A Palace brainstorm

It must be the season of leaks. As I was in bed groggy from a 38.5C fever last week, the roof of my house leaked… actually was more like poured out in buckets over the living room. That was because the ageing roof proved no match to the particularly heavy early evening downpour.

Leaks were still on top of my mind last Monday as I recovered from that bout with the flu virus. I was fascinated with the claim of my ninong, Kit Tatad, of a super leak from the Palace. If Ninong Kit is to be believed, his source told him the Napoles woman was the lunch date of P-Noy before she “surrendered”. Sounds absolutely yucky to me!

Hmm… the leak in my roof is real… I have damaged magazines and books to show for it. Ninong Kit, however, only has his word we can believe or reject. He said he believes his source… that’s assuming he has a source other than his over active imagination…

Leaks, as our readers should know, are the lifeblood of journalists. Unless you have a steady source of leaks, you won’t go far in this job.

Some of us have leaks running out of our ears. Our problem is the ear infection we sometimes contract because everyone wants to whisper stories “for our ears only.” Unfortunately, many of those so called “leakers” liberally sprinkle our ears with bacteria-laden saliva… but it is a risk we take with the promise of the juiciest tales.

It was no surprise I saw in my fevered mind a dream about my getting a Palace leak. As I recall it, I was on my way to the coffee shop but I got waylaid as I walked from the parking area. A source was offering me an exclusive. I thought it was worth the risk of an ear infection so I offered my ear.

The informant looked around suspiciously and with a conspiratorial wink nudged me and asked me in a hushed voice to look at the potted plant in the corner. Then he slipped me a chewing gum wrapper as he instructed me to read his note, go to the men’s room and flush it down the toilet.

As the informant quickly retreated towards the elevator, I just stood there wondering what that was that all about. I looked at the gum wrapper and indeed, there was the instruction in bold letters: GET FLASH DRIVE AT POTTED PLANT. Hmm… where did I see this movie before?

With nothing to lose, I suspiciously looked around me and seeing no one there but me, walked over to the potted plant. Indeed, there was a flash drive stuck right at the center of a flower. Stupid place to hide a mysterious flash drive, I thought, but I quickly got it and rushed back to my car. I needed to go some place where I can find out what it was about.

The mall a kilometer or so away from the hotel coffee shop has an internet café… choosing a computer away from the truant school kids shooting at aliens and monsters, I plugged in the flash drive, put on a listening device and waited to hear whatever it was…

Turns out it was a recording of a meeting, a brainstorming meeting like the one we used to have during our PR and advertising days. I recognized one of the voices as that of Ricky Tarantang. Then there was Sonny Toloma and Manuel Kyusi III. I got excited. This is important stuff… a Palace leak!

They sounded worried that the last ruse about the new P-Noy date, did not take hold. Toloma blamed Tarantang saying he warned that it must be credible. “How can anyone believe a young, pretty and decent lawyer will want to date P-Noy?” Toloma sneered at Tarantang as Kyusi played Candy Crush on his smart phone.

So it is back to the drawing board… they were racking their brains for a plan to moderate the daily barrage of Napoles stories because, in the words of communication strategist Tarantang, “it is dragging the boss into the slime and is eclipsing every good thing we have done and are doing.”

Oblivious to the discussion, Kyusi blurted, “buti na lang wala pa tayong masyadong nagagawa…”

“Hoy, Kyusi! Don’t you believe all that sh-t you immortalize in the Official Gazette daily?” complained Toloma.

“Eh, sa totoo lang… Corona was so far our shining moment… maybe we should quickly get some senator jailed right away to top that…”

“Hoy, Kyusi… hindi tayo martial law… rule of law tayo. We go through the process… we humiliate them in public, file the complaint with the Ombudsman, influence them to file the cases at Sandiganbayan and blame the judicial system for the slow delivery of justice.”

“I like trial by publicity,” Kyusi volunteered. “It is about as much justice as people can expect to get. Once the cases get to the system, the high priced lawyers will use technicalities, connections and outright bribery to advantage.”

“I like the humiliation part,” Tarantang said, “They deserve it. Don’t they look guilty as hell even now? Sen. Gong Revile looks absolutely worried… Sen Penrile is in the hospital and Mam Jiji has flown the coop to Bahamas, I hear. Sen Sexy, however, has not stopped looking at the mirror.”

“But that’s too negative,” Toloma avers. “It paints a picture of a government run like hell by Filipinos…”

“My lolo said that,” Kyusi proudly exclaims.

“We need to do something positive… We must give the impression we are in full control,” Toloma insisted, “otherwise we look like the clueless Student Council our critics call us.”

“Maybe,” Kyusi offered, still playing Candy Crush, “let us do something like get a major infrastructure project started.”

“Please lang, Kyusi,” Tarantang admonished, “let us be serious… suggest something within the realm of possibilities… something we are actually able to do.”

Silence… long silence… shoes nervously tapping on the floor.

“This just came in… the DOTC Secretary announced they are putting a subway on EDSA…” Kyusi reports.

Laughter. Loud laughter. All of them were laughing so hard there were tears in their eyes… pee in their pants. Toloma was pounding on the wall in delirious laughter.

“Hilarious!” Tarantang exclaimed.

“Tangna DOTC talaga… hindi nga ma bid out yung LRT1 Extension tapos subway pa. Hindi nga ma-modernize yung MRT 3, ngayon subway pa… decent toilet lang sa NAIA hindi kaya… tangna apog ng mga yan talaga.”

But Toloma who used to be at DOTC in an earlier Raquino government said, “Wait partners… they have something there… if we don’t watch out, those DOTC bastards are going to steal our propaganda jobs… they are better at this sort of thing than us… they are absolutely shameless… they know they cannot deliver so they issue a press release on a dream… the masa salivates as they dream of a subway and they forget how bad the MRT crowding is. It’s like offering heaven to sinners.”

Kyusi protests: “That’s sneaky. We are daang matuwid… shouldn’t we just get those guys to actually start two or three long awaited projects? That’s an even better way to pump in some positive feel good vibes in this depressing political atmosphere.”

Toloma: “you are reading Boo Chanco too much. He used to lecture in my PR class at AIM and that’s what he would have said. That also presupposes DOTC is actually capable of getting a project started. You and I know what Budget Sec Butch Agood said about their technical deficit. Have you ever heard of lawyers trying to build an airport, a railway or even a bridge? Onli in the Pilipins.”

Tarantang: “unfortunately, there is reality. At DOTC, they know their limitations, so they issue press releases to cloud that reality with baseless hope… makes a lot of practical sense.”

Toloma: “Sigue, I will assign some of our fiction writers at the People’s TV4 to help them transform their project briefs into glowing press releases… recycling them with new angles… every time offering visions of heavenly progress… before we know it our watch is over and it is Jojo Binay’s problem.”

Tarantang: “I like it when my strategy team gets together. Where will P-Noy be without us?”

The conversation abruptly ends as the President apparently stepped in to see his loyal propagandists plotting on his behalf. All I could hear was his voice off mike telling Tarantang, Toloma and Kyusi how proud he is of them all.

And that, Ninong Kit is my source’s story… recorded on a flash drive… and it all happened while I was delirious with fever. So where is your proof… what’s your excuse for your story, Ninong Kit?

Politico’s brain

Miriam’s thought about a politician’s brain:

“The brain of a Filipino politician has two sides: the left has nothing right in it, the right has nothing left in it.”

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @boochanco