Butz on a fourth option

A frenzy of pro- and anti-GMA activities is going on – rallies and debates and media forums. The Bulong Pulungan sa Westin Philippine Plaza has been inviting resource persons to talk on current political issues. Tuesday, one of two speakers was Congress-man Agapito "Butz" Aquino, who said three solutions are being offered to settle the issue of what to do with the President: keep her where she is (status quo), impeachment, and resignation. He offered a fourth option, which, he said, had come to him at the heat of the moment in these tempestuous times.

Maintaining the status quo won’t do, he said. The longer the President stays in Malacañang, the more people will be asking for her to step down.

Nor will impeachment work: with majority of legislators in Congress being pro-administration, the process of impeachment will be long and arduous, and predictable: she will not be impeached.

Her resigning her job will be well nigh impossible; although that would have been her easiest way out of the mess she is in.

Butz’s fourth option is an original idea, creative, and incredible: post-dated resignation.

"She will say when she will resign, she will specify the date she will leave her office. Like, say, six months from now. She will keep her promise. But will she? We’ll hold it to her, maybe she signs the agreement with her blood."

The other speaker, James Marty Lim, who looks like Hollywood actor Paul Diamond but who actually has served as president of the League of Barangay Chairmen for four years, opined that for us to have reforms, it would not be through charter change, but by going back to the two-party system. Before (when he was not yet born), things were easier with only the Nacionalista and Liberal parties slugging it out. But Marcos decided to stay in power forever, and so he maneuvered a shift from the presidential to the parliamentary system. And that’s how we got to be where we are.

As to why he wants the President to step down, Butz said he equated cheating with the bar examinations. The 10 topnotchers are proclaimed as such, but a month later, when it is discovered that they had cheated in the examinations, they are disbarred for life. "I am not saying that the President cheated in the last elections. But if you listen to the telephone conversations between her and the Comelec official, they were not social conversations. If the President is proven in the end that she participated in an anomaly in the electoral process, she will have to be asked to give up and we mount the pressure for her to quit."

To Joanne Ramirez’s question if resignation was in the horizon, Butz said, "If they can prove that the President has anomalous deals with Garcillano, she doesn’t have to resign now. Huwag tayong magmadali. Hinay-hinay lang.’ But Butz said he is certain that the woman’s voice in the tapes in question is "distinctly" that of the President.

James, a business ad graduate of De la Salle University, said that in his numerous visits to barangays around the country, he felt that people are pushing for a parliamentary system as the solution to the nation’s ills. But he tells them the two-party system is the answer. Under the present multi-party setup, the candidates who are popular are the ones who win in the elections. Filipinos have no respect for the local governments, he said. "Nobody cares." And media is no help either – obsessed as it is with putting out stories that sell, and with some of its practitioners also engaged in corrupt practices.

But if Gloria goes, who will take her place, Frank Evaristo and Casiano Navarro asked. And indefatigable lawyer Charito Planas went into a discourse on the unscrupulous practices of voters who milk candidates and elected public officials with demands for contributions. Candidates are thus forced to retrieve their campaign expenses by accepting payolas.

Saeed A. Daof of the Center for the Promotion of Peace and Development in Mindanao made the observation that there is some degree of agitation to force the President to resign, thereby making it appear that the people are being rushed to make a judgment. They also want both the President and the Vice President to resign. The Vice President is in line to succeed the President in case she leaves her post before the end of her tenure, unless he is also booted out of office if former Senator Loren Legarda wins her protest. He added that everybody is so focused on the Garci tapes that not enough attention is being directed at amending the Constitution and changing the presidential system to a parliamentary system, which might be the solution to our present problems.

Butz has three basic requirements on how to improve this country: 1) Look for a principled leader who has implementing abilities and programs, 2) A leader who will put priority on peace and order, and 3) Good governance, which means constant dialogues between the governor and the governed.

Does such a creature exist? Butz was pressed into admitting that he sees Ping Lacson as his ideal leader. He also said that he counts as principled leaders Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Rosales and Haydee Yorac.

Unfortunately those two are not interested in running for president.

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The idea of a bloody takeover is repulsive to those who want a peaceful transition. Manila Archbishop Gaudencio Rosales issued a pastoral letter recently, saying that violence can victimize the innocent and "inflict wounds so deep that will take generations to heal."

The most compelling part of the message is his call for Filipinos to "discern carefully before God, what is truly for the immediate and long-term good of our country." He said that we should "not fall prey to those self-seeking politicians from all the different political parties, who have held the country’s future hostage to their own ambitions, and have brought us to where we sadly find ourselves today."

But the good Archbishop also reminded the President that she should be prepared to account for the impropriety of her action and "lapse of judgment" in calling Comelec Commissioner Garcillano at a time when Congress was still in the process of canvassing the results of the election.

A few days earlier, former President Cory Aquino expressed adherence to the Constitution and observance of the rule of law instead of seeking solutions which could prove to be worse than the ailment that it seeks to cure. This she told Susan Roces, widow of the late presidential candidate and movie actor Fernando Poe Jr., during her visit to the movie star’s home.

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