinner.
2. Dinner was soup, salad, one main course, and dessert. Remonde says some diners had red wine.
3. Remonde says that in keeping with the death of Cory Aquino, the President and husband chose not to celebrate their wedding anniversary.
4. Remonde says 15-20 people were at the dinner;:
According to the press secretary, Romualdez invited the President and her husband, First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo, for dinner with some chosen members of the Philippine delegation and diplomats based in New York.
5. The presidential party included “some chosen members of the Philippine delegation and diplomats based in New York” who traveled by bus to the restaurant. This number is significant because it suggests familiarity with the restaurant, which has tables that seat 8 persons each; two tables, which is the number of tables Remonde said were occupied, would seat 16 individuals maximum. But with a $20,000 bill, the per person cost of a 15-20 person meal would be much more difficult to justify than a larger party, which is eventually the assertion that would dominate the alibis.
6. On ANC’s “Dateline Philippines,” Remonde attributed the Le Cirque story to Bagong Alyansang Makabayan, ignoring the story having broken in the New York Post, and even earlier Tweet by bryanboy, and sustained interest by bloggers.
“The truth of the matter is when we went there, there were many Filipinos already dining in the restaurant,” he said, adding some of the Filipinos managed to get their pictures taken with the visiting President.
Which may account for the Palace’s disinclination to contest the cost of the dinner.
1. The President was originally invited by Rep. Romualdez’s brother, architect Daniel, who lives in the Hamptons, to have dinner at the yacht club, but that it was full. So they ate at Le Cirque itself (which brings up a logistical question concerning travel times from the airport, to the Hamptons, to Le Cirque, to the Waldorf-Astoria or some permutation thereof).
2. Suarez reiterates Rep. Martin Romualdez paid for dinner.
11:25 AM PDI publishes What’s wrong with eating in a hotdog stand? in which the date of the Le Cirque dinner is still identified as having taken place on August 2.Concerning the August 2 dinner, Cerge Remonde said,
During the dinner on August 2, Remonde said the Malacanang group occupied two tables and ordered a set menu consisting of soup, salad, main dish, drinks, and coffee and tea.
But was he referring to an actual August 2 dinner, with the menu he described, or was he referring to Le Cirque?
4:09 PMTorn & Frayed in Manila zeroes in on the reality-trumps-fiction aspect of the whole story:
Philippine public life often has a novelistic, chiaroscuro quality to it; only it is the sort of novel where you think “how unrealistic, that would never happen in real life.”
Gloria’s now infamous $20,000 meal at the Le Cirque in New York is a good example of the Philippines failing the real life test.
Eight thousand miles away from GMA and her sycophants tucking in at the Le Cirque trough, a woman lay dying in Makati Medical Center. Cory Aquino devoted her life to ending the gross excesses of her predecessor, the conjugal dictatorship, the worst of which were committed in, guess where, New York. As a symbol of how we are back where we started that $20,000 bill could hardly be bettered.
Except that it could bettered. The knee jerk response to Malacañang’s excesses (as with the envelope handed out to Ed Panlilio and the other 190 elected officials who visited Malacañang duing the impeachment hearings) is always “oh the president wasn’t paying, it was one of her supporters.” And who was the generous host on this occasion? Leyte Congressman Martin Romualdez, Imelda’s nephew. You couldn’t make these things up.
1. Rep. Juan Miguel Arroyo thanks Rep. Martin Romualdez for footing the bill for the Le Cirque shindig.
2. But an aide of Rep. Romualdez, lawyer Nick Esmale says that it wasn’t his principal that paid; Architect Daniel Romualdez, the congressman’s brother, is the one who paid the bill.
3. This contradicts what Sec. Remonde and Rep. Suarez have been saying about which Romualdez paid for the bill.
1. There were more than 50 in the group that dined at Le Cirque, including the President’s security people and Secret Service agents. This figure contradicts the 15 or so persons mentioned by Sec. Remonde a day or two before.
2. He repeats his comments to media, of the Le Cirque dinner being Plan B after dinner at the yacht club in the Hamptons didn’t push through, are republished here.
Also in the same story, is an assurance by Sec. Remonde that,
To quell speculations of Ms Arroyo’s supposedly wasteful spending in her US trip, he said he would ask the deputy executive secretary for finance and administration to release this week a financial statement on all expenses for the visit.
No such report has been released as of August 15 .
“The food is good but the place is not fashionable. With our numbers, the $20,000 is cheaper,” Suarez said.
Since Filipinos are hospitable people, Suarez said the delegation allowed those who accompanied them to partake of dinner, “including the American security personnel assigned to the President by the State Department.”
August 11
Leyte Samar Daily Express publishes a rather confusing story, in which lawyer Nick Esmale, a staffer for Rep. Martin Romualdez, says:
“The report was not only factual but unfair. It was not FM but his elder brother Daniel who foot the bill,” Esmale said over the phone, addressing the solon through his nickname.
He described Daniel to be one of the most successful Filipinos in the United States and is considered to be among the leading personalities in his profession.
Daniel, who chose to stay and live in the US since the 1986, is an architect by profession.According to Esmale, Daniel learned that his younger brother was in New York together with the President who was then on a state visit.
“So he asked his brother if he could host the President to a dinner. But he was not around during the dinner,” Esmale said.
(Who was absent, Daniel or Martin Romualdez?)
New York Post’s Page Six publishes a follow-up story, confusing the theoretical computation for the real thing:
OUR little scoop about the $20,000 dinner Philippines President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo enjoyed last month at Le Cirque has blown up into a political firestorm in her homeland, where memories of Imelda Marcos’ shoe collection are still fresh. Makati City Mayor Jejomar Binay pointed out that the cost of the dinner for 25 could have fed “almost 3,000 hungry families with three square meals.” A copy of Arroyo’s tab, posted on several blogs, showed 11 bottles of Krug champagne were ordered at $510 a pop. The entourage — who were charged $238 a head for the feast — also devoured Osetra caviar at $1,400 for five ounces. An Arroyo spokesman said Leyte Province Rep. Martin Romualdez, part of the delegation, footed the bill. But Philstar.com quoted Binay, “What they did was deplorable, especially if taxpayers’ money was spent. If they spent private money, what they did was in bad taste and again showed insensitivity to the millions of Filipinos who face hunger daily.”
New York Magazine makes the same mistakes, citing the theoretical bill as fact.
Remonde said he finally located the “source” of the information detailing what Ms Arroyo and her party supposedly had at Le Cirque—a blog.
He said the blog made assumptions about how the bill could have reached close to $20,000, based on the menu.
One computation making the rounds of blogs pegged the total bill at $19,866 with such items as Wild Golden Osetra Caviar ($1,400) and 11 bottles of Krug champagne ($5,610).
The widely circulated New York Post, which reported on the dinner, said Ms Arroyo “ordered several bottles of very expensive wine, pushing the dinner tab up to $20,000.”
Remonde insisted the meal that Ms Arroyo and her group had at Le Cirque was “simple” and without caviar and champagne.
Close to 20 congressmen went with the President in the US trip last week of July, including Nograles. But the House leader left ahead to speak at the Asean parliament assembly in Thailand.
At least four House members who joined the trip claimed no knowledge about the Le Cirque dinner even amid Malacanang’s admission.
Pangasinan Representative Rachel Arenas told reporters to instead talk to Romualdez.
Marikina Representative Del de Guzman said they had dinner but not in Le Cirque. He said he ordered spaghetti.
Mindoro Occidental Representative Amelita Villarosa confirmed that they had dinner on August 2, but that she could not recall the name of the restaurant. She said the restaurant sounded like “Wolfgang,” and that the steak costs about $20 per serving.
Batangas Representative Hermilando Mandanas said the dinner he attended on August 2 was at the Bouley restaurant, which lasted 8 p.m. to 11:30 p.m.
Newsbreak reported the congressmen’s recollections as follows:
Curiously, other solons who joined President Arroyo in her working visit to the U.S. denied the dinner was at Le Cirque.
Occidental Mindoro Rep. Amelita Villarosa said they didn’t eat at Le Cirque, and that the food was not that expensive.
“Hindi Le Cirque yun. Parang ano nga, Wolfgang. It was the last dinner before we left New York. The president was there. It was not expensive. The steak was only around US$20,” she said.
Batangas Rep. Hermilando Mandanas denied it, too.
“I was in the dinner on August 2, 2009 with President Arroyo from 8 p.m. to 11:30 p.m. It was not at Le Cirque. There was no champagne, no caviar, etc. I don’t know who paid and how much,” he said.
“I have never been at Le Cirque. The first time I learned about it was from the Philippine Daily Inquirer. Baka kuryente yan, but then again I am surprised Secretary Remonde let it pass,” Mandanas added.
Remonde has admitted the presidential entourage had dinner at Le Cirque, but denied it was lavish.
Marikina Rep. Del De Guzman also said he never ate at Le Cirque. “I ate spaghetti in a different restaurant. It’s not in Le Cirque,” he said.
Both accounts have the congressmen thereby revealing the other places the President dined: Wolfgang’s Steakhouse, Park Avenue (near the Waldorf-Astoria where the President stayed in New York) and Bouley Restaurant.
Both accounts helped confirm the Le Cirque dinner as having taken place on July 31; and that other meals were had at other places on August 2. (An Inquirer report on August 13 will mention that Rep. Hermilando Mandanas said the Bouley’s dinner took place from 8-11 PM.)
And also, that the initial published report of the le Cirque tab totalling $20,000 still stands uncontested by Palace or either of the Romualdez brothers.
