To score 'brownie points'

For his first official trip abroad since taking office on June 30, President Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III is taking tonight a regular commercial flight of the Philippine Airlines (PAL) to the United States. The President is keeping close to his campaign promise to keep to the barest minimum official foreign trips he would have to embark on. 

P-Noy is expected to follow tradition to designate his Vice President, Jejomar Binay “to act for and in his behalf” during his almost a week of being out of the country. With modern communications facilities, this is the usual arrangement that keeps the President tele-managing the affairs of the State from any point of the earth.

Actually, it will also be P-Noy’s first ever foreign travel after a decade since the last time he went abroad. According to him, his last foreign trip was while he was still a congressman from Tarlac in 1999 being a member of the House delegation to the US by former President Joseph Estrada.

 I had the chance to cover this presidential trip for The STAR  while still pounding the Palace beat. After the While House meeting in Washington D.C., the presidential party proceeded to New York where I distinctly recall some small talk we had then with Congressman Aquino.

Over a late night snack with us, ex-President Estrada was teasing Aquino to the latter’s rumored ex-girlfriend ABS-CBN news anchor Korina Sanchez who was part of the media delegation to the US state visit. But Aquino quickly riposted that Estrada was not up to date with the news. Aquino drew out his wallet from his pant’s pocket and showed to Estrada and us a photo of his supposed new girlfriend. It turned out to be a photo of Bernadette Sembrano who was then a reporter covering Congress for rival station GMA-7.

Estrada was impressed, except us who chorused in jest: “Does Bernadette know she is your girlfriend?” Aquino dismissed our joke and put back his wallet to his pocket. A decade later, the 50-year old Aquino is still a bachelor. Sembrano is now married as well as Korina who happily married last year P-Noy’s vice presidential runningmate, former Senator Mar Roxas II.

I just shared with you this bit of history as rumors persisted last week over the latest gossip in town about the supposed falling out of P-Noy with Valenzuela City Councilor Shalani Soledad. Dubbed as the “First Girlfriend,” Shalani even made an official statement to deny the rumors. Subsequently, P-Noy also denied the rumored break up and explained that he and the First Girlfriend are just very busy in their respective work and ”have not had the chance to talk to each other.”

Apparently fueled by lack of better things to do by those behind it, this trivial pursuit over presidential love life greased the rumor mills for the past few days. Thankfully, the Chief Executve is more focused on the affairs of the State and not on the affairs of the heart. That is what I like to believe so.

And speaking of affairs of the State, the President is leaving the country after going through first with the 83-page report submitted to him by the incident investigation and review committee (IIRC) on the Luneta hostage crisis on Aug. 23.

He created the IIRC to look into what went wrong and who should be held responsible for the tragic end of this incident where eight of the 25 hostages were killed in a bungled police rescue.

Justice Secretary Leila De Lima, chairperson of the five-man IIRC, earlier revealed they gave to the President a list of 12 names of government and police officials, including members of media who would be held responsible.

P-Noy promised he would announce before he leaves today for the US what actions and decision he would make based on the findings and recommendations of the IIRC report.

From official Palace announcement, the IIRC report will be first furnished to the government of the People’s Republic of China, through their embassy here in Manila before the same IIRC report would be released for dissemination to the media.

In the meantime, a lot of speculations circle around the blame being pointed to the direction of Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim who acted as the chairman of the local crisis committee during the 11-hour hostage drama.  

The last time I talked to him, Mayor Lim seemed to be unperturbed on the ax hanging over his head on this Luneta hostage fiasco. As a former policeman himself, Mayor Lim, however, conceded lapses on how the policemen did not take down hostage-taker Police Capt. Rolando Mendoza. He cited at least four instances when Manila SWAT policemen could have taken a clear shot at Mendoza but did not do so. Perhaps, he pointed out, the hostage-taker was a fellow policeman.

Mayor Lim insisted also that chief hostage negotiator Superintendent Orlando Yebra did nothing wrong all throughout the hostage drama. In fact, the mayor told me he would even recommend that Yebra be appointed to become a police station commander in Manila. Mayor Lim, however, has only disappointment over Chief Superintendent Rodolfo Magtibay who went on official leave as Manila Police District chief right after the Luneta hostage rescue fiasco. Magtibay got Lim into trouble in his lack of grasp of the Mayor’s language.

This   time lag from last Friday when it was submitted to P-Noy until today, he promised to take actions already gave rise to suspicions and speculations of a whitewash of the case. Presidential spokesperson Edwin Lacierda quickly doused it.

Lacierda, along with Vice President Jejomar Binay and Department of Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo were earlier supposed to fly to Beijing a few days after the Aug. 23 Luneta hostage drama to formally present the Philippine government an apology for the mishandling of the incident. 

However, Beijing advised the Palace that they were not ready to receive the official delegation of P-Noy on such a short notice but would prefer that this trip be done only after a thorough investigation shall have been completed. From most recent official words of the Palace, the Binay-led delegation to Beijing would only be able to do this task after P-Noy comes back next week from the US.

P-Noy expects to score big “brownie points” from this US trip to offset whatever he may have lost from this first crisis episode of his administration.