Catanduanes Forum

Posted on 08:41 PM, April 20, 2010
Grassroots & Governance -- By Teresa S. Abesamis

The only way presidential candidate Manny Villar could put his motley team together the way it is shaping up is to think "addition." How can you have Satur Ocampo, BongBong Marcos, Bong Revilla, Pia Cayetano, Adel Tamano, Gilbert Remulla, and Chavit Singson all in one camp unless you had a value-less, principle-free set of standards to guide you?

The latest entry into the team seems to be convicted rapist Romeo Jalosjos, who has been paroled or pardoned (?) by the current president who seems of the same value- and principle-free mind-set. Jalosjos, who is said to have either a command vote or powerful election machinery in Zamboanga, seems to be the latest entry into this exclusive club of Manny Villar’s political party which proposes to put an end to poverty in our country. How he will do this, this aspiring leader has not explained. Several of my individual interview respondent cab drivers themselves find this incredulous. "Tapos tayo," they explain to me.

Villar, they tell me, will have to recover the billions already spent in his campaign. He is, after all, a businessman, these street-smart cab drivers, amazingly, explain to me.

It seems that fertilizer scam entrepreneur JocJoc Bolante is also supporting Villar as candidate for governor of Capiz. It is hard to believe, but it seems, from limited feedback, that Bolante has a chance to win.

It gets juicier. Andal Ampatuan Jr., no less, was shown on television brandishing two campaign materials called "ballers." I just call them plastic mini-wrist bands. Detained murder suspect Andal Jr.’s ballers were colored orange, for Manny Villar, and black for Remulla.

Earlier this week, the young Remulla was reported to have met with Andal Ampatuan Sr., governor of Maguindanao, for what reason, your guess is as good as mine. What else but the elections could have been the topic? Young Remulla, foreign educated, who seems to emit an Ivy League aura, consorting with these warlords? Ah, but the Ampatuans, it is heavily rumored, can add and add and add votes to make you win. This young man is learning early on the trade of his own father, the political lord for a long time of Cavite.

Even Manny Pacquiao has been drawn into the web of addition politics. Is he paying for entry? Or is he getting paid? Why would he join this addition team? Pacquiao is number one in the BIR’s recently released list of Top 20 Philippine Income Taxpayers in Year 2008 (Y2009 list will be released in May, perhaps after the elections). Manny Villar himself does not appear in that list, even while he says he is financing his own expensive campaign. In fact, he revealed in a radio-television interview recently that he used the proceeds from the IPO for Vista Land. This sounds funny and illegal, but we leave that to Jamby Madrigal’s lawyer to say so, as he has in fact done.

My own take on this whole parable of Manny Villar’s ascension from his claimed poor, or very poor, or very, very poor beginnings in Tondo, to almost the presidency of our country is an awesome determination to make it big; by hook or by crook, it doesn’t really matter. The rightness or wrongness of the methods may not have come into the equation. What has mattered, so far, is that he could swing it. Get the results he wanted, whatever might have been the means.

The important thing is that he could do it, or get it done. There have probably been no qualms about the rightness or wrongness of methods. Effectiveness in reaching goals is the measure of this man, it seems to me.

This is why I cannot even think of voting for Manny Villar.

He may have no malice, or evil intention. I am afraid he just hasn’t a clue as to what is right or wrong. The main thing is, will it work? So far, whatever he has set out to do, become the biggest low-cost residential real estate developer in the country, or the speaker of the Lower House, or the president of the Senate, he has accomplished. It is admirable how well he has made these things happen.

Manny Villar is a man who knows what he wants, knows the system, whatever it may be like, for better or for worse, and yes, knows how to use it. Right or wrong is not the measure. It is that he gets it done, and the sooner, the better?

This kind of thinking is frightening in a man who wants to run our government. This man cannot be allowed to lead our country.

The next leader has to be someone who is committed to bring our country and our people to a life of integrity, dignity, and principle; it is this kind of leader who will raise our nation to a higher level in the community of nations. And it is this kind of leader who will inspire our people to be the best that we can be because, in the end, that is what matters. What our people become, and what they are able to achieve, is the measure of leadership success. We need someone who is driven by more than a sense of personal success, but rather by a powerful sense of duty.

Certainly, that leader cannot be Manny Villar.

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