House on a Hill attempts to do some sleuthing, too, primarily in terms of Le Cirque’s menus (though oddly enough she couldn’t find caviar on the menu):
Despite the paper’s shady ethics and less-than-credible stories, it doesn’t necessarily follow that the New York Post’s Page Six article “Eat and Drink” about Mrs. Arroyo’s Le Cirque dinner is false nor inaccurate. Even the most lurid publications do manage to come out with bits of truth on occasion.
That the dinner actually took place is not denied. Mrs. Arroyo and her husband did dine at the Le Cirque with a number of people. That Le Cirque is an expensive restaurant is not being contested either. Most Americans cringe at $20 dinners and Le Cirque’s is pegged at $58. I’ve seen its website and the photos of the restaurant are straight out of Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous. The burning issues are, first, the total cost of the dinner and, second, who paid for it and with whose money.
The Reliable Source has learned that three days earlier, Arroyo and an entourage of about 65 people (including security and food tasters) had dinner at Bobby Van’s Steakhouse on 15th Street NW hours after she met with President Obama. The group took over one of the restaurant’s private rooms and dined on lobster, steak and fine wines; at the conclusion of the meal, an unidentified woman opened a handbag stuffed with cash, counted out bills and paid the $15,000 tab — which included a generous tip.
The Philippine Embassy did not return calls for comment Tuesday.
(Anyone want to link this story to Medy Poblador replacing the Secretary of Finance at the Oval Office meeting? Update: on August 14, columnist Lito Banayo does just that.)
BEFORE their $20,000 meal at Le Cirque, Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and an entourage of about 65 — complete with food tasters, Secret Service and a kitchen monitor to watch food preparation — dined at Bobby Van’s Steakhouse in DC on July 30. “The party spared no expense, and had lobster, steak and expensive wines,” said a source. “They paid their $15,000 bill, including a generous tip, with cash — which was counted out, unseen, underneath a table by a staff member.” Meanwhile, we’ve learned that Philippine Congressman Martin Romualdez, who allegedly paid for the Le Cirque feast, is a nephew of Imelda Marcos — who was exiled and acquitted in the US of racketeering charges before returning to her country.
I have a friend who works in the catering services in Dubai airport which provide the food for all airlines going out of Dubai. My friend shared a tidbit when GMA twice visited Dubai and in both times, GMA’s party specified that lobsters be included in the food to be provided to her charter flight when they depart Dubai. That’s why when the Washington Post’s article mentioned ‘lobsters’, it kind of confirmed my friend’s tidbit of GMA’s penchant for the expensive lobsters for her in-flight food. Next, I’ll ask my friend how much did the GMA party rack up for their in-flight catering.
In his two-page letter of complaint, Akbayan Rep. Walden Bello said Ombudsman Ma. Merceditas Gutierrez must look into the issue as public officials embroiled in the controversy may be held liable for violating several laws, including Republic Act 6713 or the Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards for Public Officials and Employees, the Revised Penal Code, and Presidential Decree 46 which makes it punishable for public officials and employees to receive gifts on any occasion.
In a Palace briefing, lawyer Romulo Macalintal blew his top and said the media had no right to raise morality as an issue when they were accepting advertisements
from politicians obviously violating the law against premature campaigning.
Which is as much an indictment of members of the President’s own cabinet and the ruling coalition as it is possibly of the media.
But it seems from Washington to New York to Manila, the alarm bells are ringing.
7:52 PMBefore NY, there was a $15k Washington dinner. A member of the President’s party, the garrulous Rep. Danilo Suarez (of whom Jarius Bondoc asks, why the gallantry in footing the President’s bill?), confirms the dinner took place but won’t confirm specifics:
In Manila, Quezon Representative Danilo Suarez, who was with Mrs. Arroyo in Washington, confirmed that they dined with the President at Bobby Van’s Steakhouse. He however did not confirm the reported $15,000 bill and was coy on who paid for it.
“I doubt if you will spend that much there. Parang Italianni’s yan e (It’s just like Italianni’s),” Suarez told GMANews.TV in a telephone interview.
He also said he could not remember how many they were, and whether they went to the restaurant hours after Mrs. Arroyo met with President Obama.
Suarez refused to divulge more details, saying he and his colleagues in the House have decided not to issue any more statements about the President’s dinners in the US since an “impeachment” case has been filed against her.
Executive Order (EO) 825, signed on July 29, set up the local group as counterpart to the national anti-hunger task force, to implement programs at the regional and provincial levels.
10 AM (approx) Elbert Cuenca reproduces an SMS message,via Twitter (see here, here, and here) supposedly from an employee in the Philippine Consulate in New York City (hat tip to The View from Saturday). I also got it as a forwarded message, and here it is in full:
Im ok, sir. Same here, im also ashamed about d extravagant stay. Her Waldorf suite, $3,500/day, $950/day for each of d congressmen and others. 60 rms wr ocupied in waldorf. 2 days they feasted in Le cirque charge to our office. At least 50 dined for 2 nites. They all came in stretch limos, rented for 3 days.
Reporters begin sleuthing around to see if there is any basis to this SMS. The alleged details above deviate in many respects from the official stories thus far: in terms of there being multiple Le Cirque dinners, in the number of persons (only Rep. Suarez said 50 people dined at the restaurant), even vehicles used (Sec. Remonde said most went by bus). (Update: the SMS would finally be categorically denied by the Consul-General on August 16.)
The source, who was among the reported 65 people in Mrs. Arroyo’s entourage, confirmed they had dined at the Bobby Van’s Steakhouse on 15th Street in Washington D.C. last July 30.
ABS-CBN’s Balitang America learned that the group agreed to dine out after President Arroyo was interviewed by Manila-based radio stations.
The source denied the dinner was lavish or extravagant…
The source told Balitang America that only Mrs. Arroyo and ranking Philippine officials, which included Defense Secretary Gilberto Teodoro, Agriculture Arthur Yap and Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo, and a group of congressmen, sat down on the long table for dinner.
The source said Mrs. Arroyo and the top Philippine officials ordered fresh oysters for appetizers and feasted on steaks and lobsters for the main course.
The rest of the party, the source added, were spread out in various tables or just standing around eating hamburgers and drinking soda.
The source also revealed that Mrs. Arroyo and her group were so full, they decided to walk back to the Willar Hotel, about two blocks away from the popular steakhouse.
1. Besides free meals, congressmen enjoyed free hotel accomodations, although he would not say who actually paid for the hotel rooms.
2. While Abante denied being at the Bobby Van’s dinner in Washington or in the Le Cirque dinner in New York, he did attend dinner at Bouley’s Restaurant that took place on August 2. This meal had originally been mentioned by Rep.Hermilando Mandanas; the report says he mentioned at the time (August 11) that the dinner took place from 8-11 PM.
“The issue at hand cannot be the sincerity of this President’s commitment to uplifting our poor,” Anthony Golez, deputy presidential spokesman, said in a statement.
“Whatever monies may have been spent for the appropriately ceremonious conduct of her official trip abroad are but a tiny fraction of the billions of pesos she has committed, and will continue to commit, to the alleviation of hunger and the amelioration of poverty in our country.”
“In their frenzy to score media points at the President’s expense, these critics will go so far as to demean and debase the office of the Presidency itself, not just its current occupant,” said deputy presidential spokesperson Anthony Golez in a press briefing.
“They would now have us believe that the leader of our nation is somehow not good enough to be hosted in the best hotels, or chauffeured around town, whenever he or she travels abroad as the representative of one of the fifteen largest countries in the world,” he added.
Returning to the confusion over which of the Romualdez brothers actually picked up the President’s tab, Stella Arnaldo in her blog comments as follows:
I have it on good authority though that Daniel didn’t pay for the dinner either. Apparently it’s a well-known fact among those close to the Romualdezes that while Daniel may be generous in charitable events, he is “too kuripot” to shell out that much for a lavish dinner where he doesn’t even personally know half of the guests. “It’s actually Martin who is galante,” as per a source. Martin is so galante, he is said to have gifted the presidentita a Rolex w/c costs anywhere bet. $3,600 to $11,000. Hmmm….
“I was the one who paid for the dinner. I invited the (Arroyo) family and our group, we were more than 60, including Secret Service agents and drivers,” Quezon Rep. Danilo Suarez told The STAR.
He said the Washington Post and the New York Post erred in reporting that a female staff member opened a bag full of cash and took out $15,000 to pay for the dinner.
“Actually, my first choice was Morton’s steak house, but since there was no space for us there, we settled for Bobby Van’s. The cost would have easily been at least 20 percent more had there been space at Morton’s,” he said.
He said he saw nothing wrong with the Washington and New York City dinners since “it was their (Arroyos’) wedding anniversary.”
Suarez revealed that there was another dinner in New York City for which the presidential entourage also spent a big sum.
“Perhaps, even that, the papers might discover,” he said.
This latest alibi brings up some interesting points:
1. On August 12, Rep. Suarez, while confirming the dinner had taken place, had declined to state who paid for it.
2. But the next day (August 13, or in time to meet presstime August 14) he finally recalled who paid (he did!).
3. It raises the question of how the balding, grey-haired Suarez could be mistaken for a woman with a handbag, unless he attended the dinner in drag and carries around a purse.
4. He has begun to lay the basis for the handling of another New York dinner revelation (based on details originally leaked by his colleagues and mentioned in the timeline above, covering August 2).
5. In the story above, Rep. Bienvenido Abante, in addition to his August 13 statements that congressmen’s hotel rooms had been paid for by others (though he declined to say who, exactly), added:
a. Congressmen were billeted both at the Willard and the Waldorf-Astoria, same as the President, upon the invitation of the Palace;
b. And that he assumes the Palace paid for their trip and their accomodations.
6. Assistant Ombudsman Mark Jalandoni saysm in the same report, a “fact-checking investigation” will be undertaken.
7. The report also mentions the details being bruited about since the day before: 60 rooms booked at the Waldorf at $990 a night. Perhaps reporters are zeroing in on this tip.
