Bandila unfurls anew/ Meralco: Gov’t backing off?

"A hero cannot be a hero unless in an heroic world", thus spake Nathaniel Hawthorne in his Journals. And it came to pass that just last Wednesday, the 70th birth anniversary of Benigno (Ninoy) Aquino Jr. flirtted by almost unnoticed. Media and the public virtually ignored the man who declared "the Filipino is worth dying for" before he slumped blood-streaked and lifeless on an airport tarmac 19 years ago. The names hitting the headlines Wednesday, in a turn of supreme and scandalous irony, were Justice Secretary Hernando "Nani" Perez and Rep. Mark Jimenez.

Did Ninoy die in an heroic world?

Hardly. While it led to the social upheaval that was EDSA I, his martyrdom simply skimmed the surface of a rotten political system that in the years ahead begat more poverty, more corruption, more crime, more violence. Messrs. Perez and Jimenez slugged it out in the mudholes of corruption, the legendary pot calling the kettle black as the nation twitched even more in social and political turmoil.

Where before, during the 50s, the nation was agog at the revelation that President Elpidio Quirino slept in a P10,000 bed and peed in a golden orinola, today Jimenez, a fugitive from US justice, and a shadow super-millionaire, accused the man who holds justice in his hands of having "extorted" the amount of $2 million (P100 million) from him. Perez, whatever he does, will hardly ever recover from that. As Frank Chavez said, he’s "damaged goods".

So 80 million Filipinos remain in an "unheroic world".

It’s in the shadow of these events that Vice President Teofisto Guingona seeks to play a mini-hero’s role. Tito and his immediate counsel of EDSA veterans have revived Bandila, now Bagong Bandila, a cause-oriented group. We have long urged Tito Guingona to get out of his shell and come out punching. This was after President GMA kicked him out of the foreign affairs portfolio and consigned him to the political scrap heap. Good, he is beginning to stir.

Guingona’s credentials are those of a nationalist, a rather fearless nationalist I would say. His revival of Bandila comes at a very propitious time. The political trees have blown off their foliage, the bitter-cold North Wind whips, half the population huddles in poverty, the economy has caught heavy fire at the edges. The year 2004 beckons not like a political beacon but rather like a busted harbor light with no guarantee incoming ships will find port succor. The only luminous vessel, many say, is that occupied by Fernando Poe Jr. (FPJ). And the contention is that FPJ will smash the skull of anybody (outside of him, of course) who will seek the presidency.

This frightens the majority of civil society who look for a hero, and do not consider FPJ such. But the masa will certainly embrace him more than they did Erap Estrada. The name of Da King is magic, his stride that of Gulliver, his panday image the legendary life-giving rain in Spain.

And so civil society is beginning to move. We do not know exactly how far Bagong Bandila and Tito Guingona can ignite the middle class. But Bagong Bandila will find more acceptance than jaded and almost defunct civil society groups like Kompil and COPA. These were once starshells in the EDSA sky, but they eventually guttered out for lack of vision, credit-grabbing, and buttering up to Malacañang. Kompil particularly. Many of its stalwarts now light candles in the halls of power and exclaim allelujah as GMA passed by. COPA’s leadership has splintered.

Tito Guingona serves the purpose at a time the nation is lost and confused and walking on broken glass. His is the lone, towering voice against the Mutual Logistics Support Agreement (MLSA). The government, led by Foreign Secretary Blas Ople and Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes, claims the MLSA is safe and snug as Santa Claus. Guingona and the opposition say otherwise. They strongly suspect MLSA is America’s Trojan Horse designed to lead the Philippines into George W. Bush’s impending war against Iraq.

Messrs. Ople, Reyes and even Presidential Spokesman Ignacio Bunye argue rather haughtily that if about 60 other nations signed identical MLSAs with America, what’s wrong with the Philippines doing the same thing? I’ll tell you what’s wrong, sirs. The Philippines was long designated by the US as its "second front" after Afghanistan in the war against international terrorism. As a result, US combat troops here will vastly increase in number in the weeks and months ahead. They will be licensed to kill Filipino terrorists of their own choice and (this is sick) with the hearty approval of our government. If the Philippines is Jemaah Islamiyah territory (alongside Indonesia and Malaysia), as decreed by America, then all of our geographical space can be converted into a Yankee turkey shoot.

