When President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo announced her run for Congress, the social networking sites Twitter and Facebook suddenly went abuzz as people expressed their panic, their rage and feeling of helplessness.

The fear reeked like rotten raw fish all over the worldwide web.

But really, what’s there to panic about?

Come high noon of June 30 next year, the awesome powers of the presidency will fall off Mrs. Arroyo’s shoulders like water from an overhead bathroom shower.

Mrs Arroyo can be trumped in her own game. Except for Teodoro, it would be easy enough for Sen. Manuel Villar, Sen. Benigno Aquino III, ex-President Joseph Estrada and the other presidential candidates to ALL COME TOGETHER AND AGREE TO SUPPORT ONLY ONE CANDIDATE IN THE SAME DISTRICT WHERE MRS. ARROYO IS RUNNING. It’s for their own survival. [I heard Mrs. Arroyo's own half-sister, Cielo Salgado-Macapagal, is being urged to run for the country's sake. That would be one epic battle.]

Even Sen.Villar is not likely to want a Congresswoman Arroyo because he knows what will come next – she will intrigue against him and will likely to try to replace him by changing the presidential form of government with a parliament. That, in effect, would cut short the tenure of next year’s winner.

In addition, would her district in Pampanga commit suicide by intentionally starving itself of patronage funds in case her anointed, Gilberto Teodoro, doesn’t win? As a mere lawmaker, she will no longer be the prime benefactor of patronage funds but would in fact have to BEG for these funds from the sitting president.

The only reason her sons won in their congressional districts was they had mommy’s ear.

Sure, she can maneuver to be Speaker of the House, but only if her anointed, Teodoro, wins. Historically, whoever wins is likely to take control of the House since lawmakers inevitably jump to the winning party.

I was highly amused when, following Mrs. Arroyo’s announcement, her spokesman-lawyer Romulo Macalintal was asked about speculations that once she wins in Congress, she would push for charter change and her election as Prime Minister.

Macalintal bluntly said:

You know pardon this word, napakatanga ng ating mahahalal na pangulo ng bansa sa 2010 kung matapos gumastos nang napakalaking halaga at siya’y nanalong pangulo ay lalapitan niya ang isang Congresswoman Arroyo at sasabihin niya, Madame Congresswoman Arroyo, kayo na po ang maging Prime Minister ng ating bansa at ako po’y hindi po marunong na maging pangulo. E kung ganyan ang magiging pangulo ng ating bansa ay napakatanga ng nasabing pangulo.”

This is the rough translation of what Macalintal said:

You know pardon this word, stupid would be the word to describe whoever we elect president in 2010 if, after spending so much and winning, he would approach Congressowman Arroyo and say – Madama Congressowman, please become the Prime Minister of our country because I don’t know how to be president. If that’s the kind of president we will have, then how stupid can he get.

Among the five potential presidential candidates I interviewed this September and October – which included Villar, Aquino, Estrada, Sen. Francis “Chiz” Escudero and Teodoro – only Teodoro pushed for constitutional change.

And when I pointedly asked him – “Are you willing to have your term cut short?” – in order to bring about constitutional change, he replied at once – “Oh sure. Sure.”

Does that reply make Teodoro, a Harvard Law graduate and University of the Philippines College of Law bar topnothcher, stupid, because he’s willing to step aside for someone else, possibly his benefactor, Mrs. Arroyo?

Her run for Congress somehow undermines his run for the presidency. Because while she has distanced herself from him by stepping down from the helm of Lakas-Kampi Party in his favor, this is negated by her running for office.

Her possible victory could now make those who were willing to vote for Teodoro on his own terms now think twice and wonder if he is just a puppet on her string.

I wrote this feature for Asian Dragon magazine, which also permitted me to post it on my blog. I wrote it without personal comment and with the aim of  stating facts as they are, hoping to help readers make an informed choice.

By age 60 when most Filipinos retire, Senator Manuel Villar is bent on launching instead an “entrepreneurial revolution”. He wants to turn the Philippines from a nation of employees into a nation of employers by using what he calls “Divisoria economics”.

Photo sent to Raissa Robles by source

He also wants to enable state hospitals to provide free health care to all Filipinos for life-threatening illnesses like cancer, heart and kidney diseases.

But first he needs to be elected the nation’s president next year and he’s working very hard on that now.

“If I will be given a chance to be the man who will turn this country around, that would be achieving something no money can buy and nobody has ever done before,” he told Asian Dragon magazine in an exclusive interview.

Villar has come a long way from growing up in a shack in Manila’s poor section of Tondo to owning a historic mansion – once the home of a Philippine president – which he and his lawmaker-wife Cynthia have furnished like a Roman villa.

