Life in PNoy’s Enchanted Kingdom

“I may be drunk, Miss, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.” Winston Churchill

Newsbreak reported that Executive Secretary Ochoa was “drunk as a skunk just days after the Luneta bloodbath”

MANILA, Philippines–We’d probably let this pass if it didn’t happen three nights after the Luneta bloodbath. After all, public officials–even those closest to President Aquino, are entitled to their own personal time outside office hours.

But Executive Secretary Paquito “Jojo” Ochoa Jr. should have known better.

According to people who saw him at around 2 a.m. of Friday last week, Ochoa was very drunk at the lobby of the Manila Peninsula, oblivious to the other few guests who were still there, and apparently unmindful of what the rest of the grieving and depressed metropolis was feeling in the aftermath of the bloody hostage at the Luneta.

According to Newsbreak informants, Ochoa was slumped in a chair at the lobby, having the grand time of his life with a popular singer-actress, who was with two lady friends. Malacañang security aides hovered around while their boss continued to drink with his lady guests.

Our informants were shocked to see him there. “At the very least, it’s so unbecoming of a Little President. He should have been more circumspect,” they said.

But what did we expect? This is the same guy who, as Newsbreak reported earlier, celebrated President Noynoy Aquino’s inauguration by having a drinking spree in Malacañang with his deputies.

Newsbreak’s beef is that Ochoa was “apparently unmindful of what the rest of the grieving and depressed metropolis was feeling in the aftermath of the bloody hostage at the Luneta.”

Now why tie the two together - public drunkenness and the Luneta tragedy?
“We’d probably let this pass if it didn’t happen three nights after the Luneta bloodbath.”

No sirree, Newsbreak. There’s a bigger issue out there and it shouldn’t get muddled up, tied to something that will eventually fade from the headlines.

The real issue is Ochoa is the Little President and he should not behave like a Little Erap, not in public, hostage tragedies or none. Period.

He holds a very sensitive position in the administration and he cannot afford to behave in a manner that would undermine the public’s confidence in his ability to function efficiently at all times. He should be aware that any doubts about his character and abilities reflect on his President.

Now I am not criticizing Ochoa for enjoying his drink. Some people actually perform better when they are “under the influence”. Churchill was a notorious drunk but he seems to have steered the British Ship of State quite well during WWII. So it’s not the imbibing that bothers me.

What bothers me is that Ochoa did not seem to care that public drunkenness, specially when it involves a government official, is not sweet. Maybe he was just too drunk to give a shit.

PNoy must tell Ochoa that he is not anymore just some lawyer in a hole in the wall law firm.

Let’s start with Minority Leader Jabba da Hutt, Edcel Lagman to his friends. He complained that the budget submitted by President Aquino demeaned Congress.

How?

From the Philippine Daily Inquirer

MANILA, Philippines – The missing P711 billion in automatic and continuing appropriations from the proposed P1.645 trillion budget for 2011 had the minority bloc in the House of Representatives raising a howl over what it said was the Aquino administration’s attempt to “demean Congress.”

At the start of deliberations on the proposed budget Wednesday, Minority leader and Albay Representative Edcel Lagman riled against the omission of the amount in the National Expenditure Program (NEP) submitted to Congress.

“It’s obvious, they wanted to demean the power of Congress to go oversee these expenditures,” Lagman told reporters in a news conference, adding that this was impliedly admitted by Budget officials during the hearing.

“That should not be the case,” he added.

Sounds reasonable. No?

Here’s the PDI report on Budget Director Butch Abad’s response:

In his presentation, Budget Secretary Florencio Abad said the amount was not submitted as part of the NEP because “automatically appropriated items have already been given continuing authority.”

Abad said this prevented a repeat of what happened in the 2010 budget “where Congress adjusted downwards the interest rate assumption to save P64.6 billion for interest payments, and transferred the same to the general appropriations for Congressional initiatives.”

This was, however, vetoed by then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, and was reverted back to debt payments.

So Jabba kept quite when Gloria did the same thing Aquino is doing to them now? But Gloria always had paper bags handy whenever the crocodiles were restless.

But that’s beside the point. Let’s leave Jabba’s double-standards for another day.

The real issue here is Jabba is crying over P711 B that would have gone to members of Congress. He has the gall to do the “separate but equal” song and dance just so he can feast on more pork Ang taba na nga ang takaw pa din.

And now on to Thelmo Cunanan, the former chairman of the Social Security System ( SSS) who made millions exercising stock options offered by Philex Mining to its board members.

Cunanan was on the board of Philex Mining as a representative of the SSS which had substantial investments in Philex. So it’s clear he was not there because he personally owned a huge block of Philex shares.

So why did Cunanan avail of the stock options and pocket the profits from the sale of the stocks he purchased as a representative of the SSS?

Here’s his reason:

“Art. 8 of the Philex Corp. Stock Option Plan states that ‘no rights may be transferred, sold, exchanged, pledged, disposed of or otherwise hypothecated or encumbered by a Participant or any beneficiary thereof…’ If (I) did not avail of them … the SSS couldn’t have either because of this provision.”

So sa madaling salita, Cunana said he would have given it to SSS if he could but since he couldn’t he decided to keep it for himself. Ayus ba?

UPDATE: From the blog Remembrance of things awry comes news that Beijing did not like Donald Tsang calling Aquino.

