So, impeachment...Tell me about that.

One good thing about this business we have chosen is that company lines blur a little when something big like an impeachment trial comes up.

This is my third year covering the Senate and I have probably spoken to more reporters in the past two weeks than I have in those three years. This is really more a function of my crippling shyness more than anything else, but this is so. With stakes this high and the country’s attention (we would like to think) on the stories we’re coming out with, it’s good to have someone to ask whether you heard what you thought you heard, or if this means what you think it does.

Sure, there are scoops and exclusives, but when all the networks and everybody else is there, an exclusive is only so until the next guy does a follow up within the next five to ten minutes. For outfits with tiny teams, it’s often better to work with a group.

And so, I found myself running up and down the the six floors of the Senate this week with a reporter from BusinessWorld and another from Rappler. The defense panel had just announced they had filed a motion to have Senator Franklin Drilon inhibit himself from the proceedings for supposedly acting like a prosecutor and not a judge. Supposedly, the Inquirer and the Star already had copies of the motion, but not being from the Inquirer or Star, we did not.

One lady from another broadsheet had a copy, but told us we couldn’t take a peek because we weren’t friends, and she didn’t even know us. This was true, and there was nothing for it but to try to get our own copies. I tried, invoking smoker’s circle privilege, to get a copy from her but since that didn’t work, I sprinted, lungs filled with smoke, back to the press office to check the copy machines, which as it turned out were not copying anything. Which meant a dash to the elevators with BusinessWorld’s Sieg Alegado to the 5th floor when we meant the 4th, an impulsive “Hi, sir!” at Senator Teofisto Guingona III, followed by a mental facepalm at not coming up with anything better to say or ask.

To the 4th floor where the Public Relations and Information Bureau, which supposedly had a copy but did not, was and then up the stairs to the Senate Secretary’s office on the 6th floor, running into Rappler’s Natashya Gutierrez and mock accusing her of having a copy (she did not and she was a sport about it), to be told the document was with PRIB all along. Which it was, except it hadn’t been stamped yet, so according to the government, that meant they didn’t have it. But because we knew they had it, they stamped it and we proceeded to the copy machines at the 2nd floor press office, which is where we first checked for them.

And then reading, excuse the language, reading the shit out of that motherfucker, trying to make sense of it in the context of the past two weeks of trials, making sure to include input from the other side, and from Drilon himself. And loving every moment of it.

–

Hangout Hangout Lang With History

*in the words of one senator: Porke’t kumuha ka ng dokumento, akala mo hero ka? How impertinent.

There was a gray pall over the smoking area in front of the Senate all of last week, with the line of smokers stretching from the wheelchair ramp by the door to the gate that leads to the part of the complex occupied by the Government Service Insurance System. With all attention turned to the lawyers tussling at the Senate session hall, staff and reporters who had partners to cover for them snuck out for a quick smoke as often as we could.

It would be more than we could handle, otherwise. Too much history unfolding before our eyes, too many legal phrases to absorb, understand, and try to explain, too much drama both in and out of the ad hoc court room. Even defense lawyer Dennis Manalo snuck out once, avoiding ambush interviews with the simple expedient of swapping his official pass with one given out to guests.

Otherwise, though, it was a madhouse, with press briefings called with little advance notice and people scrambling around for chance interviews as lawyers walked the short distance between their ready rooms and the session hall, and the even shorter distance to the makeshift TV studios crammed together in one of the Senate’s function rooms.

The press area: Not as seen on TV

You learn to drop that spoonful of lunch-break rice and run, while chewing, from the Senate press office to the room where reporters from other beats work, and where the press briefings are held. You learn to accept that you will likely not finish the cup of coffee you just made and that there is little point to making coffee at all because you will get by on adrenaline alone. You learn what is like, for the first time in months, to be dry on weeknights and fall asleep from fatigue alone.

You learn humility from the pros who have been doing this sort of thing for years and who can still somehow go on without resorting to the numerous, frivolous breaks you allow yourself. You learn, or are reminded, of the weight of what you are doing and of the consequences of doing it wrong.

And the weight of it is enough to have you reaching into your pocket for just one more stick.

