JDV at 75: presaged by turbulent events

Jose de Venecia Jr., five-time Speaker and fourth highest official of the land, turns 75 today. He was born in turbulent times. That 26th of December 1936, in the year-old Spanish Civil War, Franco’s Nationalist infantrymen were encircling the capital of Madrid and aircraft were bombing Barcelona. Mao Tse-tung was too busy re-strategizing his communist revolution to observe his own 43rd birthday, right after the Sian Incident in which Kuomintang generals had captured their own Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek for ignoring the Japanese occupation of Manchuria. Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his White House legal team were plotting over tea to neuter the US Chief Justice and five other “robber-baron magistrates” who kept blocking his New Deal reforms. The Philippines was steeped in agrarian unrest and power tussles between President Quezon and Vice President Osmeña. Could the heady events have presaged JDV’s trials and triumphs?

JDV entered politics at 33, as congressman of Pangasinan in 1969. Vigorously crafting economic laws, he was adjudged one of Ten Outstanding Lawmakers. Martial Law cut short his term in 1972. JDV reverted to business, becoming the prime Philippine contractor in the Middle East and Africa. He employed 51,000 Filipinos to build and run ports, waterworks, hospitals, mass housing, and oil explorations. As such he put in place the dollar-remittance system for overseas workers, which he had conceived as minister-economic counselor in 1966-1969. Sadly, JDV’s companies got caught in the middle of the Iraq-Iran War. Armies commandeered his offices and heavy equipment. JDV suffered heavy losses. But an oil strike in northeast Palawan somehow made up for it.

In the first post-Martial Law election of 1987, JDV retook his Pangasinan congressional seat. He helped form the Lakas Tao with Raul Manglapus’s Christian-Muslim Democrats that oversaw Fidel Ramos’s 1992 presidential win. Reelected that year, JDV was voted Speaker of the House of Representatives. Peace and economic growth were foremost. As Ramos’s special envoy, JDV held secret talks with military rebels for a ceasefire. He won over communist insurgents and Moro secessionists to sit at the negotiation table. High school ties with the National Democratic Front’s Luis Jalandoni helped break the ice with the former. Past trade dealings in Libya enabled him to solicit Muammar Gaddafi’s support for talks with the latter. JDV again was elected as congressman and Speaker in 1995. Among his major initiatives: passage of the Agriculture and Fisheries Modernization Act, and repeal of the Anti-Subversion Law.

JDV’s 1998 presidential run was a debacle. Popular actor-politician Joseph Estrada swamped him. His party split into three, JDV landed a far second among 11 contenders. Hibernating for two years, he emerged in late 2000 to call for smooth transition from the embattled Estrada to then-VP Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Estrada dismissed the idea, and soon was ousted by growing demonstrations in January 2001. That year, and again in 2004 and 2007, JDV was reelected congressman and Speaker.

Losing a child is most painful for any parent. Such tragedy befell JDV and second wife Gina Vera Perez ten days before his 68th birthday in 2004. Overheated Christmas lights exploded into flames and set the house ablaze, trapping and suffocating KC, their youngest daughter. She was only 16.

In 2007, 159 congressmen voted JDV Speaker for the fifth time. Weeks later son Joey, a telecoms businessman, blew the whistle on the infamous NBN-ZTE scam. An ensuing Senate inquiry bared the seeming involvement of presidential spouse Mike Arroyo. Protests grew loud for President Arroyo to not only void the $329-million (P17-billion) Chinese deal but also step down. Arroyo allies were incensed that JDV could not stop his son from attacking the President he had helped prop up. Joey convinced his dad that the ZTE deal was unconscionable. It contained a $200-million (P10-billion) kickback that generations of Filipinos would have to repay. A secret marine seismic pact with China also was exposed, in which Malacañang allowed aliens unconstitutionally to search for minerals in Philippine waters.

In October, two months after the ZTE exposé, a retired general aligned with the political opposition tipped off JDV, Joey, Gina and their lawyers about a plot to assassinate father and son. Life-term convicts purportedly would be let out of prison to do the dirty job. JDV promptly wrote Arroyo to investigate the matter and protect them from harm. In December the ruling majority congressmen and allied governors were called to Malacañang to thwart Arroyo’s looming impeachment; gift bags with P500,000 were distributed to the attendees. JDV purposely arrived four hours late to not partake of the bribery and political scheming.

Things came to a head in February 2008, when JDV referred to the House justice body a genuine instead of the usual diluted impeachment raps against Arroyo. Orchestrated by Arroyo’s congressmen-sons Mikey and Dato, 134 colleagues signed up to oust him from the Speakership. Before the erstwhile allies stood up one by one to stab him with their vote of no confidence, JDV recounted how he had helped Arroyo become VP and then President. He ended by saying she had up till then not bothered to respond to his assassination report.

JDV finished in 2010 his third and final consecutive term as congressman. Relieved of the Speakership, he refocused attention on regional politics. He founded and presently co-chairs the International Conference of (All) Asian Political Parties. He is also president of the Centrist Asia Pacific Democrats International. The two groups are deeply involved in peace efforts — between Thailand and Cambodia, among Nepal’s warring political factions, and between the ruling and minority parties in South Korea for a warming of ties with the North. Already they have helped ease tensions between bitter parties in Pakistan and in Afghanistan. JDV is bent on ending the tumult so prevalent 75 years ago.

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