Certainly, these tips are leading reporters and columnist like Jarius Bondoc to focus on previous presidential trips, and scuttlebutt from OFWS, in this case from a hotel worker, circa April 15, 2009:
“Si Pangulo pala nag-check in dito two nights and one day lang sila ang dami nila kasama, si Angelo Reyes at madami pang iba, mga 50 sila.Grabe ang gastos nila 150,000 dirham lang naman ang mga kuwarto kada gabi, times P12 per dirham equals P1,800,000!!!
“Mga fine wine ang in-order at mga Wagyu beef, ito ‘yung steak na pinaka-mahal, at champagne Dom Perignon.
“Tapos ’yung taga-Mindanao na governor ata ’yun, ang in-order na cognac ay ’yung 800 dirham (x P12) per shot, e naka 14 shots lang naman siya…
Asked about the reported woman with the handbag, Suarez said: “No, I paid.”
He also said it was usual for Ms Arroyo’s friends and allies to treat her: “It’s normal, it’s normal. Even here, we invite the President for dinner.”
He added that people were making too much of the dinners when there were important deals that Philippine officials had been able to negotiate with the US government.
Suarez said the food bill amounted to about $11,000; adding the service charge and taxes, it came up to $15,000.
He pointed out that it was a big group that included the security staff and Secret Service agents.
Suarez said Bobby Van’s Steakhouse was the second choice after Morton’s Steakhouse.
In the same article, acting Justice Secretary (and concurrent Solicitor-General) Agnes Devanadera, who’d previously opined that the President can’t be impeached for the dinner, says she was part of the group that dined at Le Cirque: but she only had salad as she was “missing rice.”
8 AM In a Malaya report, the deputy presidential spokesman clarifies that the President’s lawyer does not necessarily speak for the either the President or the Palace:
[Golez] also said the questions of Romulo Macalintal on the Philippine media’s morality Wednesday for harping on the expensive dinner in New York and Arroyo’s ballooning wealth is not necessarily shared by Malacañang, even if Macalintal is the President’s lawyer.
Macalintal, in a radio interview, said it is typical to spend $15,000 on fine dining in the US. “Palagay ko, kung sa Amerika gagastusin iyan palagay ko ganyan ang magagastos. Siguro tingnan natin kung iyan ba ay illegal o immoral,” he said.
He said with 65 members in Arroyo’s entourage, each would have consumed $230.77 or P11,036 – which he said would not have been immoral.
Macalintal on Wednesday turned the tables on the media for making a moral issue of the President’s spending too much in the New York dinner. He said media companies earn millions from the “illegal” political advertisements of presidential aspirants, who use public money for their propaganda, and challenged them to turn down these ads.
Not only presidential aspirants have the so-called infomercials. A number of Cabinet men eyeing elective posts have similar ads.
Suarez said several people heard and witnessed him invite Mrs. Arroyo to dinner at the Morton’s Steakhouse, also in Washington, but the “more fashionable” restaurant was already packed, so they ended up in the middle-class Bobby Van’s, which is equally famous in D.C.
“After the meeting of the President with President [Barack] Obama, I told the president that her 41st wedding anniversary is nearing and I would like to host a dinner,” Suarez said…
The congressman said he was seated at the back of the long table, which was inside a special room at the Bobby Van’s, and had to ask someone to get the receipt.
“We were seated behind. Pinakuha ko ang receipt, then I gave the money,” he said, indicating that he paid cash.
“I think we should stop making the President a punching bag, and let us concentrate more on the donut, not the hole. And let’s look at the better things in life,” he told reporters in Malacañang after the ceremonial signing into law of the Magna Carta for Women.
4-5 PM On ANC Presidential Spokesman for Economic Affairs Gary Olivar says of the sustained criticism of the President, her travels, and the meals:
“These are people overly concerned with delicadeza. Other things are more important to her.”
Gary Olivar also responded to question concerning the President’s travel expenses by saying that while the Commission on Audit had released figures, they had their own Department of Budget and Management Figures that not only are much less, but reflect a savings from the budgeted amount. Therefore, there should be a process to resolve the conflicting figures:
But Gary Olivar, Arroyo’s presidential spokesman on economic affairs, disputed Guingona’s claims.
He explained that based on an advisory of the Department of Budget and Management (DBM) in 2008, the president only spent P233 million for foreign trips, around P11 million less than the actual travel budget of P244.6 million.
“What we have is a difference of numbers between what is advised by the DBM and what the COA [Commission on Audit] report is alleged to have stated,” he said.
He also said that the Palace did not use contingent funds to augment Arroyo’s travel expenses, claiming that no releases were made by the DBM in 2008 from the contingent fund for these expenditures.
Olivar said the law allows the Office of the President to exceed its budget for foreign travel. He cited Section 62 of the 2008 GAA, which allows agencies to utilize their savings under the Maintenance and Operating Expenses even without prior approval by the DBM.
Deputy presidential spokesman for economic affairs Gary Olivar said the Palace respects the plan of some senators but said it is puzzling because details of her trips are open to the public.
He said the Commission on Audit (COA) has offices in various government agencies and its records are available for scrutiny.
“So people who want information on auditable activities and transactions can just go to the COA and go through the process of asking for information and people can also be assured that if anything wrong happens, COA would do its job that’s why COA is there in the first place,” Olivar told a news briefing.
Meanwhile, Quezon Rep. Danilo Suarez confirmed yesterday that President Arroyo and her large entourage had another expensive dinner in New York City other than the controversial $20,000 meal at the posh Le Cirque French restaurant.
“Yes, there was a second dinner in New York. But I was not there. I had other engagements,” he said.
He could not say where it was exactly or how much the presidential entourage paid.
1. Having apparently told ABS-CBN that he’d invited the President to dinner, but that his invitation had been declined, he now said what happened was, he’d invited the President to Morton’s but the place was full, and so the presidential party ended up at Bobby Van’s:
“I think some of the congressmen and some senators were there when I said, ‘Ma’am, if you have some free time, I would like to invite you and the group to Morton’s,’” he said.
But Morton’s Steakhouse was closed, so the group settled for Bobby Van’s.
2. Instead of personally paying the bill as he’d claimed in his 2nd version of the steakhouse alibi (after initially simply confirming the dinner had taken place, but saying he didn’t know who’d paid), he now presented a 3rd version more in keeping with the Washington Post report:
The woman reported by the Washington Post as having paid the $15,000 bill in cash was a member of the Presidential Management Staff (PMS), Suarez said.
“I don’t want the Americans to think that I paid for the dinner. Besides, why should they care as to who paid [for the dinner]?”
He added: “It was the PMS who made the arrangement.
“What I told them was, ‘Show me the receipt and I’ll give you the money.’ We did it discreetly.
Why he wouldn’t want the Americans to think he paid for dinner, he didn’t explain.
3. He said he originally wanted to pay by credit card, feared he’d exceed his limit, so opted for cash -which he’d been authorized to bring out of the country by the Central Bank.
So at this point, the Washington alibi has returned to trying to adhere to the Washington Post’s details. While the New york alibi is expanding to begin paving the way to include any further revelations that might emerge from leaks like the supposed SMS from a consulate staffer.
9:16 PM In NY consul says banquet story inaccurate, Philippine Consul-General Cecille Rebong, who used to be the President’s Palace protocol person, is said to have sent an August 14 report to the Press Secretary quoting a Filipino-American paper’s debunking the New York Post story:
Rebong told Remonde that Manny Caballero, writer of the Filipino Reporter, had interviewed Le Cirque’s contact manager Mario Wainer and wrote a story about the dinner that came out in the paper’s August 14-21 issue.
In the story, “Mr. Wainer was quoted as saying `It’s a lie’ and `It’s far from the truth,” Rebong said, adding that Wainer said Arroyo and her entourage “had dinner here like everyone else.”
Remonde refused to answer follow-up questions.
Rebong furnished him a copy of Caballero’s story, and vouched for the credibility of the weekly, Remonde said.
“Let the document speak for itself,” Remonde said, when asked if Malacañang was standing by the document.
Philippine Consul General in New York Cecilia Rebong disclosed that the August 14 to 21, 2009 issue of the Filipino Reporter in New York reported that the $20,000 dinner tab controversy is a “lie,” based on an interview with Le Cirque contact manager Mario Wainer.
Wainer was quoted as saying, “it’s a lie” and “it’s far from the truth.” He said: “President Arroyo and her group had dinner here (Le Cirque) just like everyone else.”
“The $20,000 dinner tab was not true,” Rebong also said.
She added: “The article said the Filipino Reporter suggested to Mr. Wainer ‘that in the light of conflicting claims in Manila and by critics of Mrs. Arroyo and by the New York Post, on one hand, and the President’s men, on the other, perhaps, Le Cirque should issue a statement to clarify the issue.’ However, Mr. Wainer replied that we (Le Cirque) do not involve ourselves in politics.”
The online edition of The Filipino Reporter was last updated June 19-25, 2009. Manny Caballero, columnist, doesn’t have a new column on the topic. However, the blog Memypoliticsandmyworld publishes what may be the article in question.
An article in The Negros Chronicle categorically denies that any member of the media covering the President’s visit ate either in Bobby Van’s or Le Cirque.
The article quotes Mario Wainer, contact manager of Le Cirque, as saying, “It’s a lie, it’s far from the truth,” adding, “President Arroyo and her group had dinner here just like everyone else.”
When asked “whether the mention of $20,000 dinner tab was accurate,” Wainer “became furious and said it was not true.” His response to Manny Caballero’s question suggests that the response was a denial of the theoretical breakdown being a facsimile of the bill; because Wainer on the other hand, refused to categorically confirm or deny the actual amount spent:
“He said he was not supposed to reveal any figure for the customer’s privacy but the New York Post story was false.” But then, false how?
