DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL
She will run
Sunday, 07 20, 2003
Malacañang will not admit it, but its drumbeaters betray an inordinate desire of the President to run again. Take a look at the proposed summit between Danding Cojuangco and the President, after Danding had said he will run not because somebody else will not run. Had Danding agreed, was this not meant to discredit him and portray him as toeing the Malacañang script? Also, the meetings at Forbes Park can only mean that Malacañang’s minions are now counting how much they can spend for the elections, and Braganza’s brazen threat of electioneering charges against those who are out merely to feel the public pulse is a knee-jerk reaction to a snowballing call for someone to run.
An ominous sigh that the President wants to renege on her Dec. 30 disavowal of any intention to run is the succession of legal problems that has been visited upon the perceived “presidentiables.” Everyone has to be discredited through the expedience of a determination of culpability: Lacson again faces the ghosts of Kuratong Baleleng as resurrected by the Supreme Court. Roco was browbeaten into a righteous resignation from the Cabinet by the Presidential Commission Against Graft and Corruption through the Department of Education overpricing scam and, last Friday, another graft case with the Ombudsman. And very lately, Cojuangco was hit by the Sandiganbayan with the coco levy issue. Each time a hit was scored on the probable candidate, the perpetrators would make the smug claim that their actions were made independent of Malacañang. The Palace, meanwhile, would make the hollow claim that indeed, no strings were pulled and that the wheels of justice were simply grinding. Grinding? Yes, but nudged inexorably against the members of Malacañang’s demolition list.
When some agency with powers to determine one’s culpability decides, the disclaimer of non-interference comes out too soon: Malacañang has nothing to do with it. The denial comes out a bit too much and a bit too soon, simultaneous with the assurance to the public that these agencies are merely minding their own business. Really! As one radio station blares out, kailangan pa bang i-memorize iyan? Why, in the first place, should it be the role of Malacañang to apologize for and in behalf of these agencies and assert that their moves are truly independent acts?
What is most galling is the presumption that the public is too stupid that it would swallow the whole charade without a doubt that a well-crafted script is being foisted on it. Can’t these folks at Malacañang and their pawns realize that their actions are as predictable as the plots of today’s telenovelas? At least in the telenovelas the dubbed dialogue is closely in-synch. When Malacañang and its pawns speak, the language comes out clearly out of whack.
No matter how loud its denials are, Malacañang’s fingerprints are all over the pawns that it nudges. Sure, these agencies are independent of the Executive, but that is in another country, not here in our jurisdiction. Kailangan pa bang I-memorize iyan? As many have probably concluded by now, it is much too obvious these agencies have become an adjunct to the Executive. A professional move that comes as soon as a probable candidate has garnered big numbers in the surveys, or a decision that comes in the wake of an overwhelming show of grassroots support for a candidate in provincial sorties, or a revived case against a probable candidate that follows after he has gained widespread good publicity, all smack of countermoves that are aimed to negate the high grounds made by the Opposition. The timing betrays Malacañang’s hand in all these. It is a shameful and shameless manipulation of the public mind, to condition their thinking that she who is now daintily perched on the presidential chair is still the best choice come election day. With their myopic eyes, little do Malacañang’s strategists see the consequences of their moves. The more they beat the horse, the more the horse will run, as pundits will describe the whole situation. Danding will run, for example.
Danding’s travails do not end with the Sandiganbayan decision on the United Coconut Planters Bank shares. Malacañang will milk ever so slowly the issue of the UCPB-held San Miguel Corp. shareholdings for all they are worth. For as long as the issue is kept current, with media playing up the claim that Danding does not own SMC after all, or that his shareholdings belong to the Republic or to the farmers, Danding will have his hands full defending himself. In the meantime, Malacañang is gloating, playing to the gallery by pointing out that the coconut farmers have been had by Danding and that he must never be the president, otherwise he will suffocate them all with their own shares.
Lacson still has to meet his tormentors in court. The trial of the Kuratong Baleleng Case could come anytime, and who, in that event, would still believe that Malacañang has no hand in it? Already, the demolition crew has been set loose and has come up with the intelligence bogey and the National Bureau of Investigation and Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency disclosures on a “high-ranking official” allegedly involved in the drug trade.
Thus, while Danding and the rest are busy extricating themselves from Malacañang’s dragnet, the public mind is being conditioned that only Gloria can run the country that well, and she will declare her availability once the wrecking crews shall have done their respective jobs demolishing the opposition.
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