Why can’t Jinggoy just tell the truth? - GOTCHA by Jarius Bondoc

Diplomacy, ’tis said, is the art of saying "Nice doggie!" till you can find a rock. George W. Bush found many rocks – really big one – in his first diplomacy test. Yet he didn’t have to pick one up when Jiang Zemin snarled that he answer for a Chinese F-8 fighter pilot’s death in collision with a US EP-3E spy plane. He just pointed them out to the Chinese leader whose bark, he knew, was worse than his bite. Jiang took one look at what could hit him: US withdrawal of China’s nomination to the World Trade Organization, revocation of Beijing’s trading status as most favored nation, blocking of Jiang’s quest to host the 2008 Olympics, scrapping of military exchanges, cancellation of Bush’s visit late this year. Jiang slunk back like a real nice doggie. Thus ended a two-week standoff, with Jiang releasing the 24 American spy crewmen.

Bush did mutter an apology, though not for what Jiang wanted. Through his envoy, he said he was sorry the disabled EP-3 had entered Chinese air space without "verbal clearance" to crashland on Hainan. The "apology", exacted under duress to free the 24 captives, actually makes Jiang look ridiculous. Here was a globe-trotting Chinese president, trying to sell China’s "new economy" to the world, yet not accepting that there’s hardly time during air emergencies to seek his state’s permission to enter its territory. More so with China’s notorious bureaucracy. At the start of the crisis, when reporters in Argentina asked Jiang about it, he waved them away saying, "It’s Sunday, I’m on vacation."

Still, Jiang is self-satisfied. He didn’t get what he growled for – that Bush admit the EP-3 was spying on Chinese space in the first place and caused the collision that blew up the Chinese jet over the South China Sea. Bush couldn’t, wouldn’t do that, US radars had tracked the EP-3 to be in safe space at the time of impact. International pacts set a 19-km air space beyond shore, but China solitarily insists on its rule of 350 kms. The bigger, slower, aged EP-3 couldn’t have hit the nimble F-8. International rules call for smaller, faster craft to steer clear of sluggish giants; jetskis, for instance, maneuver away from sailboats. But Jiang will get to keep the EP-3. That’s all he wants.

Jiang, who turns 75 this year, is set to be retired in 2002. Though hailed for binding ties with the US – from which China netted $83 billion trade surplus in 2000 alone – he is viewed by stern communist comrades as weak. They’re uninclined to reward him with a post-presidency senior ministership; he can’t get his protégés into positions of influence. Not even after he raised military spending by 15 percent.

Jiang got Washington to apologize profusely in 1999 for its clumsy bombing of China’s embassy in Belgrade. Yet Party militarists think he still didn’t do enough to chastise the old enemy. (It was their own fault, though they won’t own up to it. They painted themselves to a corner by whipping up anti-US rallies that started crying for blood.) Bush wasn’t helpful either when he came to power in January. He dropped Bill Clinton’s "partner" term for China and called it "competitor." He ignored Jiang’s initiative to not sell missiles to Iraq, then announced a scheme to sell US frigates with modern antimissile radars to Taiwan, Jiang’s comrades blame him for it.

Now Jiang has a souvenir to prove that he’s not weak after all. The EP-3 crew may have destroyed their spying equipment and data. But Jiang has found a rock, an entire plane, with which to play his own diplomacy game with displeased comrades.

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Somebody should tell Jinggoy Estrada: sige ka, you’ll begin to look more and more like your dad if you don’t stop lying about the unfinished Taytay housing for San Juan squatters. Then again, maybe Jinggoy does want to look like dad. Mom Loi once recounted that Jinggoy, as a little boy in America where they fled on her first separation from Joseph Estrada, would walk up to any man and ask if he was his daddy.

No, it’s not just about the P100-million check that Jinggoy claims the Macapagal administration bounced last January, so he now allegedly can’t build all 52 masa tenements. It’s also about who his dad contracted to do the job, and for how much and how long. Jinggoy can’t hide that forever.

National Housing Authority chief Edgardo Pamintuan has opened the files. The check wasn’t released on 16 Jan. 2001 as Jinggoy claims, but on 7 Jul. 2000. San Juan town hall even issued a receipt for it. Meaning, Jinggoy must have cashed it long ago, and is talking about another P100 million check that he got on the same night EDSA-II was starting to stir. So, what was that second check for?

Records show, too, that Erap cronies began building 11 of the 52 tenements soon after he came to office in June 1998. Dante Tan, owner of BW Resources in which Erap is silent partner, had promised to have 26 buildings completed by Erap’s first birthday in office in April 1999. But his right-hand man Hanson So could finish only six – haphazardly at that.

A month before the inaugural-cum-birthday bash, So fired BW’s original subcontractors and hired new ones. Fortunately for him, they finished one of the six buildings on time and with good quality. But So never paid the second batch of architects and engineers in full, so they pulled out. He got a third set of builders to finish the first five tenements and start five new ones. The first five fell below legal building standards, the next five do not yet have electricals or plumbing, windows or doors, floors or inner walls. As San Juan mayor, Jinggoy must know all that.

And that’s only half the story. Tan and So thought they had notched enough engineering experience with the tenements, so they set their sights on bigger projects. They wangled a deal from then-Pagcor president Butch Tenorio to erect a five-star casino-hotel in Manila’s tourist district a block off Roxas Boulevard. Pagcor was to move all its Manila casinos to the BW hotel and set up headquarters there as well. But BW didn’t have the cash for the billion-peso project. So Tan and So got Tenorio to lease the casino and office floors – two years ahead of scheduled cornerstone laying – for hundreds of millions of pesos in deposits and advance rent. Exposure in this column aborted the plan.

Of course, a lot of other truths will unravel soon about BW. Erap and Tan have been charged with criminal manipulation of BW’s stock prices. Erap faces a separate suit for taking a P189.7-million kickbacks after forcing his appointees to use SSS and GSIS money to buy into the firm. Talk about Erap para sa mahirap! And Jinggoy, with unexplained use of NHA money in BW’s Taytay tenements, might end up not only looking more and more like dad, but also living with him for the rest of his life – behind bars.

But not if Miriam Santiago has her way, of course. All through last week’s full moon, she was howling about People Power-III to restore Erap to power. Really now.

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