1. The President was there with a small instead of a large entourage? (See August 9; this would be in keeping with Remonde’s original assertion that only 15-20 people were at the dinner; but it makes the per-person bill close to $1,000 a head)
2. The President did not order several bottles of very expensive wine, pushing the dinner tab to $20,000? But if the tab was not $20,000 was it lower? Or higher? Remonde, Suarez, etc. have never categorically disputed the supposed amount: if that wasn’t the amount why were they unwilling to categorically deny it?
So the denial raises even more questions. If you check the Filipino Reporter story, it was published on August 14, therefore, written on or before then; and it was only on August 14 that the Philippine media sorted out it had been incorrectly reporting my theoretical computation as the actual bill.
In other words, Wainer was responding exactly as Remonde did –by saying the supposed bill couldn’t be real, because, indeed, the bill being alleged as real was not real at all.
“News reports have reached the Philippine Consulate General in New York insinuating that our funds were used to pay for expenses related to the recent official visit of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo to New York and that this arrangement would cause possible delay in the payment of salaries of consulate personnel. News also said that somebody from the consulate general relayed this information to some media agencies in Manila,” she said.
“I categorically state that these reports are not true. The funds allocated by the Department of Foreign Affairs to the consulate general in New York are never used to pay for expenses related to official/working visits of the President. The consulate funds were not used to pay for hotel accommodation, transportation, meals, or any expenses related to the recent New York visit of the President. More importantly, nobody from the consulate in New York contacted any media agency in Manila about this matter and therefore, all these allegations supposedly coming from a consulate staff are false.”
Epilogue
As for high society, which took much of my time in the past, I must say that its days are over. Finished. Society, as we knew it in the 1950’s till the 1980’s is dead. It has been killed by new contending forces and has sunk without a trace. The rise of new classes, a drastic change in public ideology and the social contract, the expanding economy have done it in. It’s almost as if there had been a revolution. The detritus is the new cafe and club society we see parlayed and hyped up in the lifestyle sections of the press today.
— Chito Madrigal Collantes, In her autobiography, Picture Me
Machiavelli advised that the appearance of piety is politically more important than piety itself. In a society that puts a premium on social conventions, conforming to those conventions is more important than whether anyone involved actually feels anything about the event concerned. But the broader debate concerns changing definitions of acceptable official behavior.
This is the continuing political dilemma the President faces as a result of the Le Cirque dinner story. And that’s only one story that actually became story primarily because of the bill involved. The President has been fortunate in that details haven’t been leaked concerning other dinners or lunches she had while in New York, because as it is, she’s been given some slack in some quarters on the belief she only had one fancy dinner to mark her wedding anniversary. This is because others considered the dinner inappropriate considering the President herself had enjoined her countrymen to mourn Cory’s passing. The President’s husband did tell the press, after their wedding anniversary Mass, that they had a lunch lined up.
What then, is the moral, such as it is, of the tale? In terms of political communication, only that days of furious crisis management by the Palace have failed to debunk the original assertions of the New York Post:
1. A wedding anniversary dinner took place on July 31 (not on August 2, the actual anniversary) at Le Cirque (there were other anniversary-related meals on August 2 itself);
2. The President was accompanied by “a large entourage” to “enjoy the good life”;
3. The President ordered several bottles of very expensive wine;
4. The dinner tab was $20,000.
So that, just when the Palace thought it had turned the tables on the Philippine media, the Washington Post reports a $15,000 steakhouse dinner in Washington DC.
Which has opened up another can of worms -and there’s nine years’ worth of those cans ready to burst open, it seems. Though Carmen Pedrosa thinks Gloria is no Imelda.
(above: Philippines Free Press editorial circa Cory’s return from her US visit in 1987)
The Philippine Daily Inquirer marked Cory Aquino’s passing with the editorial Our eternal flame, our Cory and marks her burial today with the editorial, ‘Paalam’; today’s entry is this initial survey of some of the most important -because meaningful- commentaries to emerge in the wake of Cory Aquino’s passing, interspersed with some initial thoughts on what these summations represent. In addition to those linked below, among the essential readings to emerge over the past days are entries in Torn & Frayed in Manila and in village idiot savant; a humorous vignette from Ambeth Ocampo; and finally, Cory herself, by means of the transcript of Cory Aquino’s last interview with Jessica Soho.
I have fallen in love with the same woman three times; In a day spanning 19 years of tearful joys and joyful tears.
IF Ninoy fell in love with Cory three times, the country fell in love with her thrice: as a widow in 1983, as a candidate for president in 1986, as an icon of democracy in 2009 –so said Fr. Manoling Francisco, the Jesuit, during the necrological rites the evening before Cory Aquino was finally laid to rest.
Of that love affair, it must be said in addition that all three times involved Cory as conscience of a country: and that the love affair was stormy in its own way and that there were periods of separation.
Writing twenty-three years apart, the late Teodoro M. Locsin Sr. and Eric Gamalinda both saw the same thing. A castrated country that needed Cory to restore its manhood.
Locsin had written of Cory, in a Philippines Free Press editorial dated February 7, 1986,
There has never been anything like it in Philippine history: “a woman telling the machos of business and industry to do what she is doing, to stand up to the injustices against which they have been content merely to complain. That the economy is being ruined, has been ruined, from which they happily drew so much profit in the past; that the system under which they prospered is in dire danger of total collapse and eventual replacement by one that would have no place for them is evident to them. Free enterprise, that holy of holiest in their minds, is doomed by crony capitalism. And one with any sense of morality, of human right and dignity, can only recoil from government by, for, and of one man clearly determined to maintain his rule at whatever cost to the nation. But it took a woman to do what a man, or men, should have been doing: Fight! Being a man was sadly inadequate. One had to be something else. Be a woman — like her! Like Cory.
Eric Gamalinda, writing in his eponymous blog on August 1, made a similar observation of Cory’s doing the machos one better:
We wanted Cory Aquino to be strong so we could remain passive. We wanted her to save us so we could refuse to save ourselves. She was there so we could continue the infantile neurosis that has always sustained the Philippines’ need for a ‘guiding’ power – God or a dictator, choose your daddy – and has always justified its corruption and poverty. She was, as so many predicted during the heyday of the people power revolution, our Joan of Arc. We knew we would burn her for allowing us to corrupt the vision we wanted her to sustain. We forgot so soon that she had achieved what no man in our supremely machismo-obsessed country had done – to get rid of the Marcoses. For that alone, we should be grateful. If the Philippines never rose from the ‘long nightmare’ after she took over the presidency, we have no one to blame but ourselves.”
If Locsin, at the time Cory Aquino was on the threshold of power, and Gamalinda, at a point when people began penning summations of her life, could look at Cory from the perspective of a nation that had lost its manhood, castrated, so to speak, by the dictatorship, in contrast to their perhaps hypermasculine approach three women’s observations –indeed, their own struggles, at the end of Cory’s life, to attempt to sum up the meaning of her public life from her becoming a widow to her passing- make for a composite that accurately gauges the public reaction to Cory’s death.
Sheila Coronel, writing for the online news magazine The Asia Sentinel, tried to evoke the country’s –and Cory’s- commingled suffering in 1983 and the resulting common cause in 1986. Recalling Cory’s decision to run for president against the dictator, Coronel recounted Cory,
In a voice that betrayed no emotion… told the large crowds that had gathered to see her [in 1985] that [in 1983] she had asked to be left alone with her husband’s body. ‘Ninoy,’ she told him, ‘itutuloy ko ang laban mo (I will continue your fight).
Coronel mused,
Those who did not live through the 1980s will find all this too melodramatic. But the Philippines was a different place then. We were a country ruled by a dying dictator being kept alive by frantic doctors and dialysis machines behind the walls of the highly fortified presidential palace. As Ferdinand Marcos lay on the throes of death, palace factions conspired, the army was restive in the barracks and the air was rife with rumor and intrigue.
Indeed it had been the distinct possibility Marcos was either dying or was in a terminal condition conducive to eyeing his ultimate standing in the history books, that had led Ninoy Aquino to come home in his Quixotic quest to reason with the dictator. The response to Ninoy’s reasonableness was bullets.
And so, as Coronel puts it,
Into this twilight came Cory Aquino. She was the grieving widow of Marcos’s martyr. She had been purified by suffering, her agony mirroring the nation’s. In 1986, she told the crowds that gathered in rapt attention, ‘I am just like you, a victim of Marcos.’ How could any Filipino not be moved?
Though Coronel points out that there would be some, like her, who subsequently remained unconvinced of the miraculous aspect of the national deliverance –and redemption- at Edsa.
Churchill had cautioned his people in the aftermath of the “Miracle of Dunkirk,” that “wars are not won by evacuation”. The agnosticism of those attempting to sum up Cory’s life and determine its ultimate meaning must therefore ultimately stand mute and abashed before Cory’s unshakeable belief in the miraculous aspect of Edsa resulting in national deliverance because peaceful –and made possible, as a victory, by an evacuation –not of brave soldiers from an entrapment seemingly impossible to escape, as the British in Dunkirk, but of am ailing, drug-addled dictator and his family from their antiseptic palace to embittered exile in Hawaii.
The difficulty with Edsa as National Deliverance extends not merely to the agnostic who acknowledge incomprehension in the face of miracles, but outright skepticism and hostility from those whose faith is of the incongruous kind anchored in historical materialism. For as columnist Manuel Buencamino, writing on the day Cory was buried wrote in The Business Mirror, what the Filipino people gathered at Edsa did was not just to “snatch victory from the jaws of defeat,” as Cory herself put it in her famous speech to the US Congress. What Filipinos did was slay dogma:
In 1986, the Filipino people, inspired and emboldened by the sincerity and courage of Corazon Aquino, took back the democracy that was taken away from them in 1972. Armed only with their faith and a firm belief in their capability to decide their own future, they faced down tanks.?