–

Hangout hangout lang with History

Please excuse the navel gazing. Better content this week as I struggle to get over my awe of things that have been happening

ZOMG...

THERE really is no delicate, or elegant, way to say this: alternative news website Bulatlat.com copied from an article I wrote for the website I work for, acknowledged it after I pointed it out, and then kept the plagiarized paragraphs in the story anyway. [UPDATE: As of 4:59 p.m., Bulatlat.com has deleted the paragraphs. I have screencaps from today, though.]

On January 4, I wrote a short article on Senator Aquilino Pimentel III criticizing the Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth) for raising annual premiums for Overseas Filipino Workers to P2,400 from P900. It was badly-written, hastily-researched, and probably submitted past deadline, but there you go.

Screencap from January 19, 2012

Despite that, it seemed to give enough background for Bulatlat.com writer Ina Alleco R. Silverio for her January 13 story on what OFW rights group Migrante thought of the increase. (They say it is a terrible idea, and unjust.) It was apparently also good enough for her to leave these paragraphs in her story:

An advisory released by PhilHealth in December promised OFWs “a new set of enhanced benefits designed to improve financial risk protection for all members.”

Among the benefits that PhilHealth has promised under its Universal Health Care program are coverage of the cost of anti-hypertensives, anti-diabetics, and antibiotics. Eventually, PhilHealth said, it will offer preventive and diagnostic services “at no cost to the member.” PhilHealth currently covers in-patient, but not out-patient treatment.

On January 16, I saw the headline for the story on my Twitter feed and clicked on the link and found out that Migrante was concerned that the higher premiums will be an added burden to our OFWs and that part of my story had been copy-pasted onto the Bulatlat.com story. I tweeted about it but didn’t do anything about it for a while. I mean, what can you do, really, when you see something like that? You have to lie down for a while and think things through.

Things thought through:

1. Why should I bring it up? Do I hate OFWs? Do I want them to pay more for their health insurance? Who would want that?

2. Who am I to bring it up? I’m just a rookie reporter who writes for a network of newspapers (and their website) in the provinces. The people I’m going to accuse of copying from me do important things like standing up for OFWs and laborers and indigenous peoples. Do I hate OFWs, laborers, and indigenous peoples?

3. What the hell, man? I applied for a job there a few years ago. I can’t do this to them!

4.And it’s only a paragraph I wrote for context, it’s not like it was material from some exclusive interview done in the hinterlands that I had to be escorted to by the Philippine Army. What do a few sentences matter?

5. The writing isn’t even that good.

6. And what did I mean when I said PhilHealth doesn’t cover out-patient treatment? Did I mean consultations with doctors? Because it says right there on the PhilHealth website that they cover “day surgeries, dialysis and cancer treatment procedures such as chemotheraphy and radiotheraphy in accredited hospitals and free-standing clinics.” Did I mean to say something else entirely?

But I did eventually send Bulatlat.com an e-mail about it to tell them that Ms. Silverio may have accidentally left the paragraphs in. “I am sure that this was inadvertent and that Ms. Silverio probably used my article for background on the issue and meant to paraphrase the paragraphs. Perhaps due to the limits of working under deadline, she simply forgot,” I said.

And then said again, since I sent the e-mail again on January 15 to both e-mail addresses that Bulatlat.com lists on their website. On January 16, Mr. Benjie Oliveros, Bulatlat.com managing editor, replied, saying they would “call her attention to this unintentional mistake. if she used your article as background, she should have given you proper attribution. Please be rest assured that this would not happen again.”

And, really, that was that. Face was kept and the day was saved. Except, as of January 19, the story on their wesbite still reads the same. And, well, I guess he never did say he would take the paragraphs out, I just assumed that.

Screencap from January 19, 2011

Photo from Japan Focus

China’s no-strings, easy-access development loans are giving developing countries an alternative to Western aid, but at what price?

A CENTURY ago, they were part of the Red Menace. Political winds have since shifted and now China is welcomed by the developing world for doing the same thing that she has claimed to be doing since the Cold War: helping the world’s poor nations become prosperous.
China has been providing some form of foreign aid since the mid-1950s. Communist Party of China Chairman Mao Zedong believed that as poor as China was, she “should take the responsibility of helping those in need, those smaller and powerless nations.”

