GOTCHA, Published in The Philippine Star, November 2, 2007
Cracks in the administration may have widened in the past few days. But expect ruling coalition leaders to patch things up. It’s in their interest to do so. They need to stay in power and divide the spoils, rather than quarrel and risk losing everything.
The plot to unseat Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. looks doubtful. It will only prosper if he fights back. But he’s not likely to. So the plotters, loyalists of President Gloria Arroyo who think they must punish de Venecia for the way his son Joey implicated her to the broadband scam, will disperse in the end.
They are loyalists only provisionally. So long as Arroyo provides for their needs — steady releases of pork barrels and P500,000 cash gifts — they will stay loyal. Apart from Arroyo’s two congressmen-sons who naturally will protect her and one or two colleagues lusting to be Speaker, most are in it only for the money. That includes even the neophytes and the supposed “young idealists”. One hundred-ninety of them (from a 240-member House) already got a taste of what it’s like to be in power or proximate to it. The bags of cash handed to them on Oct. 11 at Malacañang were not the first, nor will be the last. Service to the people was never their intention in seeking congressional seats last May. Money was.
On Monday a congressman from the majority will stand up to have all seats declared vacant. That has been decided in the series of meetings in Malacañang last week. Whether the 189 accomplices so vote will depend on their leaders extracting from de Venecia a promise to stop rocking the boat. After son Joey’s pained and perilous exposé of bribery in highest places, de Venecia had seen an outpour of public support for valiant fighters for truth. Taking Joey’s reformist stance, he gave Arroyo a hundred days to start her own moral revolution. Malacañang rejected it of course: Arroyo screamed at him in what should have been a conciliation dinner the other weekend, and her aides taunted him as a party subordinate to heed Arroyo’s program of government instead. De Venecia waffled. He began to drop the 100-day deadline for moral change. He will most likely go on waffling on Monday, if only to keep his position. In public, he would reiterate that his foes never had the numbers to oust him. Behind closed doors, he will concede that he can’t fight the 190 — not with the remaining 50 or less who are with the Opposition and so distrust him to be on their side.
De Venecia perhaps bit off more than he could chew. In challenging Arroyo to reform, he had promised to match executive action with his own exertion to clean up the pork barrel. The pork must be made transparent, he said, starting with line item budgeting one year before funds are released. If he thought he could pull that trick, he was all wrong. No self-respecting congressman, one who ran for office precisely to get his hands on no-audit P70 million a year, would want clearness. Opening up the pork barrel to prior public scrutiny would defeat its thieving purpose. It would render congressmen’s existence useless. They would have to content themselves with only their legal salary of P35,000 a month. What for would they spend millions of pesos to run? What for would they build political dynasties, if de Venecia would virtually remove the pork through transparency?
And so it will be quid pro quo. Arroyo detests moral revolution, and they won’t force her. Congressmen fear losing their pork slabs, and she won’t let them. De Venecia will just watch them do it.
A side issue on Monday will be the Arroyo impeachment case. The complaint has been denounced as trash, and the complainant lawyer Roel Pulido and endorser Rep. Edgar San Luis accused of being on Malacañang payroll. Hurriedly filed, the weak case allegedly was designed to inoculate Arroyo from any real one within 12 months. But Pulido and San Luis have been inviting detractors in the Opposition to “improve” the charge sheet. Left with no choice, the latter have begun to comply.
