Behind Malacañang's closed doors (minus the skeletons)

A new documentary produced by National Geographic proposes to show us what goes on inside the secret world of Malacañang.

Just don’t expect to find any skeletons there.

Set to air locally March 18, Inside Malacañang is billed as an exclusive glimpse inside the private realm of presidential power.

But it’s curiously lacking in history, skimming over 250 years and presenting a packaged view of the subject that’s as neatly trimmed as the Palace lawns.

Call me naïve, but as a foreigner living here, I really am curious about what goes inside Malacañang. I’m interested in its history, its construction, all the tales that can be told about its 250 years as the central symbol of Philippine leadership.

Okay, basically I want to hear some tsismis.

But sitting inside the actual Palace recently, dressed in my barong (the media had been invited to a preview of the National Geo documentary), I found my curiosity strangely unsatisfied.

Too bad, because the topic deserves an in-depth look.

The documentary gives short shrift to the Spanish years, the American years, the Japanese occupation. We get some interesting details — how Rizal mother’s ascended the Grand Staircase on her knees and (legend has it) begged that her son’s life be spared — but what I found truly puzzling was the lack of real-life anecdotes. This is, after all, a colorful place, an embattled fortress that has been under siege time and time again in its long history.

The early presidents are glossed over. Marcos is completely bypassed. We hear little about FVR, nothing of Estrada of GMA. Instead, the focus of Inside Malacañang is the Cory years and the P-Noy years. While this is legitimately interesting, I couldn’t help feeling that this all-Filipino written, produced and directed episode is a kind of scrubbed-up press release.

Still, what it does reveal is fascinating. We learn the grounds were acquired from Spanish landowner Don Luis Rocha 250 years ago (Malacañan might come from the Tagalog word mamalakaya, for “fisherman,” or perhaps from the Spanish mala cana, meaning “bad sugarcane”). We hear that President Quezon was held prisoner for a few months in the Aguinaldo State Dining Room by Americans before the retreat. And we hear that the Palace was the headquarters for Japanese generals during the WWII occupation. Still, the lack of visuals and photos makes for a rather dull history lesson.

We are taken to The Music Room, the only place, according to Communications Undersecretary Manolo Quezon III, where the President “feels really safe.” It’s a soundproof wooden meeting room with no windows used for private conferences and meetings. Elsewhere in the Palace, bulletproof glass is de rigueur, and all the walls surrounding Malacañang’s rooms “exceed load-bearing requirements.”

In other words, it’s a fortress.

And it’s not for everyone. President Noynoy Aquino and his mom Cory have famously chosen not to live inside the Palace. According to P-Noy, who gave the introductory remarks to the Nat Geo film, “Living in the Palace can have an unhealthy effect on the presidency. It can make you feel like royalty.” For P-Noy, with all the high ceilings and wooden interiors, “It’s too big, too dark. I guess this emphasizes that it’s lonely at the top.”

We get glimpses of the Presidential Security Guard (PSG) and Palace staff at their morning routine: sweeping the grounds, checking the cars, tending the gardens and lawns, and testing the food.

Easily one half of Inside Malacañang is devoted to profiling four members of the PSG under P-Noy, including presidential food tester SPO3 Jaime Castro. During Palace events, Castro’s job is to taste and test everything; armed with a flashlight instead of a gun, he shines his beam on tureens and dishes of food in the kitchen, checking for discoloration, signs of contamination or poisoning. Castro jokes that he eats exactly what the President eats. P-Noy has more practical concerns: “Sometimes, when you’re really hungry, he has to check everything, even the condiments… You have to wait a bit,” he says with a laugh.

Jay Morales, meanwhile, is the official presidential photographer, from whom we learn that P-Noy and Barack Obama both prefer “no flash.” P-Noy selected Morales after seeing a particular shot taken during the inauguration: a dramatic silhouette of the new president taken from behind the grandstand. Iconic indeed.

There’s a segment with PSG Group Commander Ramon Dizon (“We have to ensure, from the moment the President wakes up and goes about his day, to the time he comes home and sleeps, that he is safe”) and one with SPO4 Lito Africano, P-Noy’s “close-in” security. (The Philippines is probably the only place that uses the term “close-in,” but there’s no more apt term: this is a guy who has to supervise every detail of the President’s day, down to the clothes he wears. In a sense, Africano is as close to P-Noy as the suit he wears.)

Africano tells us about P-Noy’s trademark “trick” shot that he taught PSG men at the shooting range — splitting a playing card in two with one bullet — and there are lots of scenes of the PSG wielding guns, adopting combat poses, practicing at the firing range. For a minute, you think you’re watching the film set of The Bourne Legacy. “We will lay down our lives” is the implicit message.

We learn the “No Wang-Wang” rule makes the job of the PSG a logistical nightmare: they are compelled to wait at traffic lights, making the presidential convoy a much easier target.

Another scene shows PSG men during a drill: an actor plays P-Noy, tied to a chair in a kidnappers’ lair; they storm through the door, guns blazing, and the actor is saved.

All this is interesting, but when 70 percent of a documentary called Inside Malacañang focuses on the current occupant and his security detail, you feel that something is missing. With over two years in the making, why didn’t National Geographic go after recollections from FVR, or Erap, or GMA in her neck brace?

Granted, there are probably legal reasons why we won’t be hearing colorful tales of Malacañang’s past anytime soon — fear of lawsuits, most likely. But it’s also fear of politics. And let’s face it: in the Philippines, everything is politics. Everyone wants to protect their own legacy, and no one wants to make their predecessors look any better than necessary. That’s just human nature.

And this makes Inside Malacañang feel a little bitin. Instead of Malacañang, what we’re left with is a bit of a Malaca-yawn.

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Catch the premiere of Inside Malacañang on March 18, 9 p.m. on National Geographic Channel.