Is ruling Lakas-Kampi Party presidential standard bearer Gilberto Teodoro now talking to his rival ex-President Joseph Estrada to explore possibilities?

At around 9 pm of March 30, just when Metro Manila was slowly sinking into a pious mood ahead of Holy Week, my cellphone suddenly beeped out a text message.

The text was not from a politician nor a political handler but from one of my most trusted sources in the financial community. It went this way:

Gibo resigns as chairman of Lakas Kampi but supposedly still admin candidate. Heard garapal na daw lakas officials idenified with FG to support Villar.

It was the first time I had heard that Teodoro had resigned from the party chairmanship. The late evening news verified this later.

The rest of the message from my source was unclear.

I wasn’t sure if my source was telling me he had heard that Lakas officials identified with “FG” – presidential spouse Jose Miguel Arroyo – were “garapal” or shameless in supporting rival candidate Senator Manuel Villar instead of their standard bearer Teodoro.

Or if it was Gibo who had heard of this “garapal” development and therefore resigned to send a furious signal to the party.

To clarify this, I had a long phone conversation with my source who confirmed both interpretations were correct.

Then my source told me something else which I now tend to believe because of two things. First, Teodoro’s resignation had turned out to be true. Second, there is now a mountain of contradictory statements being issued by the Arroyo camp concerning Mike Arroyo and his allies’ switch of support to Villar. The presidential palace and Lakas officials have separately denied, on Mike Arroyo’s behalf, but I’d like to hear the denial straight from the First Gentleman himself.

Something is definitely going on. Key allies of the Arroyos in northern, central and southern Philippines have suddenly defected to Villar. And  not a pip was heard from Malacañang Palace, calling the defectors rats or “ingratos.” Making me suspect they are actually an advance party.

My source also told me Teodoro was now talking to Estrada, who is running third in surveys. And Teodoro was reportedly not alone in talking to Estrada. Two other Arroyo officials were also talking to Estrada: Defense Secretary Norberto Gonzales and Interior and Local Governments Secretary Ronaldo Puno.

I have tried to verify this portion but so far I have been unable to reach them. Perhaps they’re still on retreat. Perhaps by publishing this, others will come forward to deny, clarify or verify this.

Another tidbit of info I got was that Teodoro was being wooed to drop out and being enticed with a possible post – as Estrada’s Executive Secretary. As his Little President. The idea of Estrada withdrawing in behalf of Teodoro was also mentioned.

You know, politics is the art of the possible. Anything is possible at this point. Political pairings are much like those in show business where movie producers match seemingly disparate male and female stars to see which ones would click in the box office.

Just to get a sense of whether a modus vivendi between Teodoro and Estrada could somehow click, I asked a strategist within the Lakas coalition. He told me,

I think it’s possible for other people to be calling Gibo. For him to initiate calls I doubt that. It’s more of the people wanting to talk to him and wanting to verify all these rumors.

This source added that both Teodoro and Manzano had assured they won’t quit:

They are going to see this campaign through as official candidates of Lakas. Any other reports to the contrary are without any basis.

But I also asked someone who used to be very very close to Estrada. He told me it was “possible” that defense secretary Gonzales and local governments secretary Puno were talking to Erap. “Bert, during the time of Erap in Tanay (where he was detained while being tried on the charge of plunder), he cultivaed Erap. Bert is really dedicated to the transition plan” which calls for the establishment of a civilian-military junta. And it was Puno who arranged Estrada’s presidential pardon.

This source said:

“If Gibo realizes na linoko siya ng (he was fooled by the) administration, if he realizes Manny Villar is really the candidate of Gloria, why not support Erap on his own?”

And the source added:

Assuming Manny Villar is the real candidate of Gloria you have to shift Lakas support to Villar at the last moment. If you support Villar now you’ll kill him.

Only a mere 24 hours were needed to order a support switch, he said.

Villar himself has vehemently denied any arrangement. His ally, Senator Aquilino Pimentel Jr., pointed out that Villar doesn’t need Arroyo nor her money.

But as you can see, Arroyo may need either Villar or Erap to survive politically. Arroyo’s precarious situation may be likened to a scene in the movies where someone is dangling from atop a building ledge and trying to grab the nearest leg or limb for dear life.

Nearly eight years ago I asked President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo,  “I’m sure a lot of women are dying to ask you this question.”

“And since you are not a widow, they would like to ask you this question. You don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to, but a lot of women are dying to know – do you still have sex?”

The 55-year-old mother of three replied  “Plenty” – and gave a toothy smile.

Last January 22, when she hosted a a surprise dinner for 23 officers and members of the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Philippines (FOCAP) I asked her a milder personal question about her hair. Now I’m not so sure if her reluctant reply pertained to my question eight years ago or two Fridays ago.

President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and FOCAP

During the hour-long dinner, Mrs Arroyo was at her gracious best but she was not all that candid. I must say, it took all of our reportorial skills  to get her to talk about her former college student and now leading presidential contender Senator Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III. She refused to talk about her party’s presidential standard bearer Gilbert Teodoro or about her feelings towards the Ampatuans – her long-time allies now accused of murdering 57 people including 30 journalists.

