Manolo Quezon is #TheExplainer Newsletter -A reflection on family and power
The weekend begins with reports of Senator Go being prepared to throw in the towel, together with other stories that the President was trying to convince him otherwise (from a Rapper report):
Senator Bong Go gave the impression that he has decided to withdraw from the 2022 presidential race in a Malacañang meeting with governors, according to two people present.
“In very clear terms, he said he would withdraw,” said one politician present at the meeting on Wednesday, November 24.
Cagayan Governor Manuel Mamba, in a phone call with Rappler on Friday, November 26, also said this was his interpretation of Go’s remarks.
“Umatras siya (He is backing out). The governors, other officials present, were all surprised. Nagtitinginan sila. ‘Paano na kami (They kept looking at each other, seemingly asking, ‘What about us)?’” said Mamba.
Mamba and the other politicians’ interpretation of Go’s remarks was different from that of Presidential Adviser on Political Affairs Jacinto “Jing” Paras. To Paras, it seemed that Go expressed doubts about his presidential bid but that he could still change his mind.
But to Mamba and the source, Go’s decision appeared final.
The senator supposedly cried during the meeting. Those present were told that President Rodrigo Duterte was late to the evening gathering because he was “trying to convince Go to stay in the race,” said the source.
An early part of the meeting involved the governors, all of whom were Duterte allies, expressing their support for Go one by one. Go was then asked to respond. It was at this point when the senator was quoted as saying, “Hindi ko pa panahon (It’s not yet my time),” and shared his other concerns about joining the presidential race.
Yet Paras is equally convinced that Go’s expression of doubts about his presidential bid was “not serious” and that Duterte and Go would announce in a few days that the senator is pushing through with his campaign.
PDP-Laban (Cusi faction) told Rappler that things remain “business as usual” in the party in relation to Go’s presidential campaign…
But what sealed the deal for Mamba was when Duterte, at the end of the meeting, addressed the governors.
“The cat is out of the bag,” was the first thing the Chief Executive supposedly said.
Eventually, Duterte said that with Go out of the picture, he would not support any other presidential bet.
“Magneutral na lang ako. I’ll just keep quiet. Hindi ako nag-agree sa decision ni Sara but she is my daughter, obligado ako mahalin siya,” went Duterte, according to Mamba.
(I’ll just be neutral. I’ll just keep quiet. I don’t agree with Sara’s decision but she is my daughter and I am obligated to love her.)
Perhaps merely a gambit to light a fire under the President and/or the faithful; but just as possibly a recognition that the President is losing the Civil War.
Actually reading between the lines, throwing in the towel plus proclaiming neutrality is actually a face-saving way for the President to restore harmony in the Alliance of Necessity between FM Jr. and Daughterte.
They have their own “Never Again.” Remember it takes 10 years for change to have a chance to be permanent. If for some reason they don’t win 2022 they have to start again and most of them are getting too old for a boom-bust cycle.
Weekend Reflection
A Friday reflection on family, power, change, and country. With a lot of readings. It begins with something I heard Paulynn Paredes Sicam say in a peace advocates’ forum close to 20 years ago: for change to become permanent, she said, you need ten years.
In a fundamental way I think shortening Marcos’ rule to “20 years” is misleading; it was 7 years of democratic rule and 13 of dictatorship. The distinction is important and requires a bit of explanation. The 1st phase was within the confines of institutions and precedents;
The 2nd phase was without limits and even more fundamentally, without the possibility of establishing a succession because despots cannot risk it; if democracies are about succession, dictatorship is about elimination.
The moderate (democratic/middle) opposition to Marcos wanted in their heart of hearts, to bring back the country to where it was on the eve of martial law; to continue the arrested development of society/institutions. But dictatorship lasting over a decade made this impossible.
Which underscores that at its very heart, stripping away the veneer of modernity (FM adored renaming institutions with the word “development” as if it would magically transform inept and corrupt agencies), it was a family enterprise running a country as if it owned it.
Which brings us to a crucial talking point of the Marcoses, then & now: that their loss of power and efforts at rehabilitation and restoration are all an unfortunate hassle merely because of a family feud. This is a powerful argument. Leon Ma. Guerrero and Luigi Barzini tell why.