Their valor and audacity proved that Mao’s famous adage on power was just another lie foisted by oppressors. Edsa established, once and for all, that power comes not from the barrel of a gun but from the hearts of the people.
Dissent to this and similar verdicts, of non-violence as the dominant political discourse since Ninoy’s martyrdom, was registered with some vehemence at first, until it became obvious that the country had once more united in defense of Cory and was quite prepared to stare down any rumblings of either Marcosian machismo or Agitprop from the other extremity of the political spectrum –at which point it became more muted. At the heart of the big push that end up faltering, was the re-assertion of Cory as irredeemable Class Enemy, and of what was put in place at Edsa as “mere” restoration and indeed, betrayal.
In other words, at the end of Cory’s life came a renewed effort to dismiss her along either that of Marcos’ false bravado or according to the doctrines of a movement that would have preferred Cory a martyr because, like Ninoy, it would have saved the cost of bullets for liquidating two more class enemies.
But as journalist Malou Mangahas wrote in the blog of the Philippine Center for Investigative Journalism,
The Cory years launched a whole new regime of good programs that by quality and quantity surpass the combined achievements of her three successors.
The three post-EDSA presidents after Cory - Fidel V. Ramos, Joseph E. Estrada, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo - practically just had to breeze through the presidency all because Cory had done most of the work for them. And yet, by all accounts, they built less and destroyed more of what Cory had set out to do for the nation. And yes, they probably did more bad than all the good and not-so-good things that Cory did.
Mangahas briskly recounts what these achievements were:
Apart from a new Constitution, Cory gave the nation groundbreaking policies and reforms, notably the Presidential Commission on Good Government, the Commission on Human Rights, the Local Government Code, the Family Code, the Administrative Code, the Expanded Value-Added Tax, the Generics Act, the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program, the National Youth Commission, and a bounty of laws for mothers, children, rebel-returnees, and indigenous communities.
Mangahas continued,
As well, Cory freed political prisoners, forged peace with rebels, and nursed to life the communities struck down by the biggest disasters in recent Philippine history (the 1990 earthquake and the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in1991).
And it is from Carla Montemayor, in a commentary published online for the GMA Network’s online news outfit, that the closing summation comes. Fr. Francisco discreetly didn’t mention that the Cory in between her 1986 incarnation as challenger, and vanquisher, of the dictator, and her apotheosis, after her passing, as a kind of mediatrix and patroness of democracy in 2009 – was a Cory whose popularity ebbed and more often than not, waned, so that, as she ended up calling each one of her successors to task, with varying (and decreasing) levels of success, her intrinsic worth came increasingly into question, particularly by the political class.
Montemayor, looking at Cory –whether idolized or contemptuously referred to as a has-been- pointed out that
In Cory we saw how each decision had a moral quality to it; that she tried, even in the most ambiguous of predicaments, to determine what was right and wrong, what was just and unjust. It says a lot about the state of our society that one has to be heroic just to stay decent.
And it is this that is the uncontestable verdict: of a woman who personified heroic virtues –much to the chagrin of enemies old and new; and in contrast to a country that, in paying final tribute to her redeemed itself once more, purging itself of cynicism at least for the five days between Cory’s passing and her burial.
The buzz started last night with a Manila Bulletin article on the President checking into the Asian Hospital in Alabang for some cosmetic procedures. Take a look at a screencap of the article as it appeared from last night to about 1 pm today; and see Jessica Zafra’s opinion that it’s a hoax. However, the story hasn’t been taken down, though slightly modified, and can still be seen on the Manila Bulletin website: see GMA medical checkup OK. In the Inquirer, officialdom expressed shock, shock, at the news of breast implants, etc. for the President:
“What? Silicon implants? That’s the first time I heard about that,” Secretary Gabriel Claudio said in a phone interview.
“No way; I just heard that from you. I thought you were joking.”
Claudio said that he had “absolutely no information” about Ms Arroyo’s breast implant replacement, adding he was not even aware that she had an implant in the first place.
In his column today, Jarius Bondoc elaborates further:
The President has been suffering dysfunctional bleeding, likely due to polyps or myoma in the uterus. She had first walked into the hospital one dawn in 2008 for D&C (dilation and curettage) and left at dusk. News then was that she had an executive check. She’s had three follow-ups this year, the last in June. Menopause is inducing abnormal tissue growth and hormonal imbalance, a source said.
Wednesday dawn Arroyo checked in again — for less serious causes. She needed mammoplastic repair of leaking breast implants done in the ’80s. Occasion too to have doctors take out an inguinal cyst (in the groin), and laser off extra hair growth in that area and the armpits. Though a bit groggy, Arroyo was set to check out yesterday afternoon.
Article VII, Section 12 of the Constitution directs that
In case of serious illness of the President, the public shall be informed of the state of his health. The members of the Cabinet in charge of national security and foreign relations and the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces of the Philippines, shall not be denied access to the President during such illness.
Previous to this, there was much speculation on the condition of the President’s liver, and the causes of her fluctuating weight; one UP student even claimed photographic evidence that President had cosmetic surgery on her nose.
Going into the the convening of the Constitutional Convention in 1971, the Philippines Free Press published this editorial cartoon, to express skepticism about the idea that constitutions are some sort of magic bullet to solve the country’s problems.
Attitudes in official circles haven’t changed, although the public, whether from conviction, past traumas, or ignorance, has consistently registered strong objections to the idea of constitutional amendments.
Joel Rocamora recently put together this chart of what the possibilities are, vis-a-vis a possible effort to pursue amendments before 2010.
For the purposes of this entry, the chart above is relevant only in that it brings up the possibility of a constitutional plebiscite, and that brings up the question of past plebiscites, and what they had to say about the eras in which those plebiscites were conducted.
With this in mind, I put together this chart, which lists the plebiscites on constitutional amendments that took place from 1935 to 1987. As a kind of frame of reference, I’ve also included similar data concerning presidential elections that took place soon before or after these plebiscites. And then, the figures, when available, for total registered voters and the figures for our national population as a whole.
A note on sources: aside from various sources I’ll link to below, the main sources for the information above were J. Ralston Hayden’s The Philippines: A study in national development (Arno Press, 1972) and Dapen Liang’s Philippine Parties and Politics: A Historical Study of National Experience in Democracy (Gladstone, 1971).
I’d like to review our national experience with constitutional plebiscites, as defined by our current, and rather well-developed and fairly extensive, constitutional evolution since 1935, when the Philippine state as we pretty much know it today was finally fleshed out.
In broad strokes, the various proposals to amend the constitution can be described as either evolutionary, that is, to reform and improve the existing setup, or to make as clean a break with the previous constitutional order as possible or mark a distinct new chapter in our national life by means of promulgating a new constitution.
Proposals of an evolutionary nature usually came from officialdom, representing a combination of statesmanship or political self-interest; proposals of a revolutionary nature generally responded to a public clamor for changes or public opposition to officially-proposed changes; there is the curious case of officialdom hitting a wall in terms of public opinion and changing all the rules as a result, during martial law, too.
There are some trends that affected the ability of officialdom to propose changes, and the responsiveness of the public. The two most important, to my mind, was the acceleration of the expansion of the electorate that took place after 1935; and, a contemporary development, innovations in evaluating and reporting public opinion beyond the actual results of elections.
Only 104,966 Filipinos or 1.15 percent of the total population was qualified to vote in the 1907 elections. Later, the 1916 Jones Act extended voting rights to all males literate in any native language and who could also fulfill the property requirements already in place.This change brought the number of registered voters in the colony to a mere 9 percent of the entire population, according to Hayden, or only 7 percent in 1919 according to Simbulan. With the promulgation of the 1935 Commonwealth Constitution the property restrictions were dropped, but literacy and gender requirements were retained. The size of the electorate is said to have reached only 11 percent by 1935. Four years later, only the literacy requirement remained, but only 48 percent of the population over the age of 10 in the regular christianized provinces could read or write in 1939.
The first truly nationwide straw vote on a large scale ever conducted in the Philippines was the Free Press poll on the Hare-Hawes-Cutting law, conducted in February and March of 1933. On that occasion, 10,000 ballots were mailed out and 65 percent of them were returned. Of the votes recorded, 56 percent opposed the Hare-Hawes-Cutting law. The first Free Press straw vote had accurately reflected public opinion.
Then, in August and September of 1937, shortly after President Quezon returned from Washington where he had flirted with the idea of independence in 1939, the Free Press sent out 12,500 ballots asking whether the people favored or opposed shortening the transition period. In this case, 67 percent of the ballots were returned. There was some raising of eyebrows when the final result showed 55 percent opposing and only 45 percent favoring the shortening of the transition period. Yet subsequent events showed that the Free Press poll had once more mirrored public opinion. Today virtually no one favors a shorter transition period, and quicker independence would not be accepted in the Philippines unless it were accompanied by substantial economic concessions.
“Only a few days ago,” argued Gullas, “a straw vote conducted by the FREE PRESS, a non-partisan and widely read weekly in the Philippines was concluded. The result was against reelection. Of course, it is not an absolute indication of how the public will vote. But it clearly shows which way the wind blows. It is a barometer of the sentiment of the people. Like a finger on the pulse, it counted, as it were, the heartbeats of the nation.”
If you look at the chart above, you’ll notice that after 1935, the electorate expanded substantially, so that in a mere five years, it basically doubled. You will also see, however, the relatively low participation both in plebiscites and elections by those registered to vote (particularly by today’s standards, but remarked on even by contemporary observers). Contemporary observers attributed this mainly to the predictable outcome of elections, because of the essentially one-party nature of politics at the time, and the decades-long dominance of national leaders. Since the electorate was still rather limited during the prewar period, it also suggests greater cohesion between the electorate and their leaders; having more in common, there was much less to be controversial enough to excite the electorate and drive them to the polls.