I had nothing to do with this cover, JSYK

On its face, the International Development Research Center says in a 2007 report, foreign aid was a way for China to help other post-colonial nations become self-reliant and was usually given in the form of technical assistance and agricultural aid programs. But giving foreign aid also served political ends. Foreign aid gave China a way to promote communism and maneuver for political recognition against the Kuomintang government in Taiwan.

The Cold War has been over for decades and most of the world meaning Beijing when they say China. So, where does that put Chinese foreign aid? At the forefront of global development, it turns out.

A paper released in 2009 by the US Congressional Research Service (CRS) shows Chinese aid to Africa, Latin America, and Southeast Asia grew from US$1.5 billion in 2000 to US$25 billion in 2007.

Africa has received the largest year-on-year increase of development aid but the CRS says China is now one of the biggest bilateral donors in Southeast Asia, dwarfing traditional aid agencies like the World Bank and Asian Development Bank.

Where the WB and ADB could only offer loans of US$200 million each for infrastructure projects in the Philippines, China promised US$2 billion a year from 2007 to 2009. This made even Japan—historically the biggest source of aid to the Philippine—with its offer to lend US$1 billion seem stingy.

Easy Money
Aside from the large amounts that China is willing to invest in developing countries, what makes Chinese aid so appealing is the ease with which it can be had. According to non-government organization Official Development Assistance Watch-Philippines (ODA Watch), Chinese aid does not come with the strings that IMF and ADB loans do.

Recipient nations often have to lobby and show funding agencies that they have the social and political institutions in place to put the loan to good use. Loans also usually comes with recommendations to tinker with a recipient nation’s economic and social policies. From curbing corruption to rethinking economic laws considered protectionist, the strings that come with loans from traditional sources.

Chinese aid projects simply have to conform with the Eight Principles set by China Premier Zhou Enlai in 1964, one of which expressly states that China “never attaches any conditions or asks for any privileges.” Projects must require low investments and high returns, and must lead towards the beneficiary country’s self reliance, and Chinese advisors who come over should be able to live according to the local standard of the recipient country.

For borrowing countries with weak institutions and struggling with issues like corruption and instability, China’s stated policy of non-interference in internal affairs is good news. China is helping countries like Myanmar (Burma), Cambodia,and Laos on infrastructure and energy projects. North Korea and Iran, states that the Western world has been treating as pariahs, also have development agreements with China.

The Philippines has also been getting a lot of help from Beijing. ODA Watch says China President Hu Jintao came to Manila in 2005 to pledge an investment of US$1.1 billion in the country, US$950 million of which would go into a nickel mining plant. Projects like the North Luzon Railway Project (Northrail) and the scuttled National Broadband Network (NBN) were paid for with Chinese development aid.

With Japanese ODA to the Philippines dwindling, ODA Watch says China will soon become the country’s primary source of development aid. The stalled Northrail project is reportedly the biggest Chinese project in Southeast Asia and with two-way trade with China expected to hit US$30 billion this year, it is no wonder that the Arroyo Administration repeatedly hailed China as our big brother in the region.

The bulk of Chinese aid, the IDRC says, goes to infrastructure projects like railroads, power plants, and power lines. This not only means development for borrowing countries like the Philippines but also jobs and money to the communities near the project site. Military aid will also contribute to security and stability, making the Philippines more attractive to investors and tourists.

No Free Lunch

Although Beijing does not require recipient countries to embrace Chinese socialism, the aid packages that China has been giving out do carry conditions that affect how these countries operate.

One vital and non-negotiable requirement is keeping the ‘One China Policy.’ ODA Watch says China will not give aid to countries that officially recognize Taiwan, all 23 of them. Many countries have been able to skirt this by maintaining Taipei Economic Cooperation Offices as a back door link to Taiwan but a rise in foreign aid from Beijing especially to Africa could mean Taipei will have to keep lobbying for a seat at the United Nations. China is also courting votes to deny Japan a seat on the UN Security Council, the ODA Watch report says.

