Torn and frayed in Manila

These Crooked Things, Remind Me of You (Erap)

All perfectly legal

I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when I saw that there is finally to be a criminal prosecution over the BW Resources scandal. The scandal even took place last century—the worthless stock, inflated by the stale gas of Erap’s cronies, peaking on 10 October 1999. At that time it was a mere 5,000% its value the previous January.

The funny thing is that the facts are so well known and Dante Tan and Erap’s guilt so palpable that it would take a jury of 5-year-olds half a day to convict the defendants. One of the best summaries of BW is by Greg Hutchinson in Hot Money Warm Bodies. In it he identifies Estrada as a joint owner of BW, a fact that came out during the impeachment trial. He also quotes Edgardo Espiritu, Estrada’s finance secretary from June 1998 to January 2000:

“[Estrada] was a bit excited as he told me ‘Ed, I’m earning quite a lot from BW Resources.’”

You can just see old Erap drooling into his bigote can’t you?

In fact so addicted was Erap to his tumescent stock that he telephoned the chair of the Securities and Exchange Commission, Perfecto Yasay (remember him?), no less than five times to “persuade” him to clear his friend Dante Tan.

Well it may have taken over nine years for a prosecution and a revival of interest in the murder of Bubby Dacer, but better late than never I suppose. Incidentally, while pondering the incredible period of time this has taken, I glanced down to the next story, on a large sale of stock in Lucio Tan’s companies. One sentence in particular stuck out: “The PCGG has been running after Tan since 1987.” So perhaps the BW Resources prosecution isn’t so slow after all.

The Maias by Jose Maria Eça de Queirós

Almost all of the wonderful 19th century European literature that has come down to us depicts a bourgeois, or haute bourgeois, universe. This is certainly true of the great chronicle of a Lisbon family in decline, The Maias, by the late 19th-century Portuguese writer Jose Maria Eça de Queirós.

From a moral perspective, there is little to admire in the decadent and self-indulgent main character, Carlos de Maia, who wastes his talents and his family’s wealth on pursuing a number of dalliances, seems incapable of bringing any practical plan to fruition, and idles his way through the novel’s 600 pages.

Still, that’s not the point. What I loved about The Maias was de Queirós’s leisurely and ironic style and the effortless way he brings Lisbon and the nearby coastal town of Sintra to life.

The slow and inevitable caving in of a once great family is a poignant thing. We see it in Manila in all the time—think of the families you know, the dynasties that once controlled business empires, produced senators and presidents, now surviving on the rent from their one remaining property or on the kindness of relatives overseas. Of course it is in the nature of progress that families should rise and fall, and it is just as well that they do, but it would take a hard heart not to be moved by the frittering away, rather than the spectacular Bernie-Madoff-like collapse, that leads a once famous house down the road to obscurity.

Gathered around the somber main theme of The Maias are some wonderful and memorable characters: the blackguard Damaso, Carlos’s upstanding grandfather, Afonso de Maia, and his wastrel friend Ega; the mysterious Englishman, Craft; the aging poet Alencar … taken together, they bring to life a society that is in itself in a decline. Nineteenth century Lisbon is cosmopolitan, educated, and urbane, yet like the house of the Maias you sense it is going down, that Portugal’s great days are already in the past.

Perhaps I have made The Maias sound rather gloomy, but it isn’t really. The rather melodramatic plot, including its tragic, though rather prefigured, denouement, easily maintains the reader’s interest, as does de Queirós’s pitch-perfect understanding of the world he subtly satirizes. It is a melancholic book in a way, but then isn’t all great literature?

Governor Panlilio will need his mountain boots in 2010

Outsiders’ stars usually shine brightest just before serious campaigning begins. In the UK, this manifests iteself in claims the next election could provide a “break through” for the Liberal Democrats (the perennial third party). In money-dominated US politics, this is when the billionaires, the Bloombergs, the Forbes, and the Perots, start to fish for support.

The hard truth is that it is very difficult to break established political blocs in any country. The Liberal Democrats have never received more than 25% of the vote in the UK and Ross Perot, the most successful US third party candidate of modern times, received only 18.9% in 1992.

The possibility of a Panlilio-Padaca ticket in the 2010 presidential ticket has been greeted with tremendous enthusiasm in some quarters, including this one, but we will need to wait until the provincial strongmen start beautifying the landscape with their handsome campaign posters before we know how realistic its chances are. As the dawn breaks on the campaigning season, the mountain that lies before Among Ed is going to appear through the early morning mists and it’s a steep one.

Nevertheless, there are pointers in favour of a Panlilio run this time.

Even if we forget the surreal prospect of another shot at the presidency by Erap, at this stage the field looks quite dispersed. It is futile to talk of Philippine politics in terms of “parties,” since these form and dissolve as quickly as high-school cliques, but recent years have been dominated by two main “blocs”: a populist bloc congregated boozily around Joseph Estrada, and a neo-conservative bloc led first by Fidel Ramos, then by Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (in the executive branch) and Joe de Venecia (in the legislature), and since their falling out, simply by Gloria. The dominance of these two blocs can be seen in the results from 2004, when their combined tally represented 76% of the vote.