World War II and the rise of a new generation of leaders during that time changed that; and then population growth accelerated to the extent that within twenty years after the end of the war, the electorate basically tripled; and in the twenty years of the Marcos administration the electorate then basically doubled; and since the fall of Marcos, the electorate has nearly doubled again.
From 1935 to the present, the population has quintupled; and the electorate, which was 45,029,443 in 2007, has increased twenty-eightfold in the same period. This is a massive increase that the political class, much as it is almost unrecognizable today from the one in power in the 1930s (decimated by the influx of middle class challengers in the 1950s and 1960s, and guerrillas, warlords, and former rebels in the same period and to date), has had great difficulty coping with. One answer has been to engage in gerrymandering, atomizing the constituencies to keep them manageable; another, has been to learn mass media methods, as well as wholesale fraud instead of the traditional retail kind; and another has been to propose revising the rules of the political game by means of constitutional amendments.
But as a percentage of the public, and of the electorate, I wonder if even if it turns out to be a bigger per capita population of politicians than, say, in the 1970s or 1930s, and even if the political class has to be much larger today if only because the population is much larger today, the political class isn’t even more isolated today than it was during past periods of constitutional experimentation.
Put another way, even if the political map divides the country into an ever-increasing number of provinces and cities, all of which have their ruling families, and all of whom represent a national distribution of politicians, from a national point of view, however these politicians cobble together national coalitions, the demographics have become so lopsided that whenever acting in national terms, the electorate by its national composition, is almost irredeemably at odds with whatever it is the political class decides within its own ranks.
Simply put: whatever the political class, composed of politicians from all the provinces and cities of the country want, the chances are high that their desires are not in keeping with what the national electorate will want. And that’s because, for all intents and purposes, the national electorate is heavily skewed, by force of numbers, towards what the electorate in the National Capitol Region and Regions III and IV-A want.
Consider this NSCB Chart from 2007:
The chart shows registered voters, distributed regionally. Consider the national, and not local, political leanings of the NCR and Region IV-A, and how those opinions would be reflected in any national undertaking such as a presidential election or a constitutional plebiscite.
I’ve tackled what I believe are required for success in proposing constitutional amendments in my November 26, 2008 entry, “The worm within“; you may want to review that.
But this time, here is a rundown of the dates, the issues, and outcomes of past constitutional plebiscites.
May 14, 1935: Ratification of the 1935 Constitution
1,213,046 YES
44,963 NO
I cannot find figures on the number of registered voters, nationally. This was actually the first nationwide vote the country had, in which the nation voted as such and not just for provincial or regional leaders.
I can’t say if there was any change in the four months between the plebiscite on the constitution and the first national presidential elections held that September; but what observers did point out was that only slightly over half of the electorate bothered to vote. Most observers commented that this was because the outcome was practically predetermined. It is remarkable that more people seemed to have participated in the plebiscite on the Constitution than in the presidential election (however, it also seems to have been rainy in many areas during the September election, then as now, possibly lowering turnout).
A possible reason for higher turnout was that the plebiscite on the constitution was also, in a sense, a plebiscite on independence (see Why they voted against the constitution, June 1, 1935). Hence the very lopsided result in favor of the new constitution.
April 30, 1937: Women asked if they wanted suffrage
This was an unusual plebiscite, in that the voting was restricted to women, only, who were asked if they wanted suffrage for themselves. The suffragette movement had been active from the 1920s and particularly in the early 1930s so women’s groups were extremely well organized to get out the vote.
447,725 Affirmative
44,307 Negative
(300,000 affirmative votes required for approval.)
October 24, 1939: Plebiscite on Economic Adjustment
This is perhaps the least well-known of all our constitutional plebiscites. See Primer on the plebiscite, October 21, 1939 for a summary of the issue.
1,393,453 FOR
49,633 AGAINST
Hayden, note 53 pp. 869-870, summarizes the whole thing as Amendments to the Tydings-McDuffie Act by Public Act No. 300, 76th Congress, August 7, 1939; Amendments to “Ordinance Appended to the Constitution of the Philippines,” proposed by Resolution No. 39, adopted September 15, 1939, ratified October 24, 1939. Per Resolution 53, Second National Assembly, Third Special Session, November 3, 1939.
June 18, 1940: Presidential re-election; Senate elected at large; creation of Comelec
See United behind Quezon, July 15, 1939 for the maneuvering from 1935-1939; essentially practically the whole prewar period was used up by the debates on the issues of presidential re-election and the restoration of the Senate (unicameralism had won in the Constitutional Convention, not because the majority of delegates actually preferred it, but because opinion between the bicameralists was divided on the question of a Senate elected at large or according to senatorial districts); it took another year after that, for the actual campaign to overcome public resistance to the proposed amendments.
Hayden, Note 58 p. 870 gives an insight into the mechanics of the plebiscite:
Commonwealth Act No. 517, April 25, 1940. Proposed amendments published in English and Spanish in three consecutive issues of The Official Gazette, at least twenty days prior to the election; and copies of the amendments in these languages and principal native languages posted and made available for examination in the voting places.
Note 60 provides the official returns of the election of June 18, 1940, on the constitutional amendments proposed:
Question One: Establishment of a bicameral legislature
1,043,712 FOR
275,184 AGAINST
Question Two: Presidential and Vice-Presidential terms (from six years, no re-election, to four years with one re-election)
1,072,039 FOR
240,632 AGAINST
Question Three: Commission on Elections (creation of)
1,017,606 FOR
287,923 AGAINST
The first elections under the amended 1935 Constitution were held in November, 1941, but before the new Congress could convene, World War II broke out.
March 11, 1947: The Parity Amendment
On the proposed Parity Amendment to the Constitution:
After Parity, proposals began to be made for additional amendments to the Constitution, including revisiting the question of the form of government; most notably, because of their reputation as political thinkers and the prominent role they’d played in framing the 1935 Constitution, by Jose P. Laurel and Claro M. Recto in the 1950s and by President Macapagal during his incumbency.
During this period, the electorate greatly expanded, the control of the old political leaders and their party machines began to be disrupted and to decline; and public opinion began to matter more and more,Sidel, etc., Philippine Politics and Society in the Twentieth Century, pp.29-30 note 12, points out a demographic change of significance, too, considering the logistical aspect of any administration or official-initiated proposal for constitutional changes:
The actual number of voters almost doubled between 1951 and 1969 (from 4,391,109 in 1951 to 8,060,465 in 1969). Interestingly the number of registered voters showed an even greater increase from 4,754,307 in 1951 to 10,300,898 in 1969, which points to a dramatically widening gap between registered and actual voters.
November 14,1967: Increasing representatives; Members of Congress to sit in Convention
On March 16, 1967, the Senate and the House of Representatives passed a Joint Resolution that proposed constitutional amendments. Subsequently, the Congress passed Republic Act No. 4913, providing that the amendments to the Constitution proposed be submitted at the general elections to be held on November 14, 1967.
The referendum was on the amendment to Article VI, Section 5 and 16 of the 1935 Constitution. The proposed plebiscite was apparently challenged in the Supreme Court; it declined to intervene. The plebiscite is under-reported but was a highly significant one, in that it was the first and only time, plebiscite questions resulted in a rejection by the electorate.
Question One: Increasing number of congressmen from 120 to 180
18% FOR
82% AGAINST
Question Two: Allowing members of Congress to serve in the coming Constitutional Convention without forfeiting their seats.
16.5% FOR
83.5% AGAINST
Details are slim. All I’ve found is a footnote in Liang, citing Nick Joaquin, March 16, 1968:
“Of the 65 provinces, 62 rejected both issues; of the 50 chartered cities, 44 voted ‘no’ as against 2 voted ‘yes’.”
The immediate outcome of the rejection of Congress’ proposals was Republic Act No. 6132, prohibiting any political party and public officer from being represented in the Constitutional Convention, which was adopted in reaction to public opinion. See my April 27, 2009 column The elimination of public opinion for Raul Manglapus’ summary of events and the political implications of the plebiscite defeat:
According to Manglapus, politicians began to consider abolishing the [president’s] four-year term (with one possible re-election for another term) in 1949, because of the controversial elections of that year. By the 1960s, legislators were also keenly interested in two other Constitution-related proposals: first, that the membership of the House should be increased; and second, for elections to be synchronized to save time and money.
In 1967, fulfilling the provisions of the 1935 Constitution, Congress began sitting in joint session to consider these proposals, but no consensus could be reached on restoring a single six-year presidential term and on synchronized elections; there was agreement, though, to increase the number of representatives.
At which point, according to Manglapus, “someone said, ‘Since we cannot agree and we cannot keep on meeting in joint sessions because the public will demand that we cease this futile exercise, let us call a Convention.’”
But, Manglapus added, “the intention of course was that the Congressmen and the Senators were to control the Convention. And therefore when somebody said, ‘Let us call a Convention, anyway we can all be members of that Convention and we can control it,’ some other members of the House said ‘We cannot because we are inhibited by the present Constitution.’”
Clever colleagues proposed a solution: “All we have to do is amend the present Constitution at the same time that we pass the increase of seats in the House. We will say ‘However, a senator or congressman may be a delegate to the Constitutional Convention.’”
The problem was that any amendment had to be submitted to the people; Manglapus related that public opinion was disgusted with such a self-serving proposal, the result being “84 percent of them said ‘no.’ And the next morning the Senators and Congressmen woke up to find they had created a frankenstein monster. They had called a Constitutional Convention and they were not going to control it. And so they began to make noises that there was no need for the Convention, that [it] would be expensive… [and] cheaper and more convenient for the Senators and Congressmen to resume their work as a constituent assembly.”