A condition that hits closer to home is a requirement at least half of the materials and equipment used in projects that China pays for comes from China and that the contractor for the project should be a Chinese company. As a safeguard against graft and to keep money within the Chinese economy, China could even pay the Chinese contractor directly,leaving the recipient country out of the loop.

The requirement that China-funded projects should be awarded to Chinese contractors could also wreak havoc on the Philippine government’s bidding process. The NBN project awarded to Chinese telecommunications firm ZTE was eventually abandoned in 2007 after a Filipino bidder who submitted a lower price for the project alleged ZTE got the project through bribery. Allegations of overpricing and other irregularities have also been hurled at Northrail and the US$1-billion Laiban dam project.

Chinese foreign aid is part of China’s “Go Out” development policy. That is, go out and develop investments and markets overseas. That means it’s in China’s interests to make the Philippines grow as a market. That also means it’s in China’s interests to develop investments that will take advantage of Philippine natural resources. Chinese joint ventures in mining, the exploration for, and the extraction of oil and natural gas have given environmental and nationalist groups reason to worry.

In 2008, a Philippine-China joint venture in the disputed Spratly islands raised concerns that the Philippines was selling off its sovereignty. A charge that lawyer Harry Roque has also raised in 2008 over a Memorandum of Understanding that China’s ZTE allegedly signed with the Philippine government on mining in Mt. Diwalwal in Compostela Valley. Roque said the agreement promised ZTE 90 percent of any gold mined there. Then Trade secretary Peter Favila, who signed on behalf of the Philippine government, said the MOU was non-binding and was still subject to negotiations.

ODA Watch also reports that some agricultural deals that the Philippines has signed with China sets aside 1.24 million ha of farmland to the Chinese. In a country that has agrarian reform enshrined in its constitution, giving land to foreigners could cause problems with landless peasants. The agreements also require the government to help Chinese investors reach a deal with local landowners and investors on future projects and joint ventures.

Aid from China has also been criticized for increasing the debt burden for Filipinos on projects of “questionable benefit.” ODA Watch cites the example of a US$465.5-million loan for a cyber-education project by the RP Department of Education. The project would have used satellite technology to beam learning materials to Philippine schools but critics said the government should focus on meeting a shortage of classrooms, school buildings, and teachers first.

It is inevitable that trade and aid between China and the other developing countries that she identifies with will increase in coming years. The West is caught up in its own problems, with the US struggling with the repercussions of a recession and the European Union trying to stave off a regional one, somebody has to step in where traditional sources of aid cannot. China’s projected rise to the world’s second-largest economy and its emphasis on soft power makes it the perfect candidate, flush with money and eager to help.

But although Chinese aid brings development and opportunity, borrowing countries like the Philippines have to consider whether the price of a free lunch is worth it.

–

(Published in the October 2010 issue of China Business Philippines)

From Talahib People's Music on Facebook

Mga Awit ng Pag-Ibig at Digmaan (Songs of Love and War) (2011) by Talahib People’s Music would have been the next logical step for Filipino world music had Talahib picked up the gauntlet that groups like Makiling Ensemble and Pinikpikan threw down 10 years ago.

With the two bands bringing indigenous instruments and music to the mainstream, Talahib could have stepped in to inject Filipino world music with social consciousness, bringing it down from dreamy abstracts like diwatas, butandings*, and manong manong pawikans** to the grass roots where world music existed before it was re-discovered by University-educated musicians.

“Babaylan,” which likens modern women to the pre-Hispanic spiritual leader-healers of the Visayas, speaks of more mundane things, of fields and factories, and of the people’s struggle. There is none of the playfulness of Makiling Ensemble, who have been known to segue into world music versions of the Super Mario Bros. theme now and then.

These are war drums, and the lines:

Libong ulit ng lakas ng tinig
Nagpupumiglas ang itinaling bisig
At sa bawat babaeng nais lumaya
Nagbabangong ang mga babaylan

are sung with a snarl, closer to Inang Laya’s “Babae” than Grace Nono in “Salidumay.”

