Erap to Tokyo for Obuchi's 'memorial' rites

The arrest of 26 Muslim suspects in a roundup of alleged "bombers" of the Megamall and the Glorietta has enabled Philippine National Police Chief, Director-General Panfilo Lacson, to leave for Tokyo yesterday afternoon.

What Lacson, whose Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Task Force (PAOCTF) is the spearhead of the government's anti-terrorist drive, could be doing in Japan is anybody's guess. The sketchy information we got is that he was "invited" by JICA, the Japan International Cooperation Agency, but this may just be a cover -- like his earlier spiel that the Megamall "bombers" might have been "rightist" troublemakers.

Perhaps, Ping, who is the Emperor's Praetorian Guard Chief or its equivalent here, is in Tokyo as an advance team leader for President Estrada's coming two- or three-day visit to Japan, tentatively scheduled for June 7 (Wednesday next week).

The Chief Executive is going to attend the memorial service for the late Prime Minister Keizo Obuchi who died last May 14 (after suffering a massive stroke on April 2). The Memorial Service is drawing world leaders like US President Bill Clinton, Singapore's Senior Minister Lee Kuan Yew (and possibly Singapore Prime Minister Go Chok Tong), and so forth, to the Japanese capital.

Erap will also meet Obuchi's successor, Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori, who provoked a storm of criticism when he asserted that Japan "is a divine country" and shares in the Emperor's divinity, at Obuchi's Shinto funeral rites. Mori, whose ruling Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) is facing national elections on June 25, later said, "I deeply apologize from the bottom of my heart for causing misunderstanding among many people, for not using clear-cut expressions," but has refused to retract his controversial statement despite outcries of concern within his own party.

Since Japan is scheduled to host the G-7 or advanced industrial countries summit (plus Russia) soon, those remarks may continue to reverberate.

In the meantime (so what's new?), it was announced that the late Obuchi's youngest daughter, Yuko Obuchi, 26, would run for the Diet (lower house of parliament) in her father's vacated Gunma province constituency.

Yuko asserted: "I had never thought about being a politician until my father became ill. I will take up the tasks that my father did not have time to carry out."

Thus you can see, that the world's not as much different from our country as we love to think; so, let's stop wringing our hands and wailing: "Only in the Philippines." Pretty Yuko probably heard the equivalent of Magsaysay's postmortem, "Carry on, Gene!"

The LDP, of course, welcomes Ms. Yuko's candidacy, since her dad was a popular guy and, besides, the actual polls coincide, on June 25, with the late Sensei Obuchi's birthday. This will capitalize on the sympathy vote and you bet those Japanese, so fearsome in war, are suckers for the teary plots of television "soaps," which, I recall, they refer to as homudurama (home dramas).

As for the June 8 event, although the departed P.M. had told his family that he would prefer a quiet funeral, the Memorial Service to be attended by Erap and other global figures arriving to pay homage will be held in the Nihon Budokan, one of the biggest amphitheaters in Tokyo. (I once attended a mass rally there, and the crowd, though huge, was swallowed up by the cavernous structure).

According to correspondent Gillian Tett of the Financial Times of London, political dynasties already dominate Japanese politics, with about 140 of the 500 seats in parliament now held by sons or daughters of politicians, not counting others who are "less direct relatives."

The leadership of the Opposition is no different. Yukio Hatoyama, head of the opposition DPJ, belongs to a fourth-generation political clan. As for Mori, his chief patron, former Prime Minister Noboru Takeshita, in disclosing his plan to retire, said that he was passing his "seat" in the Diet to his brother, Wataru Takeshita. (Gee whiz, when I interviewed Mr. Takeshita in his office-suite in the next-door Diet building seven years ago, he already looked like a grizzled, old gnome. Those Japanese politicians last forever, although Obuchi died at the relatively youthful age of 62.)

That's nothing. The former LDP Cabinet secretary, Seiroku Kajiyama, has also just retired after passing his "place" to his eldest son, Hiroshi Kajiyama. (Obuchi was also the son of a politician, but was able to ascend to his first seat at 26 when his father died.)

