Category: ping lacson

political chitchat

for the latest political tsismis i always make silip the tribune column of former senator ernie maceda a.k.a. mr. expose(y) who is also the spokesman of former president erap.   no thanks to ping lacson’s disclosures, erap’s reelection bid might be in trouble, and manong ernie must be wishing for the good old days before cory died when the erap camp was supremely confident of a win in 2010.   just the same i t don’t see him advising his boss to give it up.   manong ernie loves the political intramurals much too much.   he loves being in the thick of things.   besides it’s early days.

anyway here’s what manong ernie says about alfonso yuchengco’s statement in the inquirer re ping lacson’s allegation that yuchengco was forced to sell his shares in pldt to manny pangilinan when erap was president.

Yuchengco sick. Ambassador Alfonso Yuchengco, 86, is in New York for treatment of Alzheimer’s disease. He could not himself have issued the statement confirming Sen. Panfilo Lacson’s exposé that President Estrada coerced him to sell his 3 percent stake in PLDT to First Pacific headed by Manny Pangilinan.

It is alleged that Ambassador Albert del Rosario accompanied by 10 soldiers forced him to sign the Deed of Sale in August 1998. But the record shows that deal was actually consummated in November 1998 after several months of negotiations over the price. So, it is clear that when the sale was consummated in November 1998, there was no coercion consideringthat there were continuing negotiations and the original contract that Yuchengco alleged he was forced to sign was even amended to reflect a much higher price. If there was coercion, then Helen Yuchengco Dee would have had nothing to do with Manny Pangilinan or PLDT. But she accepted to be member of PLDT’s Board of Directors and PLDT continued to keep RCBC, the Yuchengco owned bank, as its major banker.

The question remains: Did Ambassador Del Rosario who allegedly forced the Yuchengco’s to sell, act upon President Erap’s order or was he acting for someone else? Del Rosario is a Manny Pangilinan man, not close at all to President Erap.

Stock market brokers call attention to the fact that one of Yuchengco’s daughters is very, very close to First Gentleman Mike Arroyo.

Here comes former Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez saying that Erap could be charged with coercion. Secretary Gonzalez is again showing his partisan ignorance. The alleged coercion happened more than 10 years ago. Therefore, the crime has prescribed.

hmmm.    just because there were price negotiations and just because a yuchengco daughter is on the board of directors of pldt, hindi ibig sabihin na hindi napilitan ang mga yuchengco na magbenta.  it only tells methat the yuchengcos managed to negotiate some terms, sort of.

but what about the alzheimer thing?   perhaps it was the yuchengo kids who issued the statement in the name of their father?   and yet and yet and yet i just heard in the evening news that erap is charging al yuchengco and the inquirer with libel and asking 10-20 million php in damages.   no mention of the alzheimer thing, which, if true, would put into question the validity of the allegedly libelous statement di ba?

tungkol naman kina mar at korina and their future plans:

Mar and Korina say yes. At the birthday party of RC Constantino at the Architect’s Center, Sen. Serge Osmeña told us that Sen. Mar Roxas finally decided to accept Noynoy’s offer of the VP slot after fiancée Korina Sanchez withdrew her objections to Mar’s accepting the offer.

Sen. Serge Osmeña, who admitted he was running Chiz Escudero’s campaign for the last 12 months said he has decided to run for the Senate and implied he has left the Chiz Escudero campaign. He revealed he did commission the latest SWS survey conducted on Sept. 5 and 6. He conceded that after the euphoria has gone down, Noynoy’s ratings should go down. While he did not say so, it is clear that he will be running on the Liberal Party ticket. Serge ran for VP to Mayor Lim as LP official candidate in 1992. At the moment, he is a member of PDP-Laban. Serge admitted that with a 30-percent discount from ABS-CBN head Gabby Lopez, he will budget P100 million for his TV-radio ads

tungkol kay noli de castro and his future plans:

Noli de Castro’s ranking dropped to 7 percent in the latest SWS rating. Reports say ABS-CBN chairman Gabby Lopez has informed Noli he is supporting Noynoy and advised him to give up his plans to run for president or vice president and just return full-time to his TV hosting job.

at tungkol sa kung ano-ano at kung sino-sino:

Tidbits. At the Umagang Kay Ganda, ABS-CBN’s early morning talk show, the audience roundly applauded President Erap after his interview by Pinky Webb and ABS-CBN employees requested picture with Erap. The picture taking lasted for 30 minutes… Kim Atienza told us that he had not witnessed this happening to other guests… For the month of August, the top spenders on TV commercials are DILG Secretary Ronnie Puno — P87 million; Sen. Manny Villar — P84 million and Sen. Mar Roxas P64 million… Former Batanes Rep. Butch Abad is the de facto campaign manager of Noynoy. Active behind the scenes is uncle Peping Cojuangco. Will Sen. Tessie Aquino Oreta and Paul Aquino leave the GMA camp for Noynoy?… Lawyer Pancho Villaraza of the FIRM and his Sigma Ma Ro associates are supporting Manny Villar. Partner Nonong Cruz is with the Noynoy-Roxas camp.

masaya.  samantala umiinit na naman ang usaping reproductive health.   the bill is up for final debate and vote sa house of representatives, that is, as soon as the church stops objecting, so the speaker can muster a quorum, haha, what a house of wimps.

the games begin

was going to blog on alex magno’s game-changer series, express amazement at how cory’s death and noynoy’s audacity seems to have changed his politics, and wonder what his bosses gma and fg have to say.   then i read manuel buencamino’s bading post on gary olivar, and someone asked about gary o’s fellow ex-radical alex magno, bumaliktad na nga ba?   and manuel said no, and he seemed very certain.   so napaisip naman ako.   magno has been saying all the right things since cory died and noynoy declared.   Game-changer 5 is a piece i wish i had written.

… Despite all the tinges of retro here, what has commenced is a highly experimental political initiative. The goals are larger than Noynoyfor President. Larger than the presidency itself.

This is no longer about “opposition” versus “administration” — although that continues to be a bogey in the minds of some. It is about new versus old — although that might be difficult for some to even begin imagining.

This political initiative draws its power from voluntarism at the grassroots. That voluntarism can only spring from clear principles about what leadership ought to be and at what standards we ought to hold the wielders of power.

It is about reestablishing governance on a new ethical basis, reinventing government so that it becomes an enabler rather than a hindrance to getting things done. It is about rediscovering a new cadre of leaders who will catalyze the energies of the nation rather than stunt them. It is about neutralizing the old cabal of powerbrokers by calling up people’s power in its most sophisticated, less populist form.

There will, no doubt, be a large dose of emotionalism in this effort. That is indispensable. People will have to be shaken enough to abandon politics as usual and be freed from the traditional habits of Filipino politics. All the disgust and all the anger that have accumulated need to be re-channeled no longer at settling old scores but at building a new scoreboard for governance.

In a matter of weeks, the doors of our electoral politics have been thrown wide open. The new forces must now march in. This is what this experiment is all about.

Until a few weeks ago, the politicians of the old mold and the powerbrokers of the old trenches controlled the dynamic of democratic selection. They hired the best minds from the industry that successfully sells shampoo and toothpaste and deodorants to our consumers in order to sell contrived constructs of political personalities to a dumbed down electorate.

For this experiment to succeed, we will have to raise the quality of the electorate, force them to think about abstract options more than just people in the flesh — or worse, money in the bag. This, win or lose, will be a major step forward in itself.

This is more than just enabling one candidate to win the count over the others — although that, too, is important. This is not a battle fought to be lost. But in order to win, it must succeed in its larger goal of bringing in new forces and new ideas into the electoral field.

The Edsa Revolution was exactly like this. It asked the people to contemplate what seemed impossible because it had become almost an alien concept: be free, be decisive in our numbers, build a government accountable to the people….

indeed.   hope springs eternal.   the game has changed.   suddenly ping lacson has found the courage to denounce erap in no uncertain terms.   tanong ni erap, bakit ngayon lang?   eh kasi, i suppose, ngayon lang naging timely for ping, to defend himself in the dacer case, and to further the cause of unity behind noynoy, why not.   the game has changed.

tanong ko lang kay ping, bakit to-be-continued, bakit hindi pa niya tinapos kanina?   anong strategy ‘yan, in aid of under-the-table behind-closed-doors wheeling-and-dealing, to what end?   or maybe it’s just to prolong his stint on center stage.   whatever.   if as a result erap decides not to run, good for him, good for ping, good for us.

also looking forward, of course, to jinggoy estrada’s privilege speech in defense of his father.   magkukuwento din daw siya tungkol kay ping.   sige sige, let’s hear it all.   matira ang walang bahid.   matira ang malinis.

as for senate president juan ponce enrile’s report that there is no yellow fever in the countryside, not in the north, not in the south.   hmmm.   well.   maybe he’ll be the last to know, just like in EDSA ’86.