Everything points back to Lacson

It may not be as cruel as Nazis first walling up Jews in ghettos, then hauling them off to concentration camps with promises of better treatment. Still, it rings with that twist from the past, though milder. Senate Minority Leader Nene Pimentel is going out of his way to assure President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo of a fair shake in investigating First Gentleman Mike Arroyo. Same with LDP opposition boss Sen. Ed Angara, who claims he’s biased only for the truth in allegations that the President’s spouse induced the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office to spend P250 million for the administration’s senatorial campaign. GMA can’t help but feel disturbed. For, she spotted telltale signs of a setup.

The plot began to play out Tuesday. Angara’s special consultant Demaree Raval handed out to selected beat reporters copies of a privilege speech that Pimentel supposedly would deliver that afternoon. It was explosive. Arroyo allegedly had ordered the PCSO to bankroll the election ads of winners Joker Arroyo (no relation) and Juan Flavier, and losers Obet Pagdanganan and Ernesto Herrera. It had the makings of a headline that could outshine that morning’s resumed inquiry on minority Sen. Panfilo Lacson’s alleged narcotrafficking.

Yet things just can’t be withheld from a prying press. Why Angara’s aide would do the PR work for Pimentel aroused suspicion. Raval tried to douse it with a spicy backgrounder that the forthcoming exposé was based on confessions by no less than a godson of Arroyo. When Pimentel stuck to his seat during the session, more suspicions sprouted. The newshounds sniffed around for leads. The informant Robert Rivero, himself a former Senate reporter, is married to Lacson’s media relations officer. Like most of his staff, Lacson had inherited Jane Rivero from failed reelectionist Juan Ponce Enrile. For their wedding Robert and Jane had Angara and then-senator Macapagal as godparents.

The reporters asked Joker for his reaction to the speech that never was. Piqued with how a senator’s consultant was going around the halls with a scandal sheet, he rose to question a bill and took the opportunity to insert a denial of the allegations in the circulating Pimentel draft. Angara rose too to interpellate, but Joker cut him off by saying he had not delivered a privilege speech anyway. Nonetheless Angara kept poking Joker, looking for a chance to force a full-blown inquiry. He failed to trap him. Pimentel spent the rest of the afternoon disclaiming the draft: "If I’ll deliver a speech, I’ll write it myself."

The plot was laid bare the following day. Lacson rose at the start of the session to deliver the Pimentel draft with slight revisions. He deleted portions where Pimentel had made notations, and read only enough to gun for the headlines: Arroyo’s alleged P250-million behest from PCSO that supposedly benefitted Pagdanganan and Herrera. No mention of Joker or Flavier. Lacson clearly wanted to avoid confrontation with Joker, who heads the Blue-Ribbon committee, one of three investigating him for heinous crimes. No mention, too, of Rivero, except for saying his informant had paid off certain broadcasters to favor the administration’s senatorial bets. Lacson apparently wants Rivero to do the naming himself. And no mention of Pimentel’s marginal notes asking for evidence and not the mere say-so of Rivero. Lacson probably has studied the PCSO ad contracts, and found them above board. But that was of no import; the aim was to get a Senate inquiry rolling by all means over the First Gentleman.

And that they did. Angara, skirting the fact that his consultant had instigated the speech, grabbed the "exposé" for his committee on electoral reforms and constitutional amendments to investigate. That’s what the minority agreed in a caucus, he said. But why such a committee instead of, say, the ones on government agencies or on finances? Because, Angara said without concealing his foregone conclusion before his inquiry could even start, senators want to revise the PCSO charter. Besides, he claimed while again skirting the fact that Lacson had not named Joker on record, the Blue-Ribbon committee can’t be trusted to handle an inquiry properly if its chairman is involved in the supposed anomaly.

The plotters’ slips showed further. Pimentel finally admitted that he really was assigned, also by earlier agreement of the minority, to read the speech – just that he didn’t trust Rivero to stand by his allegations.

Pimentel and his minority probably know Rivero only too well. The man goes around town calling Arroyo ninong (godfather) by virtue of the President’s being one of his many wedding sponsors. And that’s how, according to victims, Rivero tried to extort money from them in exchange for approval of PCSO contracts and collection of billings.

From accounts, Rivero resigned from radio station DZXL last March to join PCSO as advertising-PR consultant on the recommendation of Press Undersecretary Bobby Capco, also a former Senate beat reporter. Assigned to general manager Virgilio Angelo, he dived into a job of helping his boss fight a turf war with PCSO chairman Honeygirl Singson de Leon. On the side, he did other work not in consonance with that of a media consultant.

Sometime in July, Rivero hit the headlines. DZXL blocktime show host Dick Sinchongco filed a complaint that Rivero deliberately delayed payment of his outfit’s P3-million billings. Rivero demanded a 15-percent cut to facilitate it, and actually took P200,000 in initial tranche.

Soon afterwards, commentator Felix Alegre Jr. of DZBR also cried that Rivero had sent word of stop-payment of four months of PCSO billings if he didn’t come across. The nerve of Rivero, Alegre said, when it was his son Ricky Alegre, then-DZXL station manager who had given the guy his break in radio.

PCSO director Linggoy Alcuaz investigated the complaints and told Angelo his findings. Angelo fired Rivero. Since then another DZXL anchor, news manager John Susi, reportedly has filed an affidavit that Rivero had told him to jack up the ad rates in a proposal to renew PCSO’s contract, but that he (Rivero) should get half of it.

Word went around radio-TV advertising and broadcasting circles about Rivero’s activities. He didn’t limit himself to picking on his former DZXL bosses and associates. Ricky Alegre says that DZRJ too, for which he now works, had received from Rivero an indecent proposal on how to collect P500,000 from PCSO. Two other station managers are reportedly preparing their own complaints.

Alcuaz was about to go to court last month when Rivero ran to Lacson with his story on Arroyo’s supposed behest to PCSO during the March-May election campaign. It was easy; his wife was with Lacson’s staff. What wasn’t easy, impossible in fact, according to new PCSO media consultant Ed Malay, was how the agency could have spent P250 million for four candidates in three months. The amount, he said, is PCSO’s entire board-approved ad budget for Oct. 2000 to Sept. 2001. It had spent much of it already during the Christmas season.

Other industry bigwigs warn against taking Rivero’s story hook, line and sinker. They cannot forget the time when Rivero, in the summer of 1997, was exposed for his links to suspected drug lord Alfredo Tiongco and mysteriously wealthy Bulacan policeman Florencio Pareña. Tiongco was chairman of a provincial tabloid called Luzon Pen; Pareña was its publisher; Rivero was its editor-in-chief and their publicist. Rivero at that time came out with stories against then-Senator Herrera and then-Bulacan Governor Pagdanganan who were exposing Tiongco’s rackets.

Intelligence reports show that soon afterwards henchmen linked to Tiongco, including PNP officers no less, disbanded. Some of them joined a stronger, better-connected syndicate – only to be investigated in recent weeks by the Senate.

* * *

Tonight’s guests on Linawin Natin, IBC-13’s newest talk show on hot issues of the day: MMDA chairman Ben Abalos, Mayor Pedro Cuerpo of Rodriguez (formerlyMontalban), Rizal, and Mother Earth environmentalist Odette Alcantara. You guessed it. The topic is our uncollected garbage.

* * *

You can e-mail comments to [email protected]