GMA’s new Cabinet?

As Alikabok said earlier in this corner, La Presidenta already has her "new" Cabinet drawn up. But she continues to hold their names in pectore, despite the rumors already whizzing around town.

If you’ll recall, GMA told us at the Manila Overseas Press Club dinner a week and a half ago, that if Congress procrastinates in forming its Commission on Appointments, she would announce her Cabinet choices by August 18, "at the latest". Why, that’s next Wednesday. Perhaps even sooner – like tomorrow, Monday the 16th?

In any event, here’s the list, as alleged by our veteran keynote peeper, Alikabok J. Alikabok, in the Palace.

Executive Secretary Alberto "Bert" Romulo – not to be confused with his cousin, "Triple R" – will be designated Foreign Affairs Secretary. The President and Bert, one of her most trusted confidants, deliberated for weeks whether Bert would be more effective remaining Executive Secretary, or being given the more pro-active post of DFA Secretary, particularly in the light of our currently tattered relations with the United States. A former senator himself with GMA, Romulo very well knows both sides of the street.

If Bert finally accepts this job, the post of Executive Secretary will probably go to – surprise – Defense Secretary Eduardo Ermita. A former Chief Peace Negotiator, Batangas congressman, and retired general (vice chief of staff), Ermita is also very close to former President FVR.

Who’ll become Defense Secretary? An even bigger surprise, he may be former Presidential Chief Legal Counsel and actual grise eminence in the Palace, Avelino "Nonong" Cruz. Nonong and his law partner, Pancho Villaraza, have for a long time been closer-than-close legal strategists and advisers of La Emperadora and family. Truly, the Firm is firmly in situ in the Palace, the Judiciary, and, if the appointment is confirmed by GMA this week, will include in the sphere, the Military establishment as well.

As incoming Secretary of Justice? The name we hear is that of Congressman Raul Gonzales. Indeed, our friends in the DOJ and those working in the Justice buildings and its judicial sala, tell me that Raul has been visiting there from time to time, as if to figure out in his mind how the furniture ought to be rearranged.

As DepEd Secretary? The name of former Batanes Congressman Butch Abad has for the past couple of weeks been at the top of the short-list.

There are several more names, but it’s Sunday morning, so it’s time for relaxation – not the adding of tension to those who hope to cling on to their Cabinet posts, or to be miraculously appointed.

From the above "alleged" designations, though, the Cabinet changes seem to be more like a reshuffle, rather than the formation of a bold new Cabinet.

We wrote in this corner several weeks ago that Bert Romulo – who’s GMA’s already pronounced "Mr. Integrity" in the Cabinet, a brilliant lawyer (with a doctorate in laws from Madrid, sobresaliente), an experienced solon, and, most of all, a gentleman and a caballero of the old school – is a great Executive Secretary. In the same column, we said he would be equally – if not more – effective as Secretary of Foreign Affairs, to spearhead the more aggressive foreign policy we’ll now have to launch to outweigh the setbacks we’ve lately been experiencing.

For her part, DFA Secretary Delia D. Albert has definitely been doing a fine job, and was particularly tried and tested during the Angelo de la Cruz crisis.

But it’s the President’s call – whatever she decides.

* * *

The President, it’s being speculated, is "playing the China card". This may sound cynical, but in the netherworld of diplomacy and geopolitical strategy, it’s Realpolitik in the old Bismarckian tradition.

China is, after all, the growing superpower in our part of the world, and will dominate Asia and the Pacific economically, if not militarily, during the coming decade. The Chinese invented the word kowtow, so our Chief Executive must make it clear, politely of course, that she’s going to Beijing not to kowtow, but to powwow.

During a small private dinner we had with her in the home of our STARGATE partner and this newspaper’s columnist, Babe Romualdez, more than three weeks ago, GMA intimated to us that she might go to China if certain pending agreements are formalized, such as the building of the railroad, with its first stage being Pampanga, then the North Rail project itself.

This appears to be now on track (no pun intended), with her September 2 to 4 visit now having been upgraded to a full-dress State Visit by China’s President Hu Jintao, and the breadth of prospective cooperation being expanded to infrastructure, energy, agricultural development, and investments, not merely transport.

I’m informed that even the supply of military equipment could even be brought up, but this snippet is probably being bandied about as a "heads up" notice to Washington, DC that the good old U.S.A. may not be our only potential source of hardware et cetera. Since we’re down in the dumps with the Dubya Vulcans, the guys and gals (like Condi) who run things within the Beltway, cozying up to the Zhongnanhai neighborhood Party Center PBSC (Politburo Standing Committee) might be timely.