Leon Ma. Guerrero, “What are Filipinos Like?” 1953
There is another aspect of self-reliance which has nothing to do with colonialism and its residue…. [Some Americans] cannot understand why grown-up sons and daughters keep living with their parents even after they have been married and begotten children of their own, or why we should feel obliged to feed and house even the most distant “cousins” who find themselves in want. This trait is not exclusively Filipino; it is common to all rudimentary societies. Modern man looks to his government for security but where the government, whether native or foreign, is still regarded as an alien, selfish force, the individual prefers to trust his bloodkin for what are in effect old-age pensions or unemployment insurance. The family is an indispensable institution in these circumstances, and one cannot be too sure that people are happier when it has been supplanted by the state as the center of society.
– Leon Ma. Guerrero, “What are Filipinos Like?” 1953
– Luigi Barzini, The Italians
One fundamental point which escapes most foreigners must be understood and remembered. Most Italians still obey a double standard. There is one code valid within the family circle, with relatives and honorary relatives, intimate friends and close associates, and there is another code regulating life outside. Within, they assiduously demonstrate all the qualities which are not usually attributed them by superficial observers: they are relatively reliable, honest, truthful, just, obedient, generous, disciplined, brave, and capable of self-sacrifices. They practice what virtues other men usually dedicate to the welfare of their country at large; the Italians’ family loyalty is their true patriotism. In the outside world, amidst the chaos and disorder of society, they often feel compelled to employ the wiles of underground fighters in enemy-occupied territory. All official and legal authority is considered hostile by them until proven friendly or harmless: if it cannot be ignored, it should be neutralized or deceived if need be.
The Marcoses probably believe it and many Filipinos equally believe it because part of the Marcosian secret of success was a shrewd understanding of the Filipino. Everything must be personal because everything is about the family. But read Apolinario Mabini reflecting on Rizal.
Apolinario Mabini, La Revolucion Filipina
[Rizal] was found guilty of having been [the revolution’s] chief instigator because, had it not been for the articles he had published in La Solidaridad and for his novels, the people would never have taken to politics. This judgement was totally incorrect because political activities in the Philippines antedated Rizal, because Rizal was only a personality created by the needs of these activities: if Rizal had not existed, somebody else would have played his role. The movement was by nature slow and gentle, it had become violent because obstructed. Rizal had not started the resistance, yet he was condemned to death: were he not innocent, he would not be a martyr.
In contrast to [Fr.] Burgos who wept because he died guiltless, Rizal went to the execution ground calm and even cheerful, to show that he was happy to sacrifice his life, which he had dedicated to the good of all the Filipinos, confident that in love and gratitude they would always remember him and follow his example and teaching. In truth the merit of Rizal’s sacrifice consists precisely in that it was voluntary and conscious. He had known perfectly well that if he denounced the abuses which the Spaniards were committing in the Philippines, they would not sleep in peace until they had encompassed his ruin; yet he did so because, if the abuses were not exposed, they would never be remedied. From the day Rizal understood the misfortunes of his native land and decided to work to redress them, his vivid imagination never ceased to picture him at every moment of his life the terrors of the death that awaited him; thus he learned not to fear it, and had no fear when it came to take him away; the life of Rizal, from the time he dedicated it to the service of his native land, was therefore a continuing death, bravely endured until the end for love of his countrymen. God grant that they will know how to render to him the only tribute worthy of his memory: the imitation of his virtues.
Mabini wasn’t saying anything new in that this is a fundamental difference in old and new approaches to history for example: is it great men who mold their times or do the times mold us, etc. A point to be made is that as with Rizal however a person becomes a colossus in their time, it also requires a confluence of events, trends or a consensus among previously squabbling people, to actually effect change however much an individual may have been advocating it. This was something revealed in the fall of the Marcoses, too.
Which Marcos and friends did not see. Proof of this is how he or his henchmen or whatever combination thought that liquidating Ninoy Aquino would solve their problems when it was unsure if Marcos would be alive much longer and succession fever was gripping the country in 1983.
Ninoy had identified the fatal flaw in the family orientation of FM: time. The dictators health was failing before the son and heir could possibly take over and his wife though a faction in herself was not him; thus for the first time in a decade people could actually contemplate replacing the family.
