The greatest crime during the Cory regime was the multi-billion dollar loss of selling off priceless art

GMA is not Snow White, nor is Makati Mayor Jejomar Binay one of the Seven Dwarfs, but perhaps Jojo ought to think twice about leading another opposition rally in the country’s Financial Center, his city of Makati, because it not only upsets traffic, but upsets business and investors – and drives them away.

Sure, indignation and, if you stretch it a bit, "national spirit" are worth far more than grubby money and the profit ledger, but when a nation has 84 million mouths to feed, it better not turn away jobs and investment. The principle of the "iron rice bowl" is just as valid among Makati’s poor, as it is among Makati’s rich.

So, enough should be enough.

Indeed, it’s increasingly clear that the "anti-GMA," "GMA Resign," and "Oust GMA" demonstrations and marches are losing steam rather than gaining ground or growing in numbers. This is not to say that GMA is simon-pure, or that there’s no possibility there was cheating in the May 2005 elections. But the "impeachment" move was shot down in the House of Representatives by 158 to 51.

As for the touted mass protests, while Senators like Ping Lacson and the perennial oppositionist Nene Pimentel shout defiance by roaring against GMA: "See you in the streets!" only very few seem to be taking to the streets. You can’t have "people power" without people. A mood of exhaustion has set in. What’s more, the tempest – in a tea cup – seems to be centered mostly in Metro Manila.

La Presidenta doesn’t need "martial law", as the bogey is now being raised, to put down potentially raging mobs or cow the populace. The populace seems tired of tumult, and simply wishes to get back to work – and earn a living for their families.

As for who’s being cowed, it’s only poor National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales who was reduced to eating a banana on public television after being badgered and bullied by the Senate (I didn’t say Gonzales was going bananas – but it looked somewhat like it).

Bert, who had to be brought to the hospital after his Senate "experience" and may now, by the way, have to undergo angioplasty, was placed "under arrest" by our Senators when he was unable (refused?) to answer their questions on the Venable contract. It was a lousy deal and foolishly included a "Cha-Cha" clause, but this didn’t justify treating Gonzales like some crooked imbecile.

I suggest to GMA that she transfer the unfortunate Norberto G. to less controversial duties, like running the Red Cross, or playing Tiddly-Winks. Gonzales may be brainy and savvy, but the way he fumbled the Venable "lobby" contract, then cracked up, I’m no longer certain he can be entrusted with our "national security." Obviously, he’s tired and sick.

As for our Senators, can’t we all agree to take those television cameras away so they’ll stop grandstanding and preening themselves for the idiot box? Our Senators seem to think the Senate is some sort of investigative body, or a resurrection of the old Spanish Inquisition, or a Torture Chamber. The alibi for conducting those Star Chamber or Inquisitorial hearings is that they are "in aid of legislation."

Sanamagan. This Thursday, the Senate en banc – it was reported out of three committees – is even "investigating" the North Rail project. The Chinese government, which granted the Philippines that $400 million for undertaking the North Rail’s rehabilitation and extension (at a piddling 3 percent interest over a 20-year period, by golly), is insulted at the insinuation it was a "shady" deal.

Other foreign investors are looking at how our politicians are kicking around their investments like a football, making them appear like crooks for investing their money. The way things are going in this nitpicking country, we’ll soon become the pariah among overseas investors, foreign government credit organizations, and portfolio managers. They’ll go elsewhere, where a subpoena doesn’t await them for their pains.

But what do our politicians care? They just want to rock the boat and appear like "crusaders" or "defenders of the public interest" on television. It’s the most self-destructive form of Show Biz. In aid of legislation? In aid of publicity or propaganda, is more like it.

I have my misgivings about the "Cha-Cha" and have said so often enough. However, it’s increasingly popular because, apparently, one of its well-publicized initiatives is to create just one House of Parliament – and thereby abolish the Senate.

