Beware Cora de la P.: We’re just waiting for you to do the dirty deed

Eclipsing every disaster yesterday, from the snafu in the elections to the debacle of Manny Pacquiao, was the fall of our sunny Hawaii-bred Pinay teenager, the nation’s hope, from the Magic Three of that suddenly all-around popular TV spectacular, American Idol!

I speak of Jasmine Trias, 17, who sang to the very top – then was toppled as the Idol-show swept towards its finals next May 27. Flags should be lowered to half-mast. One of our columnists has threatened suicide. (But he won’t, I’ll wager.) As for our household, our maids were close to tears when I, killjoy supreme, announced the tragedy.

We’re proud of you, Jasmine! Not just for your marvelous and thrilling voice, but for your smile and your spirit. Sometimes foreigners misunderstand us, Pinoys and Pinays. They think we’re screwy, a few sneering at us as a people who celebrate our defeats, like Bataan, Corregidor, and Tirad Pass. Consuelo de bobo is the word for it, inherited from Madre España.

They scoff that we would rather, too often, fiesta rather than fight. Yet, what we celebrate is the spirit which buoys us up, carries us throughout every tribulation, setback or disappointment. Or defeat. There’s an old Tagalog proverb: In the place where you fell, that’s where you must rise. And we always rise, always go back to fight another day. Always rejoice. Lurking behind every tear is the Filipino smile. This is why our nation, and our people endure – even in the diaspora, working, and living, and braving danger, shrugging off loneliness, in a hundred distant lands so far from home.

"Home is where the heart is," one of our exiled writers keened so poignantly many decades ago. This is why we cheer for our girls like Jasmine, who never visited her parents’ homeland. She will always have our hearts.

* * *

Tsk, tsk, tsk.

A dozen friends rang me up yesterday that Social Security System President and CEO Cora de la Paz had bragged at the Manila Rotary Club that she was determined to pursue that very smelly P8 billion sneaky sale of the SSS shares in the giant Equitable PCIBank to a favored group – meaning, Henry Sy’s and Tessy Sy-Coson’s SM Group and Banco de Oro.

Why, that smug lady Cora, who thinks she’ll get away with it, even brought in this writer’s name, and recounted to the delighted Manila Rotarians how we had this conversation on the telephone in which I told her that this deal was no good. Then, she sneered: Since Max hasn’t gotten back to me after that phone call "seven months ago", then we’re doing the right thing, implying that old Max was dead wrong – and hinting that this reprobate journalist, his newspaper (The STAR, naturally, of which yours truly is chairman/publisher) and all other media, like the Inquirer, which attacked the midnight deal, etc., had been silenced, in that affair.

Oh well, Cora dear. The Americans have a saying that "the opera ain’t over till the fat lady sings". I’ve got news for the singer. We’ve just been waiting for that SSS giveaway bonanza to be breezily given away by Cora and Company before bringing down the roof on – you-know-whom.

In the meantime, I must say that for an accountant, if Cora P. really said we spoke "seven months ago", her arithmetic is very bad. We spoke on the phone on a Monday, January 12 – and she was the one who rang me up to piously blabber that the "agreement" had been made in good faith kuno and allegedly in the best interest of the SSS members. She had assured me, her own words, that it was "NOT YET A DONE DEAL".

I know her exact words, because I published them in my column, dated Tuesday, January 13, 2004, under the headline: If that strange sale of P8 billion SSS shares is not a ‘done deal,’ it must be immediately undone."

Simply go back to your archives, friends. This is still my position. It has not changed – and if Cora P. does it, then abangan ang kasunod na kabanata.

Madam Cora must not boast. I guess those guffawing Manila Rotarians could have missed her arithmetic as well. If that sweetheart deal, in which the Lucky Sys would have to pay for those billions of pesos worth of shares belonging to millions of poor, hardworking, needy SSS employees ONLY AFTER SIX YEARS (sanamagan, even Eddie Gil could have "bought" those delicious Equitable PCIBank shares on the same "easy-payment" basis) why did Cora and the SSS wait more than five months – until the Presidential elections were "over" (they ain’t over yet) – instead of concluding it immediately?

Was their hesitation because Cory P. and her confederates (and the deal’s godparents in Malacañang?) were scared of the political explosion and fall-out from such a giveaway transaction?

Madam de la Paz, in fact, foolishly mentioned that she had received "other offers" for those SSS Equitable PCIBank shares, but avowed she was "pursuing" (her own rash words) the Sy Deal.

Did she report I had warned her to "bid it out", in short I had told her to subject that multi-billion peso Christmas package to the law-mandated "public bidding" with full transparency?

When you’re tampering with the fiduciary funds of millions of SSS wage-earners and employees, who may wake up one day with not a centavo in their benefit accounts, you’re playing with hellfire.

And what about Senator Serge Osmeña’s earlier allegation that "two billion pesos" had been paid up, up-front? If so, where did that immense advance payment go? Gee whiz, Cora. What a Pandora’s Box you may have reopened, with yesterday’s Manila Rotary self-preening and ululation.