The ease with which she talked to reporters vanished in 2005 when wiretapped tapes of her, suggesting she was trying to rig her 2004 poll victory by a million votes, leaked out.

During her dinner some of that ease returned as she talked about the presidential palace, her girlhood and her Palace chef. Only to vanish when she refused to answer many questions she deemed “political” or which asked about her “feelings”.

Still, the occasion gave me a momentary glimpse of the power and the pomp of the presidency, its lonely isolation, and the woman who was determined to hold on to it for as long as she could.

I did not get any hint she was ready to clear out her desk by June 30 when her term ends.

At short notice. An invitation to dine with her, even at several hours’ notice, was highly unusual and one I seized at a moment’s notice. She had not seen FOCAP since 2007. A press conference in 2008 was abruptly canceled after we were told she would only talk about the economy and would not entertain political questions.

I was curious why the President wanted to meet us on the same day she waved goodbye to the remains of her press secretary, Cerge Remonde.

Her terms for engaging the foreign press quickly became evident. At the entrance to the presidential palace, the guards impounded all tape recorders and cameras on orders of the palace media relations office. It was a first for many of the journalists, including me, who have covered Palace events in three previous presidencies.

The media handlers later explained that no tape recorders and cameras were allowed because it was a strictly social event. A Palace photographer would snap photos. The confiscation disoriented me somewhat because we were informed earlier that while there was no formal Q and A, the President “may answer questions”.

Didn’t she want to be quoted correctly? And it would have been bad manners for us to scribble throughout the meal.

It turned out alright in the end, because someone else, who asked to remain unnamed, enabled me to put together almost the entire dinner conversation. Besides, Mrs Arroyo never told us it was off the record.

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Forming a unicameral legislature, that would in effect scrap the Philippine Senate, tops Gilberto Teodoro’s presidential agenda.

Gilberto Teodoro with his Xavier School classmates who promise to help him win - photo by Raissa Robles

The 45-year-old defense secretary told Asian Dragon magazine that he was running for the nation’s highest office “because a lot of people want me to become president (and) I think I can do some other things before I quit public service.”

The slender, six-foot tall Teodoro exudes confidence and an easy charm that seems to project only one message — “believe in me, I’m the one.”

“I’d like to reform society, transform the political structure, reform public governance, to put it that way,” he said.

Apparently realizing that the phrase “reform society” sounded too much like buzz words from the late strongman President Ferdinand Marcos, he shifted gears and said, “Not society but public governance.”

Teodoro believes constitutional change is key to securing the nation’s political and economic future: “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.”

Among the 2010 presidential candidates, Teodoro is alone in aggressively pushing it as his main platform of government. His proposals are similar to those being pushed without success by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and the House of Representatives, which she has dominated.

One charter revision Teodoro is batting for is the partial lifting of the ban on foreign land ownership. His advocacy was borne out of his experience as a congressman of nine years and as a defense secretary for two years.

“I do not want a strictly presidential (form of government); it does not work in this country. And a bicameral presidential does not work,” he said. “It (the structure) could be parliamentary, (it) depends on the sense of the Constitutional Convention,” which he would ask Congress to convene immediately if he wins.

The bottom line is, “I’d like a more synergistic structure” in which there is “unity of effort, of cooperation” between and among those who make the laws and those who implement them.

He’s familiar with how a unicameral legislature works. For eight years since he was 14, his mother Mercedes served as an assemblywoman at the unicameral Batasang Pambansa that Marcos created in 1978 to lend his dictatorship a veneer of democracy.

Teodoro regrets the day his late aunt, former President Corazon Aquino, threw out Marcos’ 1973 Constitution and replaced it with a “reactionary” charter. “I’ve studied the (1987) Constitution for a long, long time,” he said. “It looks back. It just corrected everything… Marcos did. It did not provide a mechanism for the future.”

Teodoro believes Marcos was “wrong in declaring martial law” even though his uncle, businessman Eduardo “Danding” Cojuanco, was part of Marcos’ inner circle. Cojuangco heads the National People’s Coalition, of which Teodoro was a member before he bolted to join the Administration’s Lakas and be its standard bearer.

He said martial law “just prolonged the agony.” Marcos should have simply waited for the Constitutional Convention, in which Teodoro’s mom was a delegate helping draft a new charter. “And if the Constitutional Convention completed its work, (and) the Constitution was properly ratified, we would have had a good Constitution in 1973, except for the economic provisions.”

Asked if he could turn out like Marcos who was elected president at 47, Teodoro replied, “People have experienced what Marcos had done.” Besides, he added, “I’m a different person.”

“Marcos had a very, very strong sense of history. I don’t share that… I don’t keep a diary. I’m not that kind of a leader,” he said. “I’m a consensus builder leader. I’m not a dictator unless there’s something that has already been agreed upon and I need to enforce it.”

“I don’t intend to be a Roman conqueror. I intend to do what I can, contribute what I can, then go while I’m still young,” he said.

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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.