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Speaking of obscenities, we must STOP the bargain-sale of the jewellery collection seized from the former First Lady and ex-Metro Manila Governor Imelda Romualdez Marcos by the Presidential Commission on Good Government! That surprisingly fabulous collection of jewellery which the new PCGG Chairman Ricardo Abcede is trying to rush to the auction block through the glitzy London auction house of Christie’s is worth far more, for starters, than the $10 million the PCGG estimates it will get for it. "The government needs the money" – my fish! It’s a firesale or worse, a stupidity, anyway you look at it.

No wonder Christie’s "experts" seem so eager to get their hands on it. Christie’s is on a roll, raking in more money than it has done in the past ten years – it’s reported that in the first half of 2005, Christie’s had a turnover of $1.6 billion as compared to its equally chrome-plated New York rival, Sotheby’s which had a current half-year turnover of $1 billion.

That Imeldific jewellery, consisting of crown jewels, art treasures of the Romanov Czars, the late Shah of Iran (Persia), and matchless Fabergés, belong to the patrimony of the Filipino people. They are the only things left from a previously fantastic collection of paintings, silvers and objets d’art, and irreplaceable buildings from New York City to San Francisco, accumulated by the ex-Superma’am Imeldific and the late Apo Ferdinand E. Marcos at the height of their 20-year hegemony – but which were sold-off at bargain basement prices (I won’t say fiddled) by the fastbreak operators of the Cory C. Aquino Administration.

Did the sainted President Cory Aquino know what her people were doing?

The present collection of jewellery (have some of the hoard earlier been pilfered?) must not be disposed of in the same cavalier and dubious manner by the same PCGG – which ought to have been tagged instead, the Presidential Commission on Bad Deals. They must be kept in our nation’s possession, and placed on exhibit for our people to see, in our National Museum or our Metropolitan Museum of Art, as well as for the delectation of tourists whom we’ve been desperately trying to attract.

In all those previous sales – into whose pockets did the money go? Into the government’s "coffers" where they vanished without a trace? Or what? Let’s not allow this to happen again.

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What set me on today’s verbose rampage? Well, it was a leading article in yesterday’s weekend Financial Times of London.

In the FT report, the writer Anthony Thorncroft revealed that last July no less than L18.6 billion (British pounds), or the equivalent of more than US$33.48 million, or more than ONE BILLION EIGHT HUNDRED NINETY THREE MILLION PESOS, had been paid at a Sotheby’s auction "for a Canaletto view of Venice."

The Financial Times which is published simultaneously in the major capitals of three continents, said "this is the highest auction price achieved this year to date."

In the light of the above sale, prepare to be shocked. In the year 1987, the Cory Government and the PCGG sold SEVEN Canaletto paintings of Venice, plus 122 other priceless oil paintings by Italian Masters, for the awful bargain price for the entire collection of ONLY US$16 MILLION! By gosh. That entire irreplaceable collection of "Paintings by Old Italian Masters" which was already on display in our Metropolitan Museum of Art here in Manila – gone with the wind!

If we had kept that collection, which rightly belonged to the heritage of our people, in our Museum, it would now be worth, by any calculation, a billion dollars. Yet we dispatched it for a measly $16 million.

Guess who snapped up the entire collection in a wink – the Italian Government! The Italians wanted their priceless art back, which had been sold to Imelda and her buyers by cash-strapped members of the Italian nobility and gentility when the Superma’am had hundreds of millions of bucks at her beck and call to finance her acquisitions. What a tragedy. That pathetic $16 million we got in 1987, could not today have been enough to buy one-fourth of a single Canaletto painting – yet we threw seven Canalettos into the sordid bargain.

Imagine that: we once had enough Old Masters to make our Museum a mini-Louvre or a slice of the famed Hermitage in St. Petersburg, something of which our pauper nation might be proud, yet we flushed this opportunity to be counted among the world’s art collecting nations down the toilet.

You don’t have to take my word for it. There’s an entire book, with an introduction by the wellknown connoisseur Mario Bellino, whose announced genealogy was "seven generations as specialists in Antique Italian Arts", assessing the extraordinary collection.

I looked through the pages of the volume to review the art we had lost – and almost wept. (If you want to know, former Ambassador Bienvenido R. Tantoco, Sr., was then president of the Metropolitan Museum Manila Foundation – so Benny, if you can manage to corner him, can bring you up to scratch as to the marvelous nature of those paintings).