Few Filipinos realize the precarious situation the Philippines is in today. Guingona does. I’ve known the man since way, way back. That was when we were still few, fighting the Marcos dictatorship, and those who dared saunter into the streets to protest were risking their lives.

Tito is very much aware of the fork in the road as the nation bleeds. Like Ninoy Aquino, he wants to avert a communist revolution, the kind that Jose Maria Sison seeks to inflict on the country where thousands will die and the archipelago physically torn apart. And for what? The hammer and sickle? Tito also realizes the danger of a military takeover if chaos and anarchy in the streets should ensure. The era for military dictatorships is past. Caudillos never knew how to rule and succeeded only in destroying the economy and bloodying even more a weak social fabric. Many families in Argentina and Brazil are still in tears. They are looking for their lost and vanished ones, husbands and sons who had the courage to criticize brutal liders maxima like Generals Augusto Pinochet and Leopoldo Galtieri.

What is interesting about Bagong Bandila is its launching statement that EDSA I installed "an elitist democracy dominated by traditional politicians and the recently ascendant populist politicians". The same elitist democracy, according to Bandila, "produced a corrupt and criminal President" (Joseph Estrada).

Bandila does not tell us how this "elitist democracy" can be crushed or removed outside of exhorting civil society to "put ourselves on a war footing again" since "there are many key struggles ahead". I surmise that war footing here does not mean eventual resort to armed war. If I know Mr. Guingona, he precisely recoils from armed violence. But then the question has to be posed. If Bandila fails to peacefully reach its objectives and realizes its dream of a real democracy remains a pipe-dream – what then?

Bagong Bandila stops short of that. It has to give us a bigger vision.

* * *

So, what gives? Now that the government has decided to junk the memorandum of Finance Secretary Jose Isidro Camacho to take over Meralco lock, stock and barrel, what is the likely solution? The government and Camacho didn’t expect the reaction. It was an in-your-face splat of public venom. It was proof very positive the government is looked upon as a villain that would loot Meralco and make of it a political vassal the moment Malacañang laid its hand on the utility giant.

Camacho’s repeated entreaties that all he proposed was a "caretaking situation", a form of partnership and not a takeover, doesn’t wash. If indeed Secretary Camacho was proposing a partnership, it was a partnership between the shark and the sardine. When the government, specially this government, takes over anything in a so-called joint venture, it is like a cyclone taking over the landscape. What chance do you have?

The case of Meralco must be handled with the greatest of care.

Everything must be avoided to spare the nation from a spate of brownouts or a paralysis in management. The issue is too delicate for it to wash over into the hurly-burly of politics, particularly at a time the economy teeters on the balance. I suggest for whatever it is worth that the government touch base with Meralco, negotiate this crisis in all sincerity and seriousness, and abandon all hope of imposing an imperium on Meralco. I suspect this crisis was triggered by the cabal of all-powerful government lawyers who have GMA’s ear and who long ago planned to take over the Supreme Court. They are obsessed with money and power.

I had long warned her against this cabal, but she paid me no heed. To me, this indicated they comprised the most potent power bloc in Malacañang. That probably explains why the public is focused on Simeon Marcelo, who replaced Aniano Desierto as Ombudsman. Marcelo is known to be a ranking member of this cabal which has already planted its flag in the Supreme Court. Add up the Ombudsman and the High Court, and you’ve got Octopus Incorporated, just about as potent and powerful as any legal octopus that flourished during the Marcos dictatorship.

I understand the feud between Malacañang and the Lopezes has also been fueled by the TV giant ABS-CBN whose reporting and commenting have badly hurt Palace sensibilities. Antabayanan, as they say.