Healing period

The Lenten season gives us all the opportunity to take a much-needed rest from work and respite from the day-to-day grind of life. It is also a chance for us to take stock of how we live our life. But while we turn to spiritual contemplation during Holy Week, it is something that should not be limited to this occasion only.

I admire people who turn to their deep religious faith which help them cope and survive crises and challenges that come their way. However, being endowed with earthly material wealth certainly could help people in distress cope with life’s crisis better than ordinary mortals could.

This I saw how ousted Speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. and his wife, Manay Gina managed to bounce back though badly battered, but definitely not beaten from their worst nightmares. The couple invited some of us STAR editors last Friday to a lunch at their residence in South Forbes in Makati City. The ex-Speaker told us the house belongs to his wife’s late mother but they renovated it after they lost to a deadly blaze their family residence at the nearby Dasmariñas Village.

On Dec. 17, 2004, a fire blamed on exploding Christmas bulbs gutted the second floor of the Speaker’s residence, trapping their 16-year old daughter KC in one of the family rooms. Manay Gina has already moved on after this tragedy in their family after a long period of grieving over the loss of their youngest daughter.

Learning from this personal tragedy, Manay Gina organized the INA Foundation, short for Inang Naiwan ng Anak. They put up the INA Healing Center in Batasan Hills in Quezon City. There, the INA Center has trained “grief mentors” to counsel parents, especially grief-stricken mothers, to cope with the loss of their beloved child and move on. She is actively involved also at The Haven for Women Center she helped put up in Alabang, Muntinlupa City to care for battered women and victims of rape and other forms of abuses.

Their daughter KC would have turned 21 years old Monday, April 6, or a day after President Arroyo’s birthday, Manay Gina added. She chuckled when she fondly mentioned this footnote upon mention of her estranged friend and “kumare” President Arroyo. It’s been more than 14 months now when the Filipino nation witnessed the bitter parting of ways between the two erstwhile allies when De Venecia, with the blessings of the President, was stripped off the Speakership by his colleagues in the House of Representatives.

De Venecia was ousted as Speaker shortly after his businessman-son and namesake Joey de Venecia III, linked her and her husband, First Gentleman Jose Miguel Arroyo to irregularities and corruption in the $330-million national broadband network (NBN) deal.

Mrs. Arroyo’s House allies led by her two congressmen-sons Mikey and Dato and brother-in-law Iggy engineered the House coup and replaced De Venecia with Davao Rep. Prospero Nograles in February last year. Even Congressmen from the ruling Lakas-Christian Muslim Democrats (CMD) that De Venecia headed joined the ouster plot against the former Speaker.

At the same time that he lost the Speakership, De Venecia lost the presidency of the Lakas party also to Nograles. Certain Lakas Congressmen even called for the ouster of De Venecia from the party that he co-founded with former President Fidel V. Ramos.

He vehemently denied reports, though, that he purportedly wanted to regain the Speakership. “I’ve been Speaker five times already. That’s unprecedented in history. So what’s the point when I am on my last term as congressman,” De Venecia pointed out. Either son Joey or Manay Gina is being groomed to run for his congressional district in next year’s elections.

This was after De Venecia reportedly asked his reinstatement as Speaker as a condition before he agrees to support the renewed Charter change (Cha-cha) initiatives in Congress. De Venecia insisted anew that these Cha-cha moves were being pushed even this late at a time in order to extend Mrs. Arroyo in office. “I smoked them out,” De Venecia admitted.

Unlike the Cha-cha he pushed when he was still the Speaker, De Venecia cited he made transparent campaign to push for the proposed shift to parliamentary system of government. He charged that the Cha-cha Resolution authored and filed by Speaker Nograles is being pushed under the guise of amending only the economic provisions of the 1987 Constitution. 

De Venecia was quoted as saying yesterday by our House reporter that Cha-cha was apparently the major reason why the incumbent Speaker got the historic lowest performance rating in the opinion survey done by the Social Weather Station (SWS). Results of the first quarter survey of the SWS showed that Speaker Nograles had a net rating of -22, down by five points from -17 in the previous quarter. The SWS noted this was the lowest rating yet for Speakers of the House since 1990.

A check with the SWS website showed that two months before De Venecia’s ouster, a survey gave him a +1 satisfaction rating. However, his lowest marks were -8 and -5 in March and May 2005. “As far as I could remember, the lowest rating I received was -2, when Singapore executed Flor Contemplacion in 2001,” he said. He also got low marks when the House approved the expanded value added tax (EVAT) and when he was pushing hard for Cha-cha in late 2006.

While he is no longer the No. 4 highest-ranking official in the government, De Venecia remains a favorite guest speaker in various international fora. In fact, he just flew back from Kazakhstan where he addressed the 10th meeting of the International Conference of Asian Political Parties.

De Venecia said he looks forward to putting together Asian political parties that will take him abroad again in June. He swears he has no rancor in his heart and has been sleeping soundly, with a balm of clear conscience. He now has time to cook for friends. He invited us to a special lunch he personally prepared for us. He whipped two of his favorite pasta menus, pasta su tinta or spaghetti cooked in squid ink and spaghetti cooked in crab’s fat (aligi). He even welcomed us in his kitchen still wearing his apron and wide smile from ear to ear.