Somebody asked during the open forum, my Rotary Alikaboks informed me, whether Cory P. had tendered, as Cabinet members were asked to in the Palace, her "courtesy resignation". Madam de la Paz had replied she was intending to resign, anyway. After doing the deed? Not so fast, Madam SSS President and CEO. Not such a fast getaway. If you proceed with the deal, please stay and face the music.

It’s not too late, I remind you. Call for a public bidding. (Cory P. hinted, darkly, that "vested interests" have been trying to derail the stampede towards giving it to the Sys. Let those dastardly "vested interests" come out into the open then, and bid openly for those juicy shares – so the SSS members can reap the benefits that are due them, and they deserve.)

I won’t talk about the friendly connections the favored bunch have up high in the Palace. Or the weekend visits of a Palace couple to enjoy private movies in a posh "twin-palace" mansion in Dasmariñas Village. Unlike some people who spin stories about a single telephone conversation, I’m not a village gossip.

But think about the heinous crime of "plunder". In a certain case, this might turn out to be applicable. Remember, such a crime involves arrest without bail – and the possibility of the death penalty.

* * *

It’s interesting that Rotarian Santiago "Santi" Dumlao (did he come from Harvard or the old Philippine Harvardian?) – as master of ceremonies – quipped after Cora P.’s speech: "I guess after that we should ignore columnists!"

This sally of what passes for wit was appreciatively greeted by the Manila Rotarians in the Makati Shangri-La luncheon, quite well-attended, with a gale of laughter and applause. Gosh, I didn’t know Santi and the Rotarians hated columnists so much. What have columnists done to Santi, or to the Rotarians, except perhaps occasionally flunk "The Four-way Test"?

Golly, and to think that just a few months ago, this same Manila Rotary invested on this columnist, namely me, the honor of being elevated to the Journalism Rotary "Hall of Fame", along with Inquirer Columnists Amando Doronilla and Belinda Cunanan, not to mention GMA 7’s Jessica Soho. At the same meeting, Conrad de Quiros of the PDI was also rightly named "Columnist of the Year". I also got the award for "Journalist of the Year" not once but twice, by the Manila Rotary Club, once, "Columnist of the Year".

So, I suppose, it’s true. Fame is fleeting. (If ever being hailed by Manila Rotary means fame.) Oh, well. When I got that feedback yesterday on my cellphone, I must admit it was a humbling experience. After all, as a retired ex-Rotarian I’ll have to recall the motto: Service above self.

* * *

Many I’m sure still find it unbelievable and dismaying that KNP presidential candidate Fernando Poe Jr. (alias Ronnie Kelley Poe), who hails from San Carlos, Pangasinan, did not get one single vote in all the 34 precincts of the town of Sto. Tomas, Pangasinan.

How could everybody have voted for GMA (others, the explanation went, left their ballots "blank" for President) and nobody voted for FPJ in that municipality of 6,737 registered voters? This is raw, and reports have it happening in other places.

As I wrote in this corner four days ago, this has been a very bad election. The Commission on Elections, I earlier warned, will have to answer to the people.

Yesterday, I had lunch with my doctor and friend, Dr. Rose Marie Liquete, the famous kidney surgeon (who does 110 successfully kidney transplants a year). Rose Marie was furious. She had dutifully gone to vote last May 10 at her accustomed precinct, in Project 4, Quezon City. Would you believe? Her name had disappeared from the voters’ list, while that of her husband, who accompanied her, was still there! She was not angry at the teachers manning the voting precinct. In fact, they helpfully said: "Let’s look at the list of ‘Inactive Voters’, perhaps our name is there!"

Dr. Liquete was amazed to see the book of ‘Inactive Voters’ was three times or so thicker than the book which contained her precinct’s list of Active Voters. Did this mean those in the Inactive List had been "disenfranchised" by the Comelec? Anyway, Rose Marie’s name wasn’t in the Inactive List either.

I’m afraid that the estimate that some 800,000 to one million voters had been "disenfranchised" by their names, vanishing from their old precincts, or popping miles away, or disappearing altogether may be on the low side. Is it possible two million voters had found their names vanished in a puff of smoke? Or displaced by five million "new" voters on a miraculous dagdag basis?

No wonder FPJ’s fretting. And the mood could still turn dangerous.

* * *

THE ROVING EYE . . . In the senatorial race, on the other hand, the results may be certified today or tomorrow, by Saturday. That’s the latest word. At present, former Trade Secretary Manuel "Mar" Roxas, alias Mr. Palengke is running "Number One", and that will probably be true at the finish. He’s just invited some friends to a thanksgiving dinner tomorrow evening in Cubao, the home turf. It was supposed to be "open air" but with Typhoon Enteng’s rains in the vicinity, it has been moved indoors. Can’t tell you where. But Mar won’t deny who is his date, cute Korina. Who else?