The construction magnate, who prefers to dress like a building foreman when out campaigning, has a conjugal fortune valued by Forbes business magazine at US$540 million making him the ninth richest in the country this year. Two years ago, though, he was number five with his fortune valued at US$940 million.

He doesn’t want to be called a magnate. “I prefer being called a management man. I have managed the House of Representatives and the Senate and a business concern.”

Villar has also managed to revive the long comatose Nacionalista Party. “When I took over the party, it had no one.” Its spurt is “proof in fact of my competence as a builder and manager.”

“I really feel this country has been mismanaged,” he said adding
shyly, “do I sound conceited?”

Sen. Manuel Villar - Photo by Raissa Robles

Even if he does, he has earned bragging rights. In 2007, he revived the sagging fortunes of his company, C&P Homes, by forming Vista Land and Landscapes, Inc., a holding firm. From at least 21 billion pesos that Vista Land raised through an initial and secondary public offering, Villar was able to retire the P5 billion debt owed by C&P.

“I’m not getting any younger. I’m turning 60 (this December 13). This is like my last quarter. I’ve been a House Speaker and Senate President. I’ve planted a million trees,” he said.

“I (once) told myself, one day I will establish myself as the Filipino who has built the most number of houses and I’ve built 200,000 homes. My business has become number one and my family is okay.”

“And now the door is open and it’s like I’ve been brought to this door, it’s not as if the desire (to be president) just came out of  nowhere.” (more…)

A source who personally knows members of the Ampatuan family has just told me this piece of disturbing news:

First, assuming the son Andal Ampatuan Jnr. carried out the crime, the son is NOT the mastermind. The son reportedly carried it out on someone else’ orders.  The key to finding the mastermind is the back hoe or excavator which had been digging up the killing fields even before Monday’s carnage.

The family decided that for the sake of the family’s political survival, the son would have to surrender to authorities and defend himself before a court of law. The family fully regrets what had happened.

Second, before the mass murder took place Lakas-Kampi Party presidential standard bearer Gilberto Teodoro tried to negotiate a political settlement between the Ampatuans and the Mangudadatus. In that meeting, the Ampatuan patriarch Andal Snr. reportedly expressed outrage that his allies the Mangadadatus had refused to concede the governorship to his namesake, otherwise known as “Datu Unsay”.

From what my source told me, I can only conclude that Teodoro knew even then how enraged the old man Ampatuan was.

Teodoro is a decent person. I wish he would disclose what had happened in his consensus-building meeting with the two families, which fell apart and led to Monday’s carnage.

A story in ABS-CBN tells the same thing.

WARNING: The post-massacre photos taken and shared by Rolivel Elusfa are extremely graphic. He said the police are looking for up to 79 people but have only found 57 as of November 25,2009.

It’s close to midnight of Day 3 since at least 57  unarmed women and men were murdered in broad daylight and still not one of around 100 suspects have been nabbed and presented to the outraged public. This is despite your declaration of a state of emergency in that area under Proclamation 1946. (By the way, your office has not released  the text of this Proclamation.  Wonder why.)

Photo taken by Rolivel Elusfa and posted with his permission. He said this is the 52nd body dug up from the 2nd mass grave. As of 6pm, 57 corpses were recovered but the police were looking for 79 bodies in all.

How do you sleep at night, Mrs President, knowing you could have prevented this?

You must know who the Butchers of Maguindanao are and how this might affect the outcome of the 2010 presidential elections next year.

If the Ampatuans are guilty, you know that they know a lot of your dirty secrets. The Autonomous Region of Muslim Mindanao (ARMM), where Zaldy Ampatuan is the governor,  has 1.5 million registered voters. You won by one million votes in 2004.

It fills me with horror that if even one of them perpetrated the crime, you were meeting with ARMM Governor Zaldy Ampatuan on November 23  -  the very day the massacre was taking place.

Did Governor Zaldy know something bad was scheduled to happen? It’s like a scene straight out of The Godfather mafia movie.

Governor Zaldy was there trying to get you to endorse Lakas Party Congressman Munir Arbison to run as  governor of Sulu, your political strategist Gabriel Claudio said afterward. Sulu’s incumbent governor is Sakur Tan, who is in your Kampi Party. That is another dangerous political brew in the making. It would be just like Maguindanao where your two party mates – the Ampatuans and the Mangudadatus – are fighting it out not only for the governorship but for various local posts.

The massacre would not have happened if your Lakas Party had resolved the Maguindanao gubernatorial issue internally.

I was thinking, if you’re really after swift impartial justice, why don’t you do it Manila style? Treat the suspects the way the police treated broadcaster Ted Failon after he found his wife shot in the head on April 15 this year.

Only hours after the incident, the police arrested Failon even without a single witness pointing an accusing finger at him. Even without a criminal complaint being filed against him. The police subjected him at once to a paraffin test because they said it was imperative that they find out whether he had fired a gun.