Their two strongest songs, “On Potok” and “Bumangon Ka Igorotan,” dealing with issues of land and the loss of local culture in the Sierra Madre mountain range and the Cordilleras, could have formed a separate stream from Pinikpikan’s nostalgic back-to-nature vibe. Not superior, certainly, just different: another world music.

That they did not, or have yet to, is a matter of timing more than anything else. Talahib was formed in 2001 and actually did accept the challenge posed by the popularity of world music in the early 2000s. They were busy with playing at cultural nights and rallies, though, and only got around to recording last year.

Their album launch in December was attended mostly by activists from UP, IP rights groups, and from Amnesty International, the same people Talahib has been playing to for years. That steady, though underground and underpaid, base means songs like “Bagyo,” which has the reggae influence that informs the musical tastes of most in the broad Left, will always have an audience. That also means appealing to the mainstream will be an uphill climb.

A friend passed on Talahib saying, “this musical fruit falls too close to the Pinikpikan tree.” Which, again, is not a bad thing, but sounding like Pinikpikan is already the province of Pinikpikan. The music sounds dated now because it has been at least a decade since electrical guitars and indigenous instruments playing together was a new thing.

That does not mean Talahib should not have released an album at all. The issues raised in “On Potok”, a Dumagat protest song (more traditional versions here, here, and here), are just as valid today. The same goes for “Bumangon Ka Igorotan”. The Cordillera People’s Liberation Army signed a closure agreement with the government last year, 25 years after the Mt. Data ceasefire was signed, but human rights and environmental issues remain.*** Climate change and recent calamities have made the issues of logging and mining, which both affect IPs the most, more pressing than ever.

Talahib may have missed the world music wave of the 2000s, but maybe Awit ng Pag-Ibig at Digmaan came out just in time for the next one.

*Sure, whale sharks exist, and it is good that Pinikpikan is singing about them. A Butanding, however, is a rare and rarified thing.

**”tahanan ay pasan-pasan“

***Under the agreement, the CPLA, a splinter group from the New People’s Army, will become a non-governmental organization in the Cordillera Administrative Region.  It has run into into a hitch, though, because  the CPLA is also split into factions.

Chief among those, of course, is to never get high on your own supply. The moment you start thinking you’re close to legit because you know how words go together and can get information from a handful of important people, someone breaks a story that the Ombudsman has charged Pampanga Representative Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo with graft and your frantic calls to contacts will go unanswered while you watch the story develop before your eyes. (It could happen.)

And that’s the thing, isn’t it? In The Wire, gang boss Avon Barksdale says you only need to fuck up once. Be a little slow, be a little late just once. Truth be told, I have been more than a little slow, more than a little late, and not just once. Barksdale again: “And how you ain’t gonna be never slow, or late? You can’t plan for anything like this, man. It’s life.”

What you can do is break out in a cold sweat and, eventually, end up in a taxi rushing to the Office of the Ombudsman for confirmation the next day, arriving just as it starts and all within 15 minutes of a colleague calling to tell you about it. Or you could wait for other people to write the story and then copy-paste it.

But then, you would not have this blurred picture of Assistant Ombudsman Asryman Rafanan.

Which still does not take away the fact that you were scooped and that happened because you didn’t know your beat,  a fact that you can take as a sign to get out of the game. On the other hand, you can take the hit, admit there are a lot of people better than you, and, as another street reporter said: get that dirt off your shoulder. Switch up your flow and brush your shoulders off.

This will not mean higher prices, however, as the Department of Trade and Industry has already issued a freeze on price increases in calamity areas hit by Typhoon Sendong.

Corazon Curay, vice president and director of the Supply Chain Management Association of the Philippines (SCMAP), told Sun.Star that shipments to the Southern Philippines have been difficult because a peak season for cargo means less containerized vans to go around.

Box Stops Here: Too few cargo containers may delay a return to business as usual in calamity-hit Northern Mindanao

She said shippers have to wait for “two days or more” to get goods loaded in a twenty or forty-foot metal container and onto a ship.

Trucking fleets have been complaining of the delay, which already existed even before the typhoon hit Northern Mindanao and Central and Eastern Visayas.