Here let’s pause for a little detail that would prove mightily important:
So long as Marcos could make people believe it was only s personal grudge he was facing, people had an excuse to duck and avoid being dragged in, as the dictator was proving all-powerful. But when others begin opting in, as Chitang Nakpil saw, well, they create yellow…
So long as Marcos could make people believe it was only s personal grudge he was facing, people had an excuse to duck and avoid being dragged in, as the dictator was proving all-powerful. But when others begin opting in, as Chitang Nakpil saw, well, they create yellow…
Carmen Guerrero Nakpil
I asked [Imelda] whether she and the President had watched Ninoy’s funeral on TV, and she said, yes, they’d done so, together, in his bedroom. And that they’d been crushed, struck dumb by the enormity of what they were seeing on the video screen. She added that they had felt overwhelmingly humiliated because they had little inkling of the public mood, and that Marcos had said, “So, after all these years, all our efforts, our trying and striving, it has come to this?”
Ninoy did not die that day on that sunny Sunday afternoon in August 1983 at the Manila International Airport, for that was when he began to live forever in the hearts of his countrymen. It was Ferdinand Marcos who died that day, and he knew it.
Here is where grudge match became People of the Philippines vs. Ferdinand Marcos and Friends: the opinions of many ended up pushing the leaders to get together, however uneasily (or resentfully, or falsely). But this coalition proved more able than one utterly dependent on FM.
To be sure there was also a battle of wills with the dictator ailing and presiding over a regime he had built: where competence was punished if it got in the way of loyalty; in a negative sense it had dark echoes in 2001 as well as chronicled by Nick Joaquin.
Nick Joaquin, Madame Excelsis: Historying Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo
However, this second People Power epiphany was not uniformly the tea party that Mao said no uprising could be. For a while, again and again, it looked as if blood would have to be shed. And Mike Arroyo says they were ready to shed it.
“Our group there was a back-up strike force. In fact, it was our group that won over to our side the PNP first. If Panfilo Lacson had resisted, he and his men would have been repelled: there would have been bloodshed, but not on EDSA. In every place where Erap loyalists had a force, we had a counter-force to face it, with orders to shoot. And not only in Metro Manila. Carillo had already been sent to the provinces; and in Nueva Ecija, for instance, we had Rabosa. This was a fight to the finish. That’s why those five days that Erap was demanding were so important. He was counting on counter-coups and baliktaran.”
And on real war. A hot war to empty EDSA, divide the nation, ands keep him in Malacañang. All he needed was time: time to get the hot war started and startling. And so Erap’s endgame was delay, delay -delay discussions, delay agreements, delay decisions. But Mike Arroyo says they were prepared for that, too.
“Why, I was negotiating with Pardo up to three o’clock in the morning: niloloko lang pala kami. But I told him point-blank: “If by six o’clock this morning [Saturday] you haven’t given us the resignation letter, we will storm the gates of Malacañang!’ But they insisted on more talk: with de Villa up front, and my back channel debate with Pardo, which even became a three-way contest, with Buboy Virata pitching in. But the threat to march to Malacañang was for real. And so was the danger of bloodshed.”
And those who taunted the peaceful “mob” at EDSA to go ahead and make revolution -with scissors and bolos and kitchen knives- didn’t know how close they came to being killed in a not so gentle show of People Power. If Erap was banking on a hot war, so were certain troops of Gloria’s, including Mike Arroyo’s forces.
Superstition maybe, but all the signs, as Mike Arroyo read them, pointed to the room at the top for Gloria.
“When she became vice-president, a believer in feng shui told her she was lucky: Erap would not last his full term. ‘Why, will he die?’ we asked, knowing that Erap had a bad liver. And this guy said no, but Erap wouldn’t last three years as President.”
Mike Arroyo would marvel how people who sneered that Gloria was too greedy and impatient for the presidency would later, when Gloria the President consulted with this or that people’s group, would very snidely sneer that the consultations proved that Gloria had not been preparing for the presidency.
“But Gloria knew that her job as vice-president was to be prepared to take over. She was the spare tire: what happens to the jeep of State if it suffers a flat tire and the spare tire is also flat? Gloria has always shown herself ready to take over -and for that she has been taunted as being in a hurry to be President.”
Mike Arroyo admits he had his moments of doubt.
“There was a time honestly, when I felt I erred in advising her to resign from the Cabinet. The Masa in Manila apparently wanted her to stick it out with Erap. And when she started attacking him, everything fell on us — grabe!- everything! But I told myself: it’s now or never; if we lose here we’re totally destroyed and it’s goodbye to her political career — but if we win here, she becomes President! So we really fought. We bought one million and a half million copies of Pinoy Times to give away so the public could read about the Erap mansions and bank accounts. And when EDSA happened, we texted everybody to go running there. EDSA, EDSA: everybody converge on EDSA! Panalo kung panalo. Patay kung patay! Jinggoy had already announced what they would do to us if they won.”