It would be a timely reminder, too, that "geography" is one of our fixed assets, and that not all of America’s troubles and options are centered in the Middle East.

* * *

In the meantime, GMA will have an opportunity to get to know China’s new leadership better, despite the obvious whirlwind nature of her planned visit.

Most interesting of all, naturally, is Hu Jintao himself, 62 – his birthday falls in December – who’s concurrently General Secretary of the CCP (the Chinese Communist Party), Chairman of the Central Military Commission, and totum factotum, all around.

His term runs from 2002 to 2007, but in the People’s Republic of China, this is usually open-ended.

The Communist Party, itself is composed of only 65 million members, but it dominates every sector of society, from village leaders, to factory to academe, and all the way to the top. Newspaper editors, bureaucrats, and so forth belong to it (must belong, really), and these members run everything from public health to universities to police intelligence.

Hu heads what is known as the Fourth Generation of leaders. The previous regime of Jiang Zemin (who handpicked Hu as his successor ten years before the succession) is dubbed the Third Generation. Andrew Nathan of Columbia University and Bruce Gilley of Princeton – who did a special study of "China’s New Rulers: The Secret Files" or Disidai – say that the idea of numbering generations of leaders came from Deng Xiaoping (whom I interviewed in 1988), China’s leader from 1978 to 1997. Deng, one of the original Long Marchers, identified the First Generation as that of Mao Zedong, the founding Great Helmsman, who ruled from the beginning in 1949 to his death in 1976, and continues to be ritually revered (his preserved body on view in Beijing guaranteeing him immortality despite disastrous Great Leap Forward, a violent Cultural Revolution which crushed millions of lives, and a number of spectacular palpaks).

Deng, who was one of Mao’s victims, cannily didn’t demonize Mao but set China on the road to riches and capitalism with a Communist face – and declared his own era as the Second Generation. Before Deng died on February 19, 1997 of advanced Parkinson’s disease and lung complications he had already announced Jiang Zemin as the "core" of the Third Generation.

Jiang had a tough time of it, since he had to weather the storm of worldwide indignation which descended on China when Deng’s Second Generation gang crushed the "pro-democracy" students and workers in the 1989 Tienanmen massacre.

However, Jiang pulled it off. Why, when we went to Beijing a few years ago, at a gala banquet in the Great Hall of the People, he even regaled his happily applauding audience with a resounding rendition of O Sole Mio.

Unlike his predecessor Jiang, President Hu Jintao is no singer – and diplomacy was never his forte.

A hydropower engineer, he had been originally spotted for upcoming leadership by First Party Secretary Song Ping of Gansu province, a sort of Search Committee chairman for Deng Xiaoping.

Song happened to be one of four officials tasked with selecting the list of candidates to be elected to the new Party leadership in the 14th Party Congress of October 1992.

Hu was one of four that Mr. Song and his group nominated to represent the younger generation. The others were Wu Bangguo (now PSBC member and chairman of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference), Wen Jiabao in the ruling Politburo, and Premier of the State Council), and Li Changchun (PBSC and Deputy Premier).

Aside from Luo Gan of the ruling PBSC, who’s Secretary of the Central Disciplinary Inspection Commission – under whose internal security agency China’s tough crackdown on criminality is conducted, with 15,000 criminals executed every year, none of the Fourth Generation leaders, including Hu, have studied abroad, or had any extensive international experience.

On the other hand, Hu – like Jiang Zemin – had been brought up in Jiangsu province and in Shanghai. (So the Shanghai influence, contrary to previous misunderstanding, is still strongly felt in Beijing). After a stint as head of the Communist Youth League in the 1980s, Hu served as Party Secretary in Tibet from 1988 to 1992. He was brought back to Beijing, finally, suffering from altitude sickness (from the rarefied heights of the Roof of the World in the highest Himalayas). He does not, however, suffer from attitude sickness. He was boosted to the top by Party loyalty. He’s known to be sobersided, businesslike and unused to Jiang or Deng-type banter. Nor is he interested in Western culture.

I guess that’s enough of a primer on which La Presidenta can begin to gauge what she accomplishes in her snap visit. Hu himself, by the way, may be pragmatic and even dispassionate about Taiwan’s cheeky President Chen Shui-bian, but he will sternly insist that Taiwan should never dare use that bad word, "independence".

You can be sure that GMA will be bombarded with the idea that she must reaffirm the "One-China Policy".

Like they say in those "Highlander" sword-action television movies, "There can be only one!"