“Of course, this is an opportunity cost for them,” she said, adding that shippers were prompted to factor in extra days to book their shipments in advance.

Delays may be prolonged if relief goods headed for calamity-stricken areas in Northern Mindanao are given priority.

She said the shipping lines can do that, especially as support for relief and rescue operations in the region. She said the shortage may be resolved by January when container vans already dispatched to other ports return to Manila.

Right now, “the queue for container vans is really long,” she said.

On Sunday, a military cargo flight brought 1,500 500-milliliter bottles of water to Northern Mindanao along with water treatment systems. Curay said, however, that airlifting is too expensive for regular goods.

Eduardo Sanchez, SCMAP executive director, said that although much of Cagayan de Oro was spared by the flooding, “definitely, the delivery of consumer goods will be affected.”

He said the difficulties in delivering consumer goods will be felt more in Iligan. SCMAP president Dennis Llovido was in Cagayan de Oro when Sun.Star tried to reach him Monday. He updated Sanchez on the situation on the ground, however.

Sanchez said the decision to put the priority on delivering relief goods will have to come from the government, and not from the association since “each member is an independent company.”

According to news reports on Sunday, stores in Cagayan de Oro had run out of water and other basic goods as was confirmed by local store chain Ororama.

Pamela Mendez, store manager for Ororama Supertore in Carmen, said it has been “very difficult” to get water delivered.

Part of the problem is the sheer number of stores and homes that have ordered bottled water.

“Even if we buy in volume, we will still have to pick up the water ourselves (if we do not want to wait),” she said.

She said smaller bottles of water are still available and they are “trying our best to restock five- and 10-liter bottles.”

Mendez said, however, that goods will be sold at the same price despite the extra cost to Ororama of transporting the water themselves.

Supplies of noodles and the “cheapest kind” of noodles are also low after the Social Welfare department bought the store’s stock to distribute to calamity victims, she said.

With the shortage of potable water, and with the taps shut off, many tenants have had to keep their businesses temporarily shuttered, she said.

Ororama has also taken to boiling water from a deep well so employees will have water to drink.

“It’s really scary if you think about it,” she said, adding fast food restaurants have even had to close or limit operations because of the shortage.

Lotta Lim, store manager of the Robinsons Supermarket in Cagayan de Oro, said their stock of bottled water is also running low but that they are working on a stock transfer deal with outlets in nearby towns and cities.

She said suppliers have been giving priority to stores and homes in “the city proper” and that supermarkets are having a hard time getting supplies. Aside from water, noodles and canned goods have also seen brisk sales, she said.

Steven Cua, president of the Philippine Amalgamated Supermarkets Association, said relief goods coming into the calamity areas will not affect prices.

“If there was an ample supply of these items there, then people would have (just) donated cash,” he said in a text message.

Dorothy Salazar, manager for mall administration at Robinsons, told Sun.Star that the floods during the weekend have not dampened the spirits of most shoppers.

She said Monday has been a normal shopping day, “although people have been buying candles and other supplies too.”

–

(Actually a story on Sun.Star, the newspaper and website that I work for.) 

Barry, if his stories can be believed, was the first to predict that Japan would let the yen float in the 1970s, earning him curses from the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan who had been scooped and also lost a bet that he was wrong. He was also at Camp Aguinaldo when then Defense minister Juan Ponce Enrile withdrew support from Marcos and set the 1986 People Power Revolution in motion. Enrile, he says, had tipped him off at the lobby of a Manila hotel that something was up.

Photo by Andrew Taylor

Before that, he covered Fleet Street with Ian Fleming, whose best friend was friends with his best friend. They weren’t friends, but knew each other enough for friendly nods at the Falstaff and the King and Keys nearby. He also replaced “Freddy” Forsythe as Reuters correspondent at Whitehall. Forsythe presumably left to write this little book called The Day of the Jackal.

In between that and becoming a fixture at the Senate, he has written (and headed the Asia bureau) for Reuters, Newsweek, and the Economist.

Barry says he has known Senator Francis Escudero since he was a boy, has been on a first-name basis with former Presidents Fidel Ramos and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, and has been “closer than friends” with a government official who shall remain unnamed.