Nepotism is alive and well in Japan, alas. But how can the Americans complain? The Republican candidate for President, already acknowledged as such before the G.O.P. convention, is Texas Governor George W. Bush, son of former President George Bush, and brother of Florida Governor Jeb Bush. As for Vice President Al Gore, his dad was a longtime senator and political kingpin, who simply passed the torch to baby boy.

Can anybody, like Honest Abe Lincoln, still rise from log cabin to President? Only if he has a lot of friends who are multimillionaires and billionaires. This thing called "democracy" is not for the impoverished and the small fry.

Remember the "raid" on the offices of the money-man Luke Roxas? When it took place, one former congressman who originally campaigned on a pro-poor ticket was found to have "invested" P100 million in that fast-break fellow's failed investment portfolio. How did he accumulate P100 million on a congressman's salary? This is a land where the miracle of the Loaves and Fishes, sad to say, qualifies as small time.

All eyes are on the "bidding" for the purchase of the Philippine National Bank (PNB) as the litmus test of President Estrada's sincerity in assuring a level playing field.

Three bidders pre-qualified last May 22, among them former Ambassador Al Yuchengco's Rizal Commercial Banking Corporation, and a group headed by Filipino multibillionaire Loida Nicolas Lewis. We're still to find out who is the mysterious "third."

Loida has just liquidated TLC Beatrice International, the billion-dollar company she inherited from her husband, Reginald Lewis (at the time of his death, Regie's personal fortune was estimated by Forbes magazine to have been in excess of $400 million). Since then, Loida has parlayed and expanded the "empire" several times through her own business and legal acumen. She arrived here a few days ago, and has said she hopes, if her bid is successful, to use the PNB as the launch pad for bringing in extensive investments and establishing new enterprises in her native Philippines.

I just read her late husband's heartwarming and witty book, Why Should White Guys Have All the Fun? (co-authored by Blair S. Walker; John Wiley & Sons, Inc., New York, Chichester, Brisbane, Toronto, Singapore, 1995). It ended with an epilogue about his funeral, which was attended by friends like former New York Mayor David Dinkins, Texaco Chairman James W. Kinnear, the Rev. Jesse Jackson, and Harvard Law School Dean Robert C. Clark (from his alma mater). The last chapter noted that at the funeral services thronged by more than 2,000 at St. Edward's Roman Catholic Church in Baltimore, opera star and family friend Kathleen Battle sang Amazing Grace, while Lea Salonga, then already starring in Miss Saigon, gave a rendition of The Quest (The Impossible Dream).

The final page contained Reginald Lewis' favorite poem, or one of his inspirational favorites, which I can only commend for our present situation in this troubled land. It was written by Langston Hughes and goes: "Well, son, I'll tell you: Life for me ain't been no crystal star. It had tacks in it. And splinters. And boards torn up, and places with no carpet on the floor -- bare. But all the time I'se been a-climbin' on, And reachin' landings, And turning corners, And sometimes going in the dark, Where there ain't no light. So, boy, don't you turn back."

That's right, guys. Don't turn back! Out there, as we climb through the dark, there's a chink of light. And beyond that -- the stars.

There was a fascinating column in yesterday's Malaya by Ellen Tordesillas. I hope she won't mind if I quote from it verbatim since it contains an interesting insight into the antics of the Abu Sayyaf whom some people seem to be romanticizing as "freedom fighters" or something like that, those rascals.

Wrote Ellen: "Journalists, both foreign and local, who have been covering the hostage crisis in Jolo have harrowing stories in the hands of the Abu Sayyaf but they are not reporting it for fear of their life.

"It is a tribute to these journalists' dedication to their job that they continue to seek the Abu Sayyaf for interviews and photos despite the danger they are exposed to everytime they get near the rebels.

"Just the other day, one of the foreign journalists who accompanied government negotiators to the Abu Sayyaf camp in Bandang, Talipao, after the start of the negotiations was taken aside by a group of Abus who divested him of his shoes, clothes and valuables, including wristwatch and cash.

