E·N·Q·U·I·R·Y
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL
Spinning wheel
Sunday, 08 29, 2004
There’s an unkind story that used to circulate when the presumptive Vice President was still a senator. It is said that the colleagues of Noli de Castro forged a gentleman’s agreement that no one would interpellate him when he was on the lectern because, so the story goes, if ever he replied it would be like listening anyway to a deaf person who goes on answering questions no one has asked of him. This agreement, however, slipped out of the mind of one senator one unfortunate day, and so when he rose to ask De Castro some clarifications about a bill that the latter was trying to get the Senate to adopt, he never got direct answers and ended up twice as uninformed as he was before.
The story could either be purely apocryphal, or one concocted out of mischief by those envious of his stentorian delivery as he reads the news in Magandang Gabi Bayan.
But judging from the answers De Castro gave to the electoral protest filed by Loren Legarda, one is tempted to believe that the story might be true after all. What De Castro has done so far is to nitpick on the absolutely harmless typographical errors in the protest, and show a jaunty disregard and total disrespect for the Presidential Electoral Tribunal (PET), by declaring that this constitutional body will probably take all of ten years to resolve it. In a word, De Castro has not addressed the issues squarely.
De Castro has had years in perfecting the art of the spin in front of TV cameras - with the aid of a script read off an “idiot board” - so one need not wonder why the cavalier attitude comes all too effortlessly to him.
Is De Castro taking the protest as a legal process seriously? Or is he simply indulging in belittling, denigrating and, worse, assailing the integrity, competence and good faith of the PET? Shortly after the filing by Legarda of her protest, De Castro and his agents dwelt repeatedly in media with the preposterous claim that “it would take ten long years” for the action to be resolved. Is De Castro not aware of the rules of the PET that are designed precisely to overcome unnecessary delays? Are we to understand that unreasonable delay would be his only defense? Or for that matter, does he believe that the PET would allow itself to fall into such a flippant, irresponsible conduct?
Is De Castro interested in a clash of legal and factual issues, or is he just spoiling for a pissing contest?
More ominous is the attempt of paid hacks in media to picture the proceedings before the PET as yet another Filipino version of Waiting for Godot. Here again, we see a spin so transparent one could read it right through the newsprint: Those who dread a Legarda victory are casting a harsh criticism on the competence of the PET while conditioning the mind of the public that this constitutional process is a futile exercise.
De Castro’s arrogant and condescending attitude has not spared his own running mate. Boasting that the presumptive president recruited him as an “independent candidate,” De Castro has the gall and the temerity to assert that his “proclamation certainly did not come as a surprise. During the campaign, it was particularly noticeable that while the turn-out of the presidential race was indeterminate, the outcome of the vice-presidential bout was decidedly in [his] favor.”
As the Brits would say, “Of all the bloody cheek!!!” It is of public knowledge that De Castro relied on his running mate for party machinery, organization, manpower and financial muscle.
Such derogatory and overbearing account of De Castro’s on his own running mate is a desperate attempt to cover up the free fall of his candidacy, from the initial big lead then reported in his favor. A later and more objective survey conducted by the IBON Foundation showed that at the middle of the campaign the vice-presidential contest had become a dead heat. The vaunted lead of De Castro had dropped by about 30 percent after several individuals surfaced, alleging to have been extortion victims of De Castro. Further, the quick counts conducted separately by ABC-5, DZRH and Net-25, and KNP’s own internal tally confirmed Legarda’s victory over De Castro. Even ABS-CBN’s exit poll in the National Capital Region, where De Castro’s running mate reportedly won, showed De Castro miserably losing to Legarda.
If De Castro was eventually proclaimed as Vice President, it could only be due to what Legarda claims in her protest as widespread electoral irregularities. And like the deaf man who goes on answering questions no one has asked of him, De Castro replies with a counter-protest that is way off the mark. Was it not only a few months ago, as borne out by the transcripts of the congressional canvass, that De Castro’s counsel startled everyone with a claim that none of the certificates of canvass deserves any objection, on the ground that all of them, “without exception, are genuine, authentic, duly executed and in order.” If this were the case, then what merit would the counter-protest of De Castro serve? Except perhaps as an instrument of delay?
De Castro’s wish that the contest between him and Legarda before the PET will be resolved long after his presumptive term has ended betrays the weakness of his claim to the vice presidency. If he sincerely believes that he honestly won the elections, he had better have irrefutable answers to the hard facts alleged in the protest: That in specific precincts in certain provinces, Legarda’s votes were mysteriously reduced and De Castro’s votes were magically padded during the process of transposition to the statement of votes and to the certificates of canvass.
The magical increase in De Castro’s votes, and the mysterious decrease in Legarda’s votes will soon unravel before the PET. And as “Spinning Wheel,” a song once popular in the 60s goes, “What goes up… must come down.”
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