The Erap and administration blocs will be heavily represented in 2010 and presumably heads will be knocked together to stop a repetition of Ping’s disastrous campaign in 2004, which split the Erap bloc and effectively denied FPJ the presidency (along with the Garci shenanigans of course).

Let’s say for the sake of argument that the Erap bloc puts up Binay and Escudero (sorry Loren) and the administration fields de Castro and Bayani.

That still leaves Manny Villar and Mar Roxas, who will almost certainly run very well- funded campaigns, not to mention the usual crazies (Eddie Gill, Imelda, et al) who pop up to brighten our mundane lives at such times.

These four teams have the money and machinery to pick up at least 5 million votes (about 15% of the electorate) each. That leaves about 40% to be divided between them and a credible fifth candidate. If Panlilio runs a decent campaign, that could be him. If the votes are spread fairly evenly, 25%-30% might just win it. The victor would have great difficulty in claiming a mandate, and we can expect the usual post-poll protests, but that will be the case whoever wins.

Panlilio’s greatest ally will be public dissatisfaction with the current system and the desire for a moral alternative. Still, such disenchantment has been building for a long time and look who was voted in last time. Panlilio also has to expect opponents to work hard to blacken his pure image; criticisms have started already, and it will be difficult for him to make it all the way through campaigning season without some muck sticking to that white shirt he usually wears.

Panlilio’s two most notable achievements have been increasing the revenues from quarry operations from Mount Pinatubo (he collected P29.4 million in his first month in office, which was about the same as his predecessor collected in a year) and his return of a paper bag containing P500,000 after a meeting between President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and local officials in Malacañang. These are impressive, but will they be enough to take him all the way?

Panlilio’s victory in 2007 was remarkable, but it took place in very particular circumstances. Even by the standards of Philippine elections, his two opponents (the corrupt and useless Lapid and the wife of the provincial gambling lord, Bong Pineda) seemed to come straight from Third World Politics for dummies. He won’t have such easy targets in 2010.

One of the most important questions Panlilio will have to answer has been posed by blogger Carlo Ople: “If you really want to stay in politics, why not focus on Pampanga first?” That’s a legitimate question, I think. Among Ed has been governor of Pampanga for less than two years, shouldn’t he complete his work there before aspiring to national office? There are legitimate answers to that question but Ed and his advisers are going to have prepare them because it is a point that is already being made.

I am not trying to pour cold water on Brother Ed’s prospects; personally I would love it if he ran and won, especially if he is in tandem with the courageous governor of Isabella, Grace Padaca. If I had the vote, I would certainly put my cross against their names. But winning against the entrenched patronage network that has led the country into its current mess would be an enormous feat, greater in its way even than Obama’s victory last November.

The odds against a fifth candidate, even one comparatively well known like Panlilio, are enormous. His supporters may argue that Panlilio and Grace Padaca won the gubernatorial races in Pampanga and Isabella with no funds and no machinery but surely it would be impossible to run a national campaign on a shoestring. As Nicanor Perlas points out, politicians from outside “the system” can win, but only if they manage to mobilize civil society on an almost unprecedented scale. If there is to be a fifth column in 2010 it will need more than Brother Ed’s sincerity, it will require a campaign with enormous organizational expertise, support from the traditional leftist parties (Bayan Muna is already making positive noises), a huge fundraising effort, and possible links with Mar Roxas's campaign. All that is possible, but since it is starting from zero, the campaign has to start right away.

PS A half hour interview with Ed Panlilio can be found here.

The “Gentleman” Kidnapper

It really turns my stomach to hear kidnapper Albader Parad try to claim the high ground after the release of Mary Jean Lacaba yesterday. Here is what Richard Gordon had to say about the Parad’s behaviour after the release:

Gordon said Parad, in their talk, sounded more aggressive than before. “It was as if he stands on moral ground because of the release of Mary Jean,” he said.

Parad himself claimed that the release was part of a “gentleman’s agreement” with Gordon:

“We just wanted to show that we fulfill what we promise,” Parad said in an interview in Filipino at around 8:30 p.m., adding: “They know no ransom was paid.”

Well what a great guy. Yet this is the same gentleman Parad who has subjected three people and their families to unimaginable distress for the past 77 days. The same Parad who has been hogging the headlines with his gruesome threats of beheadings of innocent people. I doubt whether too many people will be impressed by his new found trustworthiness.

Parad even tried yesterday to shift the blame onto the government:

“But if [the government] will not try to understand us — didn’t they say that life is precious? So, let them show us that the lives of these two are precious. If not, we cannot do anything. The lives of these two are even less important to us.”

Quite sickening.

Meanwhile the Silvio Berlusconi award for tactless sexism goes to Sulu Vice Governor Sahidullah, who described Mary Jean Lacaba as “slimmer, prettier,” after her hellish experience. Nice one Gov!