"The journalist was given rubber slippers which were too small for his feet.

"A Filipino journalist who saw the 'holdup' said the Abus were laughing like crazy while collecting their loot. But he was also as terrified as the victim. Besides, he had been a victim too.

"A photographer of a wire agency was earlier divested of his vest and P20,000 cash. A foreign journalist had to reluctantly part with his wedding ring which an Abu liked.

"Although the Abus were wise enough not to confiscate television and still cameras, knowing the propaganda value of the footages and the photos, they did not spare some instamatic cameras.

"The Abus have also been rude to women journalists, particularly those who do not wear a veil.

"The earlier victims have learned their lesson. Now, they bring with them extra shoes, clothes and wristwatches just in case they get unlucky and attract the Abus' fancy.

"One journalist said that if you see the Abus now, they are better dressed, well-shod and are wearing expensive wristwatches, courtesy of the journalists covering the hostage crisis.

"It was reported earlier that some French TV reporters each paid the Abu Sayyaf $1,000 to be allowed to interview the hostages, two of them French. The reporters denied it.

"It's not difficult to think that the denial was demanded of their job and their survival.

"I have talked with some Muslims who denounce the Abu Sayyaf for giving a bad name to Islam. It is doubtful if they can reform their ways. They are incorrigible."

Former Presidential Spokesman Jerry Barican has, for his part, returned to journalism with a column in his alma mater, the Manila Standard.

Yesterday, he had an interesting "inside" piece on what happened when TIME magazine started working on what finally became its sarcastic piece on Erap, which Barican called the "Anatomy of a Cover Story."

Jerry said that it was Jimmy FlorCruz of TIME (the weekly magazine's Beijing correspondent, and recently in New York, I heard, on an Edward Murrow fellowship) who had first rung up Barican and former Press Secretary Rod Reyes to indicate that TIME was planning a cover story on President Estrada.

Barican recounted that, after Jimmy, "perhaps about February," Nelly Sindayan, the local TIME correspondent, had contacted him to tell him "that the reportorial team from New York was preparing to leave to interview the President, take photographs and write the story."

Since Sindayan is regarded by Barican as a friend -- as indeed she is one of this writer (everybody loves Nelly ) -- he was amazed, he revealed, "a few days later" when he "received an irate call from Brenda Tuason of the Bulletin recounting her conversation with Nelly. The trip of the TIME contingent had been cancelled, because their head office had received a call from the Icon group, a public relations outfit under contract with the Philippine government. According to Nelly, Icon's head, Aimee Laurel, had called TIME in New York and told TIME that Icon was in charge of all PR arrangements in the US and that all the details of the trip needed to be cleared first with Icon."

"I found it incredible for the story to be true," exclaimed Barican. "How could a PR firm interfere with the arrangements made directly with the Press Office in Malacañang?" Jerry said he spoke to Rod Reyes about it and "Rod was equally at a loss to explain what was going on." Barican remarks that he never got "the full story directly from TIME or from Icon." But he averred that the result was "a couple of months' delay in the interviews and in the release of the cover story."

It seems that, in his belief, an earlier arrival of the TIME team might have resulted in a more favorable and friendly article. Oh, well. Who can tell? There's many a slip, as the Bard mourned, 'twixt cup and lip.

But I agree with Jerry's suspicion that Icon interfered. For years, I've been wondering why the Philippine government has been squandering so many hundreds of thousands of dollars on Icon, an agency which has done us no good. And to think that, in the Estrada administration, Icon's contract was "renewed"! This Ms. Laurel must have very good connections. But here, not in New York City or Washington, DC.

It's astonishing, if it's true, that Icon tried to interfere with the TIME "brass" in New York -- that's a no-no not only in public relations but in personal relations. Why should a journalist or editor have to "clear" anything at all with a PR agency? This is -- if it was rashly undertaken -- an act that was both brazen and, worse, stupid.