Public opinion forced Congress to pass a Constitutional Convention Act, according to Manglapus, and deprived the political professionals of the fruits of victory twice over.
As I pointed out, as things turned out, robbing the political class of control over the 1971 Convention may have predisposed it to accepting Marcos’ solution: to force the Convention to accept his own draft, while ensuring general compliance by offering delegates seats in a new parliament on condition they approved Marcos’ draft.
1973-1984: The New Society Plebiscites
As for the Marcos “plebiscites” from 1973 to 1984, they were conducted in a manner entirely different from the 1935-1967 plebiscites and that held in 1987. So they are not part of a piece. What Marcos was trying to capitalize on was the familiarity of the public with referenda as a democratic process.
Marcos’s political problem was that his 1969 term expired on December 30, 1973; and that, ideally, the extinction of the 1935 Constitution should be accomplished by means of the process set out in it. He seems to have been concerned that the Supreme Court might become the focus of resistance to his plans, as cases challenging martial law began to clog the court’s docket. An additional problem arose, when some senators tried to organize a ruckus in Congress, in time for the 1973 Regular Session scheduled to begin on January 22, 1973.
The Constitutional Convention had approved a draft acceptable to President Marcos in late 1972 and presented it to him, formally, on December 1, 1972; he’d accordingly issued a proclamation calling for a plebiscite to ratify or reject the new Constitution.
It seems that Marcos got wind of the possibility public opinion had swung against ratification. So if he held a plebiscite, he might lose; and win or lose, Congress or at least the Senate if not the House, seemed hell-bent on challenging martial law when it resumed session on January 22; that challenge, among other things, might stiffen the spine of the Supreme Court. So something had to be done before January 22.
This concern is reflected in his December 23, 1972 announcement postponing the plebiscite; statements in December 29 in the state-controlled media warning of a “constitutional crisis” if senators insisted on convening in January, 1973; then, his decree creating Barangay Assemblies on January 5; then, having created a new mechanism, his January 7 order stating that the plebiscite originally scheduled for January 15 might be held on February 19 or March 15 as alternate dates; in other words, he postponed the only option, a plebiscite, to create two tracks, the barangay or citizens’ assembly and plebiscite paths.
Prior to martial law, Marcos had been admiringly described by his critics as engaging in Ju-Jitsu, and he handled the possibility that Congress would convene, under the provisions of the 1935 Constitution, and the difficulty represented by a plebiscite in the old manner leading to the rejection of the new constitution, by scrapping the rules.
He lowered the voting age from 18 to15 and illiterates were allowed to vote. From January 10 to 15, a series of “citizens’ assemblies” were held, in lieu of a plebiscite in the manner specified by the 1935 Constitution. The “results” of the January 10-15, 1973 were:
Question One: Whether to adopt the proposed (1973) Constitution:
14,976,561 (90.67%) Yes
743,869 (9.33%) No
Question Two: Whether the public still wanted a plebiscite to be called to ratify the Constitution:
14,298,814 No
With total valid votes at 15,720,430 (compare this figure with the 1967 plebiscite and 1969 presidential election figures; the Supreme Court itself, in its decision on the “ratification” of the 1973 Constitution, mentioned “the total number of registered voters 21 years of age or over in the entire Philippines, available in January 1973, was less than 12 million”: this suggests the boost in voting numbers provided by relaxing voting requirements such as age or literacy; except that Marcos, as a shrewd and self-confident strategist, didn’t rely on subordinates to scrounge around for a “will I win by 1 million” margin, but rather, created an infintely safer margin for himself of nearly 3 million votes!).
Two days later (January 17), President Marcos certified that the new constitution had been ratified. And then, he padlocked Congress, which he argued, was now defunct. All that was left was for the Supreme Court to declare the process valid. This, the Supreme Court did in Javellana v. Executive Secretary on March 31, 1973. Chief Justice Concepcion wrote the decision, stated his objections, and retired ahead of schedule in muted protest.
Marcos as a political strategist and tactician can be seen in his own diary entries, showing how in 1972, on September 24 (the day after he proclaimed martial law) he bluntly warned the Supreme Court that any effort to question his proclamation might provoke him into proclaiming a revolutionary government, which would mean shutting down the Supreme Court; September 26 (or three days after he proclaimed martial law) he was still telling subordinates that Congress and the Constitutional Convention would be untouched; and in 1973: January 13 (marshaling support among allies for his own draft of the proposed new constitution was what was going to be “ratified”), on January 23, he once again reviewed the option of simply proclaiming a revolutionary government; January 24 (citizen’s assemblies instead of a secret ballot in a plebiscite), on January 27, expressing satisfaction with how everyone has fallen in line, and contemptuously noting the Justices of the Supreme Court seemed inclined to fall in line too, as long as he reassured them they could keep their jobs. And so, once success had been achieved, how the plebiscite route became his favored option for validating his rule; see May 5 and July 5-6.
And his self-satisfaction a year after proclaiming martial law, see September 22.
For my purposes, it’s not relevant to rehash the Marcos plebiscites which you can find in Wikipedia.
February 2, 1987: Ratification of the 1987 Constitution
The results were as follows:
17,059,495 (76.37%) Yes
5,058,714 (26.65%) No
That percentage, if you look at the surveys, has only dipped by about 10%; public opposition for amendments, and therefore a tacit endorsement of the 1987 Charter, has been fairly consistent at around 66% over the past eight years or so. Considering the conventional wisdom that people have generally been disappointed over things have turned out since 1986, this is a remarkably high retention of support for the Charter.
“Hope,” said Gandalf in the film, “is kindled.” Last night, the media basically ignored the goings-on in the House of Representatives.
The question is whether the seven beacon-towers of Gondor have been lit; and if anyone will or should answer the summons.
Lawyers and such have pointed out that besides what they call a “lack of material time,” there are other hurdles that will be difficult to overcome if the scenario in play is amending the Constitution before 2010. Even if the House goes it alone, the most formidable seems to be getting the Senate to pass a law to fund a plebiscite to approve proposed amendments. To get around that you’d have to go down the road of extreme measures like emergency powers, and that seems a stretch.
But I’m operating from a particular point of view, which is that it seems more likely to me that the President and her people are more interested in consolidating their ranks going into 2010, and solving the problem of what happens after 2010, by making whoever is elected president irrelevant.
Among other things, the way to do this is to keep the ruling coalition together, and by so doing, allowing it to maintain its dominance over local governments and the lower House, in the hope it might even eke out a majority in the Senate in 2010. It could then pursue amendments while the President could, say, run for congresswoman in her home province.
If you review Joel Rocamora’s account of the Palace campaign to secure amendments, the problem, then as now, was securing enough votes for Charter Change, considering most representatives are hedging their bets with 2010 in mind. With that in mind, the Palace strategists seem to have gone for an indirect instead of a direct attack, in the hope that one victory will inspire greater confidence among the members of the ruling party.
Of course the first confidence-building measure was to finally graft the Kampi minority onto the Lakas majority, turning the ruling coalition’s biggest chunks into a majority party on its own. Ana Marie Pamintuan today writes that the President pretty swiftly gave the House its marching orders:
If the congressional buzz is accurate, just hours after President Arroyo told the nation that the merger of the two pro-administration parties was the surest sign that the 2010 elections would push through, she instructed the merged party to pursue Charter change at all costs.
Among the reported costs are additional pork barrel allocations for those who would vote for House Resolution 1109, which seeks to convene the chamber into a constituent assembly without Senate participation…
The buzz about the President’s direct hand was reinforced by the fact that her usual congressional retinue of jet-setting sycophants did not join her in her latest trip to South Korea and on to scenic Lithuania.
Instead the jet-setters stayed home… Yesterday they cast their votes for Resolution 1109. What happens next is another story, requiring another generous serving of pork.
Personally, I view what happened from the perspective of confidence-building. The Palace and the House leadership can bask in the warmth of success. That is its own reward. It can also chortle over the way the approval of HR1109 swept other pesky issues off the table, such as extending Land Reform, or the dilemma represented by the Reproductive Health bill, or even the hole the Senate dug for the House in terms of the Right of Reply bill.
Crucial constituencies -owners of large estates, the Catholic hierarchy, the media- won’t have inconvenient legislation to fuss over, and will be less inclined to fight the ruling party frontally. The House’s move, crude as it was, simply isn’t enough to derail the ongoing alliance-building going on among candidates (who are being picked off one by one; Villar and Lacson are in hot water, for example).
Also, the Palace thrives in a situation where its critics are discombobulated by events, and fall all over themselves trying to respond to the latest Palace ploy, which leaves the administration free to hatch new plots.
What happens next is, of course, unknown. I don’t think anyone really knows how this will play out; but, it throws a monkey wrench in the campaigns of the aspiring successors of the President, and their efforts to forge new coalitions to propel them to the presidency. It keeps the administration coalition intact, fat, and happy; and it allows the pros to survey the scene. As baratillo@cubao shrewdly slices and dices it,
1. There will be rallies and demonstrations today? Unfortunately, it might even hurt the cause of the oppositors of the bill if there is a lack of support or a show of numbers. This is further complicated by the weather - monsoon rains and typhoons are party poopers and might prove to be a fatal one for this party planned.
I strongly agree with this statement. Marcos bragged “nothing succeeds like success” and you know the saying that while victory has a hundred fathers, defeat is an orphan.