It is hard to tell, seeing him now, walking around with all his belongings in plastic bags, that he has seen and filed reports on more people, things, and events longer than I have been alive. He lost his house in a fire, he said, and has brought everything with him ever since.

He has also taken to eating beans and onions and similar, which he eats at his cubicle while reading online articles about ancient Greeks.

People have also not been kind to Barry R., foreign correspondent to the Philippines since Martial Law and, this month, the subject of a blind item in a local tabloid. Part of it is his being British, I suppose. Foreigners are, after all, fair game for jokes, and it is not like he has not helped this along with the typical sarcastic British humour that is easy to take at face value.

His choice of food, no doubt healthful and the cause of his living past his seventies, does not help either. The food he eats tends to smell, and it is the sort of smell that hits you like a punch in the nose. As the guy who sits next to him every day, I have learned to live with it, but this does not stop people from remarking “Nice food, Barry”, which, perhaps underestimating the elements of sarcasm in Filipino humor, he also takes at face value.

He has also adopted the people he rents a room from, taking on their problems with the police, with rabid dogs, and with general poverty. He takes leftover food from committee hearings and press lunches home for “his people”, slipping sandwiches and buns into his plastic bags while people are busy with briefings and conferences. And this is what put him in the blind item on a local tabloid, this incredibly odd, if noble, compulsion to bring cast offs from this place of power to feed those without any.

I will not lie. I find it odd too, and that I do makes me feel bad about myself especially since I pick his brain now and then on how to write a story, on the general history of the Senate of the Philippines, and on what Ian Fleming used to drink. (Gin is a very British drink,  he says, before launching into how British naval officers drank it while the sailors had rum.)

“I know more about the poor than maybe half of the people here,” he once told me, and maybe that–to people who are supposed to be the voice of the voiceless, proponents of social change, exponents of national development etc.–is the most offensive thing of all.

Senator Antonio Trillanes IV then administered the oath to Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, binding him to “do impartial justice” as presiding officer of the impeachment court, an oath that Enrile then recited with the rest of the Senate.

And just like that, the Senate became an impeachment court and not the collection of “independent republics” it usually is.  Days–even minutes–before, some senators had been labeling either  impeached Chief Justice Renato Corona or President Benigno Aquino III a threat to democracy and good government.

Corona had just given a speech accusing the President of having him impeached to grab power and create what Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago called a super executive. Senator Ferdinand Marcos Jr., to whose father’s dictatorship the Aquino administration has been compared in recent days, said the President is redefining the government into three co-equal branches with the Executive being the “more equal.”

Senator Joker Arroyo, just the day before, said the President has done what the senior Marcos did without having to declare Martial Law. He said the President’s support for the impeachment eroded the separation of powers and would give the President control over the entire government.

Senator Arroyo drew this to illustrate the separation of powers

Senator Franklin Drilon, who has been critical of Corona’s perceived bias for Pampanga Representative Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, said the chief justice should be “dignified in his responses” and told him to “keep his equilibrium.” This after being attacked by the President in scathing speeches, including one with Corona himself in the audience.

Drilon will not inhibit himself from the impeachment trial. The senator said he has not prejudged Corona on eight articles of impeachment lodged against him. Senator Francis Pangilinan, another Corona critic, will also participate in the impeachment trial.

“There are as many senators who have been critical of the Corona court decisions as there have been defenders. If the rules of inhibition are strictly adhered to in a political proceeding, then all the political positions taken by all the senator judges could be made basis of inhibition and there will be no one left to try the respondent,” he said.

With the impeachment court convened, the senators are now expected to forget political ties, personal feelings, and things said before today. They are also supposed to keep quiet about the merits of the case.  Asked for comment on Corona’s speech Wednesday, Majority Leader Vicente Sotto III said, “Uy, hindi puwede yan (You shouldn’t ask me that).”

If it were up to Enrile, everyone should keep quiet about the case. Or, at least, try to use their inside voice.  ”The political rhetoric is rather heated so we better tone down our comments. I hope that they will exercise circumspection in their statements and conduct in this time because tension is mounting in the country,” he said.