Four policemen were relieved afterward but only for the “forceful arrest” of his two relatives, not for arresting Failon.

When the test on his hands and clothes turned out negative for powder burns, the police insisted he was still their prime suspect because paraffin tests are not that reliable after all.

In the present case of mass murder, the prime suspect was at once tagged by the husband of one of the victims. The police and military knew beforehand there was a security threat against the husband because he had asked for armed government security to escort his wife. The authorities turned him down.

During that fateful day, the victim had phoned her husband Esmael Mangudadatu just before dying, to tell him that about a hundred men had blocked her group.  She even named the ringleader – Andal Ampatuan, Jnr.  Hours later, she turned up dead.

It was this phone call that alarmed her husband into alerting authorities to look for her.

Photo taken by Rolivel Elusfa at the scene of the crime and posted with his permission.

Instead of picking up the prime suspect for questioning and your usual paraffin test, you sent a top presidential aide, Jesus Dureza,  to talk to the suspect’s father and to ask for the family’s cooperation in the investigation.

They were not the only victims. Many of the dead were reporters. Have you sent anyone to offer your condolences to their  families? Or are they outside your concern?

The only demand to date from the presidential palace is for the murderers to please turn themselves in. It has sent no posse to pick them up the way Ted Failon and his relatives were immediately picked up for questioning.

Photo taken by Rolivel Elusfa and posted with his permission. This is the crumpled vehicle of Anthony Ridao, son of Cotabato City councilor Marino Ridao. It was buried along with 11 bodies found today. Driving from Koronadal on his way to Cotabato City, he was accidentally following the convoy that was waylaid by 100 armed men.

No one in the Ampatuan family has publicly said a word since the Monday massacre and it’s now Wednesday midnight.

Wow.

From now on, will you be treating all suspects that way? Or just these suspects. (more…)

Filipinos want change. Four leading presidential candidates told me in separate interviews what they had in mind. Two proposed radical change.

Lakas Party candidate Gilberto Teodoro said:

I’d like to reform society, transform the political structure, reform public governance,to put it that way. Not the society but public governance.

The only swift method he has in mind is a replacement of the present Constitution which he branded as “reactionary”.

It’s the only thing that should be done. Public governance. We must transform. If not, we would just be in the same system as now. Forget it.

He even expressed willingness to have his tenure cut short to make way for this change. Unfortunately for lack of time, I was not able to ask him who he had in mind to replace him.

Nacionalista Party candidate Manuel Villar has not one but two radical changes in mind -an “entrepreneurial revolution” and a “health care revolution.”

He explained:

A rich country is a country of employers, not employees. So it is necessary to create more and more employers. But we have to change the mindset of our people, their thinking that that they cannot succeed in business.

In reality that’s cultural. It has nothing to do with the blood. Among the Chinese thepressure is for you to do business. Among Filpinos the pressure is for you to have a job. When college graduates among the Chinese hold a reunion the question they ask of each other is – what’s your business? What’s your company? [But] Filipinos ask among themselves – where are you working now? What’s your job?

In addition, Villar promised:

I will revolutionize health care.

Part of his plan is to raise salaries of government doctors and nurses and provide free treatment in state hospitals for dreaded diseases like cancer, heart and kidney ailments for EVERYONE, rich or poor.

Trust me I can do it. I have a plan. To me it doesn’t cost much. Only about 1.3% of the budget goes to health. That’s too small. We should get a minimum of about 3% [and] 5% should be enough.

To me it’s the minimum safety net. No Filipino should die without a fighting chance.

Villar’s twin plans are wonderful. His moves in the next six months could give voters a hint on whether or not to trust him to deliver.

Ex-president Joseph Estrada also hinted at radical change but declined to elaborate. All he would say was –

I want to leave a legacy, that they have all committed wrong in ousting me as president.

Asked for specifics, he said:

Watch me.

In provincial sorties he has consistently made the same promise before wildly cheering crowds:

I want to finish what I failed to finish because I was constitutionally ousted.

Finally, Senator Benigno Aquino III.

He neither talked of replacing the Constitution his mother put in place nor health care reform nor an entrepreneurial revolution. All he simply wanted to do, he said, was:

To prove that democracy works for everybody in the country, regardless of  your strata.

The diminishing democratic space that we’re experiencing now is reverting us back to an authoritarian type of rule…In other countries they exchange their freedoms for supposed economic benefits.

My advocacy is centered in making the institutions of democratic governance work so that it takes root and serves the interests of the many as against those of the few and powerful…In a working democracy the government exists to ensure the equitable distribution of opportunities and resources. Democracy will be the solid foundation on which economic progress would be based.

Which promising candidate do you believe can deliver? Let’s watch and see…