This brings up something the historian Ruby Paredes brought up some years back in a book review. Concerning our political culture and voting behavior (in the localities, for example where congressmen rule the roost), she wrote,
I know Filipinos who have actually voted, un-coerced, for local criminal “boss” types, simply because they were perceived to be vaguely more powerful than the other candidates, and therefore more likely to win. Perhaps some voters do not want to be on the losing team, and may be attracted to power per se rather than to a candidate’s moral character. Vulgar displays of power… feed deliberately into largely amoral ideas about personal prowess, widespread in Southeast Asian cultures, that can influence social and political organization at a very local level.
In this case, however much the behavior of the ruling party might offend people, there’s also the element of the brazeness of it all resulting in a kind of charisma. On the other hand, every instance of success saps the will of the other side, and increases the chance the public will just go with the official flow rather than buck the trend. Every gathering that ends up perceived as small, composed of the usual predictable groups, only strengthens the impression the administration is all-powerful, and depresses those active against the present dispensation.
2. It will be challenged in the Supreme Court. Where it will be locked in a legal battle. And depending on the mood of the public and what is seen by the SC Justices will determine its outcome. If approve then this gives the Lower House the opportunity with no need of the Senate - not the whole Senate anyway. If not then back to the drawing board.
This is a clear and present danger, one that lawyers like Teddy Te have warned about; here’s his FaceBook message:
[Ted Te] urges all concerned NOT to file cases against the railroaded HB1109 before the Supreme Court. It is a worthless scrap of paper that should not be dignified any further, especially with judicial intervention. Without Senate participation, the House is whistling in the wind. In the meantime, show your outrage at this shamelessness (yes, even for this House).
Though of course even if senators muster unusual self-control and don’t go charging into the receiving room of the Supreme Court, there’s nothing to stop the usual suspects like Oliver Lozano from doing the administration a favor by obligingly filing a case.
Returning to baratillo’s points,
3. It also exposes the strength of the different political parties at present. It will show how strong or weak the alliances are in the Opposition. And more importantly it will and has shown within the Administration forces who are loyal and who are not. A Sitzkrieg for the 2010 elections. Last night and the succeeding days will show who among them will be on the list to be supported.
Again, I strongly agree. As mistress of patronage, the President knows who, exactly, can be relied upon in the months to come.
Now baratillo@cubao also brings up an interesting phrase -sitzkrieg- “sitting war,” dating from the early months of World War 2, or as the Western media put it, the “phoney war,” which was spent by the Germans and the French and British, for the first few months of the war, trading barbs but little else. What we have, as a result of the House passing its resolution, is the appearance of conflict without any real fight being engaged, until -and unless- the Opposition falls into the trap of fighting the campaign on the basis of ground rules proposed -and mastered- by the administration.
He also goes on to suggest,
4. The event also shows or will show how much change or actions can be done by the present administration. A sort of testing of the public and the opposition. Who are the one’s protesting? Who are the one’s acting on it? Or are the players hesitating? Will it all be talk and no action.
And this, I believe, is also a crucial benefit accorded by this move. The administration has one significant advantage, and that’s of having achieved a consensus. But then that’s always been an advantage it enjoys. It knows what it wants; the opposition does not (or to be precise, opposition factions have objectives and desires not necessarily shared, in fact probably opposed, by other factions).
I often hear people ask, “we know what you are against, but what are you for?” The administration can always clearly answer what it’s for -and it’s always about change. Seriously. Right or wrong, it can always point to a consistent record of advocating change, even if it’s “unpopular.”
Critics are often stumped on the “change” part, either the changes are too exotic, too frightening (because too wide-ranging), or not expressed in terms of wanting change, but couched in conservative “let us protect” this or that terms, which isn’t exciting at all for a public tired of the usual goings-on.
And it is to the advantage of the administration for the public to consider this as just the continuation of the same tired old fight which the administration will win, anyway, or at least, for which it won’t have to suffer an real inconvenience, which is a victory in itself.
Meanwhile, because 2010 still remains in play, as political groups rush to do something -anything- to appear relevant in the present news cycle, the Palace can see which of its favorite tactics to keep its 25% of the population that supports it on its side, the 25% that hates the opposition more than it hates the President uncommitted, and the remaining half of the population in hopeless disagreement, still works:
a.The Estrada bogey; even if I personally think the President herself extinguished the Edsa Dos-Tres divide by pardoning Estrada, consigning his past cases to the past, this is not how many veterans of Edsa Dos see it, or how the Edsa Tres advocates view it.
b. The CPP-NPA card; which harps on how there is a significant chunk of the population unprepared to recognize the NDF as a legitimate player in parliamentary politics (which is the only real guarantee of a shift from armed to peaceful efforts to contest power).
c. The military specter; in that military adventurism spooks most people, as it carries risks the public is unprepared to take (how different it would be if politically-minded officers simply said, we will keep off the streets but clean the military’s Augean stables! That might be something the public would applaud).
d. The Vice-Presidential threat; in that there are many who view the Vice-President as no alternative at all to the President, and who can be convinced to stay quiet out of the pious hope the President will bow out of public life come 2010.
This brings up the reassurance of the Secretary of the Interior and Local Governments that, as he put it, there will an election, at all levels, for the positions and in the manner specified by the present Constitution. Though as he charmingly put it, “in the manner of the 2004 elections.” The administration has the means to prepare for more eventualities, at the same time, than anyone else.
He wasn’t lying when he said the administration is preparing for 2010. He wasn’t lying when he advised the administration’s many but disorganized critics to prepare, as well -he wasn’t lying, he was taunting.
“All your bases are belong to us,” is what this entire exercise seems to be about, if you read between the lines. The President and the ruling party is so awash in cash and political capital, it can thumb its at everyone simply to pursue an exotic legal theory on constitutional amendments.
On a final note, blogger SMOKE, provocative as always, says,
The trouble with the fear-mongers is that they didn’t want this step taken at all. They don’t even want to hear what the proposals are. That’s not democracy. People who call what happened last night a tyranny of the majority got it right. It was a tyranny of the majority, but then again, isn’t the rule of the majority what a democracy is all about? Is the majority supposed to be gentle? Better by far to have the opportunity to talk about the proposals through the flexing of majority muscle, than be eternally be bogged down by the debates of people who would rather have a tyranny of fear.
Because that’s all this is, the opportunity to talk about proposals and finalize them.
“Disingenious,” some would holler! “This Resolution makes it possible for the feared amendments to be railroaded!”
Of course it does. But even assuming that the feared amendments - term extensions and such - are included in the final bill of proposals, that list will have to weather the inevitable challenge before the Supreme Court, making it therefore, far less than final. And even assuming that it hurdles the Supreme Court, then it has to survive public opinion.
And there is where I believe the real battle should be fought.
She’s not alone in arguing critics of the House move are alarmist because there’s no reason to worry because the House hasn’t put forward specific amendments it wants, beyond the Speaker’s personal proposals to liberalize restrictions on foreign investments. But beyond that modest proposal, the operative word is change, and all the majority wants is a reasonable opportunity to hear all sides -and be heard.
This is untrue. The blueprint was laid out in 2006, and has not changed since. The changes proposed are detailed, and many. There is no reason to think this doesn’t remain the blueprint for the changes the new hybrid majority party wants and will campaign for even in 2010.
Matrix House Proposed Charter Amendments mlq3 Existing provisions and proposed changes to the Constitution, as drafted by the House of Representatives in 2006.
But you see, this is the whole problem right there. Too much remains to be done in getting the public to understand the system as it exists, before you even tackle what should be changed -and how. So it seems to me, since we have no control over the Lozanos of this world, or even the Supreme Court, and since, after the House adjourns sine die tonight, not to reconvene until July to hear the State of the Nation Address, much more productive things could be done in terms of
1. continuing preparations for 2010
2. educating ourselves and each other about the Constitution.
After yet another query asking about yesterday’s “missing” column (for some reason, it cannot be easily located on Inquirer.net; I had to Google it), I thought I should post it here on Current. Let me know what you think!
Published on May 26, 2009
When it comes to everyone’s favorite pastime—no, not watching the latest Hayden Kho sex video but handicapping favorites in the equally rough-and-tumble world of presidential politics—everybody has an opinion. But this emphatically does not mean that one man’s guess is as good as any other’s. I say this not simply because I have a vested interest in professional commentary and political journalism; I say this because certain factors are already in play, and opinion that does not take them into account is worse than useless.
Political facts, of course, may be read differently. In the interest of greater accountability, I would like to advance the following five theses, with which I propose to frame my reading of 2010. [Read the rest of this entry »]
Last week, a Leadership Forum was held in the Ateneo de Manila where putative presidential candidates subjected themselves to questioning for the first time. Today Inquirer editorial called the exercise an example of Maturity unfolding. It suggests that the public is keen on watching candidates confront each other, and that dodging debates, as Joseph Estrada, Fernando Poe Jr. and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo did, won’t wash with the electorate anymore.
It’s interesting to compare how a grizzled old veteran like Amando Doronila (in a nutshell, he says Nobody got away undiminished) and young observers who blogged their reactions, compare to each other in terms of their reactions to the debate. I particularly enjoyed the blog entries of So far, so good, Philippines Rising, jessie’s wicked world of reality and Jolly Life. The respective media teams of the various candidates will gain a valuable insight into what young people, in particular, thought of the whole exercise.
But once again, let me revisit John Nery’s February 10 column, in which he pointed out that there was something remarkable about how The 2010 race is set. The public, acting as a communal self-limiting mechanism on politics, has, quite early on, narrowed the field. And let me point to another, more recent column of his from April 7, on how The vice-presidency is subtraction:
[M]y hypothesis: Since the snap election, the principal role of the vice-presidential running mate has changed. To be more precise, since 1986 the winning presidential candidate’s decision-making process for selecting a running mate has turned from addition to subtraction.
In other words, the main value of the vice presidency in election politics is tactical: It provides a presidential candidate the best way to sideline a strong rival.