“A curious, but probably correct, thing was that there was a negative reaction in Beijing to the news that Hong Kong’s Donald Tsang had called President Aquino of the Philippines about the hostage crisis. Beijing considered it as a breach of state protocol regarding international relations: Beijing strongly felt that Tsang did not have the prerogative to do that because Beijing reserved that privilege for itself.”

Read more HERE

Too many experts

“Too bad that all the people who know how to run the country are busy driving taxicabs and cutting hair.” – George Burns

I agreed with most of the expert opinion regarding the Luneta tragedy but I disagreed with two in particular: criticism of the Palace aide who screened the call of Hongkong chief executive Donald Tsang and criticism of the negotiators for not giving in to Capt. Mendoza’s demands.

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Heroism in our time
FROM A DISTANCE By Carmen N. Pedrosa (The Philippine Star)

Apropos my column on “More than a tragedy” some Charter change advocates called to say I should have spelled out the reforms needed so that Monday’s disastrous fiasco might not have happened. There are other reforms. What is clear is we have a system that gave rise to the incompetence. Indeed, in the personality based presidential system that we have, the election and appointment of incompetents is an expected hazard.

It would not be so if we had a party-based parliamentary government. The choice of a leader will depend on his ability to see the program through if the party is to remain in office. Even before he assumes office he is already under scrutiny for capability by his peers. He is a first among equals, not a popularity figure.

There are no bungled hostage situations in countries that have a parliamentary system. Their leaders do not mess up because their selection system is fool-proof. Wow.

Everybody is now an expert in hostage situations. They’re all over blogs, social networking sites, and mainstream media.

Woulda, coulda, shoulda sums up what those morning-after quarterbacks are saying about Monday’s tragedy. And it’s the same refrain I heard after the attack on WTC, the hostage-taking in Russia, the assault on the Branch Davidians in Waco, Texas and a whole host of incidents that did not have a happy ending.

Woulda, coulda, shoulda is not for those who only know what they saw on TV. That was only a part of the entire thing. Viewers did not see what went on behind the scenes, what went on in the bus etc. etc. There are so many things to be looked into before anyone can say woulda, coulda, shoulda.

Authorities must do a post-game analysis so that mistakes made are not repeated. Monday’s incident is not the first nor will it be the last.

In situations like last Monday’s, the public needs to be assured that authorities know what they are doing so that even if things turn out badly there will be no loss of confidence in the capability of law enforcers.

No one can predict the outcome of a hostage situation so authorities have to look like they are ready for anything. Recall the Entebbe hijacking and the Israeli rescue operation. Some hostages were saved and others were killed but because the operation looked very efficient, the public focused on the hostages saved instead of those killed and the rescue was deemed a success.

Last Monday, unfortunately, it looked like the cops didn’t know what they were doing. And so experts mushroomed and the blame game became the most popular sport in town.

Changing the topic
Written by Manuel Buencamino / Business Mirror / Dispatches from the Enchanted Kingdom

“Where there’s smoke, there are mirrors.”

On July 30 President Aquino signed Executive Order 1 creating the Truth Commission. Maj. Gen. Juancho Sabban, Marines commandant, immediately declared that his men would testify about cheating in the 2004 elections.

Col. Angel Querubin, the highly decorated soldier charged with trying to overthrow Gloria Arroyo, welcomed the good news. “The statement of General Sabban, that the Marines will cooperate, will snowball….”

All of a sudden Rear Adm. Feliciano Angue, former head of the National Capital Region (NCR) Command, came out of the cold to reveal that a “group of politicians” offered him money and rank to cheat for them in the 2004 elections. (more…)

Depicting Luisita
By Rina Jimenez-David
Philippine Daily Inquirer

“PLEASE DON’T ask me to defend Hacienda Luisita,” was the late President Cory Aquino’s tart retort in an interview with her shortly after she assumed office. At that time, the “Stock Distribution Option” or SDO had just become the most controversial provision of the Comprehensive Agrarian Reform Program (CARP). Critics alleged the alternative of distributing stocks of ownership in the company instead of distributing land in a plantation was created precisely to benefit the President’s family which owned Hacienda Luisita.

Actually, there was a point to President Cory’s assertion. Hacienda Luisita and the SDO had enough defenders, and anything she said would have been construed as self-interest and interference. (more…)

The Wrong Suit

“I have an agreement with the houseflies. The flies don’t practice law and I don’t walk on the ceiling.” – Groucho Marx

“Gloria Arroyo’s House allies asked the Supreme Court to nullify Pres. Aquino’s executive order creating the Truth Commission.”

“Why, don’t they want to know the truth?”

“That’s not the point.

(more…)

I have purposely stayed away from commenting on the Hacienda Luisita Incorporated issue because I am not a stockholder of that corporation. But since everyone seems to think they are experts on an issue that does not concern them directly then I’m not going to be left behind.

The overwhelming majority of HLI stockholders voted for the latest plan. The overhowling minority represented by Christian Monsod, his wife, and Joma’s party list groups now say the will of the majority should be disregarded for this or that reason.

Well, I think the only correct solution for all is for those opposed to the deal to buy out HLI and then distribute the land to the farmers, whether they like it or not, at gunpoint if necessary. Call it the Utrecht-Dasmarinas Village Initiative.

Two female legislators filed a “Divorce Bill”. The bill will make divorce a humane option for couples who do not want to stay married.
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