Just minutes before, in the gallery, a lady had to fight the urge to pee that the air conditioning in the session hall always brings on. Her friend told her to hold it, “this is historical.” The instinct to ogle trumped her more primal but mundane call of nature.

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Hang Out Hang Out Lang With History

A group of Arroyo’s supporters, most of whom came from her home province of Pampanga, lined the road in front of the military hospital. Bearing placards and banners wishing the President well and calling on the government to set her free, the group–numbering around 300 according to police estimates–were separated from anti-Arroyo protesters by a thin line of police officers.

They engaged activists from Bagong Alyansang Makabayan, and Bayan Muna and Gabriela party-lists in a call-and-answer contest, matching chants to put the former President in jail with calls to let her loose.

The Bayan group called on the government to send Arroyo–who is recovering from surgery, hypoparathyroidism, a mineral bone disease and an upset colon–to jail instead of a government hospital. “Many of us, even if we are bleeding pus and almost dead cannot even go to the hospital!,” a Bayan leader screamed through a bull horn.

Bagong Alyansang Makabayan activists called for jail for Arroyo, freedom for political prisoners

A few meters away, a smaller group of activists from Akbayan party-list and Alab Katipunan waved their banners and also demanded to have Arroyo put behind bars. The rally, dubbed “Pananalubong sa Mandarambong (Welcome for a Plunderer)”, was meant to show the “people’s” sentiment that Arroyo should not be afforded special treatment. There is little enough money for government hospitals, they said, to be spent on someone they believed to be feigning illness to avoid staying at a police detention facility.

They also called for the resignation or impeachment of Chief Justice Renato Corona, an Arroyo appointee, whom they say is biased toward the former President and should not be involved in cases against her. Bantay Gloria Movement, a coalition that includes Akbayan members, has already formally petitioned to have Corona inhibit himself from Arroyo cases.

“We really have to get rid of this CoronArroyo!,” they said, echoing a theme from the 2010 elections of combining Arroyo’s name with politicians perceived to be allied with her.

Five men dressed in white shirts tried to heckle and provoke the Bayan group who, at an estimated count of 150, were greatly outnumbered by the pro-Arroyo crowd. Police were quick to step in, however, to defuse the tension. To prevent more provocation, the Bayan group closed their ranks, turning their backs on the pro-Arroyo group and on the activists from Akbayan.

At around 10:30 am, a convoy of police vehicles, including a police ambulance, arrived at VMMC and was welcomed with cheers from the pro-Arroyo crowd.

“We love you, Gloria. We love you,” an old lady, who refused to give her name, said as the convoy drove past. Be fair, they said, Arroyo has done so many good things.

The rain was pouring hard by then and pro-Gloria protesters had taken to using their placards for shelter. The rain did not keep them, however, from starting another round of chanting and cheering at the ambulance they believed to be carrying the former President.

Whispers of “This is it! Ayan na!,” were passed around as a police troop carrier rolled in behind the convoy.

But Arroyo was still at St. Luke’s Medical Center in Taguig City as the government and her lawyers argued over how she was going to be brought to Quezon City. This was confirmed by the departure of the same convoy around 15 minutes later. The police cars, the ambulance, and troop carrier were still fully loaded.

There was, after all, nobody to off load. It was a decoy sent ahead as the government tried to get Arroyo to get on a helicopter that would fly her and her family to VMMC.

The realization that they had been duped sapped the crowd’s spirit–both from the pro- and anti- side–which had already been dampened by the continuous downpour, and people started melting away to seek shelter.

The Bayan group continued its chanting for a few more minutes before ending the program and getting into hired jeeps for shelter and lunch. The people from Akbayan did the same, clambering into a single jeepney as the rain kept pouring.

Meanwhile, the gate guard at VMMC said a press briefing announced Thursday had been cancelled. There was nothing, after all, to say.

With a long wait ahead, and with the rain giving no signs of letting up, there was little to do but make light of the situation. One reporter hailed a Quezon City utility truck driving into the hospital and asked the driver, “Boss, is this the truck that’s bringing GMA here?”

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Hang Out Hang Out Lang With History