Let’s begin with the seven beautiful paintings of the immortal Antonio Giovanni Canaletto (Venice 1697-1768). He needs no introduction, for his works hang in the finest museums in this planet – you only have to take one glance to identify the radiance of a Canaletto – a recorder of La Serenissima’s charms for 40 years of his life. Here’s what we once had in that collection: (1) La Piazetta of San Marcos square – a canvas 66 by 104 cm.; (2) Padua Landscape with Prato della Valle; (3) View of the Grand Canal in front of Saint Marcus Square with the Doggia Palace; (4) The San Marco Bassin with the island of San Giorgio; (5) The Departure of the Bucantaur on Ascension; (6) Portico of a Venetian Palace; and finally (7) The Grand Canal with the Rialto Bridge.

The "lost" collection contained the works of Segna di Buonaventura; Lippo Memmi; Andrea di Bonaiuto; Sano di Pietro; Neri di Bicci; Giovanni Bellini; Benvenuto di Giovane; Andrea de Niccolo; Rosalba Carriera; Marco Ricci; Alessandro Magnasco; Giovanni Battista Pittoni; Gaspare Diziani; Giacomo Amigoni; Michele Marieschi; Giovanni Battista Tiepolo; Gianantonio Guardi; Francesco Guardi; Pietro Longhi; Francesco Zuccarelli; Giusepe Zais; Francesco Zugno; Giandomenico Tiepolo – and others.

It wasn’t just a stupidity or a tragedy. The sale was a sin.

Who was Chairman of the PCGG when that foolish (sinister?) deal was made in 1987-88? Records show that from 1987 to 1988 it was Ramon Diaz, then, for just a month, Adolf Azcuna, now a Justice of the Supreme Court, and from 1988 to 1990, it was Matt Caparas? Will somebody tell us who made the deal? Sanamagan.

Many strange sell-offs occurred during the Cory dispensation. I’m not referring to the current controversy over the non-land reform of Hacienda Luisita, mind you. We won’t even classify that current brouhaha as GMA’s "revenge."

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THE ROVING EYE . . . I’m glad that Father James Reuter, S.J. joined us when we had lunch with President GMA last Monday in Malacañang – this gave me, at last, an opportunity to congratulate Father Jim on his more than well-deserved "Congressional Medal of Achievement" given "for his love of country and service for Filipinos." Father Jim came to our country as a young Jesuit Scholastic (seminarian) and has lived and worked with us, indeed become a "Filipino", for most of his life. I remember him when he was young, incredibly handsome (like the actor Paul Newman) and a friend of my Mama and our entire family. He was later slapped into prison camp by the Japanese. My mother, trying to support nine orphaned children, when she was widowed in wartime, became a modista or seamstress, and sewed the sotanas or cassocks for all of the Jesuits. Father Jim is one Jesuit who still wears such white sotanas with panache, although he’s grown thin as a result of his unending labors – we’re proud of his being a columnist for our STAR, a source of inspiration to us all, his readers and admirers. When Mom died, Father Reuter took care of the funeral Masses and other arrangements. He continues to be the best of the best. Those of my generation who studied at the Ateneo were blessed by having Father Jim as our teacher, as well as an entire slew of terrific American Jesuit professors: Father Thomas B. Cannon, S.J. (our Dean of Journalism), Father Tom O’Shaughnessy, S.J.; Father Henry Lee Irwin, S.J., who taught us speech, drama, and how to love life; Father Gough, S.J. who taught us Latin, Religion – and backbone – as well as handball; Father George Meany, S.J.; Father Austin Dowd, S.J. who taught us manhood and track & field ("For the first 50 meters run as fast as you can, and for the last 50 meters, run faster!"); Father Greer; Father Lewis Mudd; and, of course, my boss – I worked as his secretary – our late Rector and President, Father Bill Masterson, S.J., whose folly was to buy Loyola Heights and move the Ateneo there. God bless Father Jim – and God bless them all!