What happened during the GMA-Guingona powwow in Davao?

Vice President Teofisto "Tito" Guingona returned from Davao City late yesterday morning, just in time for lunch – and to announce he was finally resigning his Cabinet portfolio of Secretary of Foreign Affairs. Tito’s resignation will be effective this Juy 15th.

The Vice President – I suppose he’s retaining that – tried to evade reporters the rest of the afternoon and evening. When "ambushed" by the DFA press corps in the corridor of the department, he made his escape after muttering that his relations with the President remain "cordial" and that he had "no regrets". Then he said Malacañang would make the necessary statements.

The fact is that he was requested to meet with GMA in Davao, flew over there Monday afternoon and had a closed-door session with the boss-lady that night in the Marco Polo Hotel. What was discussed during that meeting – or was it a showdown or confrontation? Guingona wasn’t saying. Yet.

In the meantime, having exploded his "bomb" (or been exploded?), it seems like business as usual. Guingona is going through with his scheduled lecture today, as guest speaker of a forum in the Carlos Romulo Auditorium, (named after the daddy of Bobby Romulo) in the RCBC in Makati, sponsored by former President Fidel V. Ramos’ RP Development Foundation. His topic: RP-China Relations. Not RP-US Relations? Not GMA-TG Relations? Abangan.

On July 10th, still in his role of DFA Secretary, the Veep will fly to Shanghai to formally inaugurate a new Consulate General in the Shanghai-Pudong area which is generally viewed as the up-and-coming rival to supplant Hong Kong. Beyond that, no one can, at this muddled moment, predict his plans.

* * *

Rumors are flying, as expected, thick and fast as to who will be the next DFA Secretary.

Angrily reacting to a news report in another daily that he was leading a "Sikatuna group" intriguing against Guingona by bending the President’s ear with bad stories about Tito G., former Foreign Affairs Secretary Roberto "Bobby" Romulo (who had earlier e-mailed me with a similar denial from his hotel, Le Meridien, in Brussels) indignantly asserted in a television interview that he wasn’t fueling the GMA-Guingona row, and, although it wouldn’t be offered to him (he said), had no intention of accepting a DFA Secretaryship.

The most persistent kuro-kuro remains, of course, that concerning – as I’ve mentioned previously – the ancient Kulog ng Hagonoy, Ka Blas Ople, who’s at present in Los Angeles but is expected to return on Friday.

Is it true that Presidential publicist and image-builder Dante Ang flew to the USA to "convince" Senator Ople? Another report is that Ka Blas’ kababayan and, indeed, former chief of staff, Bulacan Congressman Willie Villarama, took off post-haste to L.A. to also importune the Senator from Bulacan to take the DFA post.

What hat is our old friend Willie wearing these days? He was once Vice President GMA’s virtual "chief of staff" when she was Veep, until a celebrated break was precipitated, the usual rumor-mongers alleged, by a row within the inner circles of then Vice President Macapagal-Arroyo’s staff. Then, Willie was chief of staff of businessman, now Manila Congressman Mark Jimenez (one of America’s "Most Wanted for Repatriation"). In the House of Representatives, he has been the champion of controversial Commission on Elections Commissioner Luzviminda Tancangco, moving vigorously to head off "impeachment proceedings" against her.

Will Congressman Willie – if Senator Ople, after several protestations that he wouldn’t, suddenly accepts the DFA portfolio – come back with him in glory to stand behind him as he is "anointed" head of the Foreign Office?

* * *

The opposition leader, Senator Edgardo Angara, assured me last night that Blas wasn’t going to accept the DFA plum being dangled before him. He confirmed (as reported on ABS-CBN Channel 2) that Ople had sent him a fax message yesterday afternoon which told him to "rest assured that I will not compromise my vote in the Senate." The same fax, Angara averred, had authorized him to relay that message "to the Senate media". In the same facsimile message, on the other hand, Ka Blas had included a copy of a column he had written (due to appear in the Manila Bulletin today) in which there was a vague hint, unless he revised it between this writing and its publication, that the offer might be interesting if it seemed "good for the country". Forgive me, but I must be dumb about such matters: Would that mean that Ka Blas is leaving the door… well, slightly ajar?

Why is Senator Ople in L.A., the city of fallen angels in the USA? By coincidence, really. He had come from the International Labor Organization (ILO) conference in Geneva (Switzerland), then flown down to San Francisco for a medical check-up in the Stanford University Hospital in Palo Alto (usually described by transiting politicians and officials as "routine"), then gone on to Los Angeles.

In the meantime, some names are also being floated – or being floated by themselves – like former Ambassador Ernie Maceda, ASEAN Secretary-General and Ambassador Rod Severino, DFA Undersecretary Lauro Baja, etc.

No hurry, it seems, on the other hand. I just heard on the radio that President GMA is prepared to be concurrent "acting" Secretary of Foreign Affairs as long as needed. Why doesn’t she just keep it? Then, there will no longer be any clash between her role as Chief Executive (and "chief architect" of foreign policy) and the DFA Secretary (as implementor of foreign policy).

She and she will be one big happy family.

* * *

For someone whose seven-year term of office is expiring next month (on August 5), Ombudsman Aniano Desierto seems unusually active in announcing planned investigations of prominent (or notorious?) characters like the perennially alleged but never confirmed jueteng king Rodolfo "Bong" Pineda from the holy land of Lubao, Pampanga, and his brother Romy of the same hometown. Even the impending resolution in the Ombudsman’s office of high-profile cases like the case versus Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes et al., is being touted by him in an expanding "brag list."

There are those who see these phenomena as a bid to catch the attention of somebody "upstairs." Are those regular public pronouncements part of a campaign to enhance Desierto’s aspiration for nomination to the Supreme Court by the Judicial and Bar Council, and "persuade" the President to appoint him to the High Tribunal? As former Senator Rene Saguisag, in a column he wrote in Today, remarked on Ani Desierto’s ambitions to become an Associate Justice of the Supreme Court, and I borrow the expression from Saguisag this time: "Susmariosep!"

There are 27 – yes, twenty-seven – aspirants for the two vacant seats in the High Court recently vacated by two men of brilliance and probity, just-retired Justices Jose Melo and Sabino de Leon. In fact, although there are only two vacancies, four candidates are already intimating to friends and other listeners that they have been promised a seat in the Court by no less than GMA herself.

I hope that the JBC will carefully screen the 27 aspirants before it pares the hopefuls down to a short list. In the past, nominees whose names were sent by the JBC to Malacañang could be described as a mix of qualified, undeserving (for lack of integrity, unfortunate moral character, and intellectual inferiority), and unknown nominees. This time around, the JBC must resolve to only pick the best and the brightest. Under what category, of the above-mentioned, does exiting Ombudsman Desierto fall?