Arroyo says he and Chavit Singson had what they called Plan B, involving elements of the military eager to strike the first blow against the Erap regime.
“They would kindle the spark by withdrawing from the government, and one by one others would follow: Class ’71 would also withdraw, then Class ’72, and so forth. But General de Villa warned that the timing had to be precise because one untimely move against the government and the military would automatically defend it. The move must be made at what De Villa called a ‘defining moment.’ So I told Chavit to put our Plan B on hold until after he had testified in the impeachment. In January we had two more meetings: he said the military wanted to move on the 13th but I said that was too early. In the next meeting we tentatively set our move on January 20. I wanted it to be on a Saturday because the traffic on EDSA would be lighter and the public would be freer to join us there. The site we chose was not the Shrine but the People Power Monument: that was where we planned to launch Edsa 2. But our plan got overtaken by events.”
Even so the military involved were for going on with the plan: “Boss, let’s go ahead and make the strike!” But Mike Arroyo knew that other moves were afoot.
“So I said to them: ‘Don’t, don’t move!’ And I told them there were negotiations going on higher up. They could just monitor those negotiations and offer assistance. You see, General de Villa had his Plan A, which was better than ours, because he was focused on the Chief of Staff and the Service Commanders. At past one o’clock p.m. January 20, Chief of Staff Angelo Reyes defected, but we knew that already the night before, when negotiations had lasted until the small hours. By past 2 a.m. we knew Reyes had been convinced to join us. His only condition was: ‘Show us a million people on EDSA so it will b easier to bring in the service commanders.’ And they asked when the crowd was thickest. We told them: ‘From three to five in the afternoon.’ But while hiding in their safehouse, they got reports that General Calimlim could not be located -and their first thought was: ‘He’s out looking for us, to arrest us!’ So they decided to rush to EDSA right away. When they got there -why there too at the Shrine was Calimlim! He had been looking for them all right, but join to join them, not to arrest them!”
The writer Garry Wills wrote leadership requires three things: leaders, followers, shared goals. The wider the goal the vaster the followership; conversely the narrower the goal and more personal the more brittle the shared goal can become. In the end only family will be left.
The (in)famous photo which shows the gathering of clans that have dominated our political life also has, in common, bearing the brunt of public outrage to the extent it made them all fall from power, until they recombined to find s new champion.
But again its worth underlining what they have in common: remarkable success, even adulation, combined with phenomenal public disgrace. It is a powerful glue composed of resentment and even fear, combined with a cunning and shrewdness to rise, fall, and claw ones way back up.
As time went on, memories faded, disappointments mounted, the core arguments necessary for rehabilitation and restoration: 1. They are all the same 2. It’s just personal grudges, mounted in powerfulness and effectivity. But again fate serves to make things clear. Take away the family they (all the many “they”!) could finger point to, and what would be left, in the end, would be them.
It only underscores what they have in common and thus their shared motivation — specifically because they still stand under scrutiny because the people still remain.
Remember the trivia about Eva Estrada Kalaw and yellow? A similar distinction applies to the many nameless volunteers who ended the upstairs leaders’ bickering over symbols and colors by putting forward their own referendum on identity.
Could the colour pink swing the Philippine presidential election for Leni Robredo? | South China Morning Post — www.scmp.com
Fans describe Leni Robredo’s choice of campaign colour as “a masterstroke visual metaphor of resistance against toxic masculinity”.
This is very interesting precisely because it demonstrates two things: evolution on one part, the combining of old and new constituencies on the basis of shared values, driven by constituents themselves, in contrast to the cults of personality revealed for what they are.
But again having experienced what few have experienced: the sense not just of loss, but of terror and humiliation, from being being loathed and rejected by the people, the combination of forces today realize it is they who are stuck in a rut because try as they may none of them have been able to last long enough to permanently reverse history’s verdict; or put another way, reverse the tide that keeps sweeping them eventually away to places where ultimately their liberty and property are always going to be in danger. Imagine the crushing reality of this.
Theirs isn’t the serenity of those who can lose power and go home knowing they have a clean conscience.
Theirs is the gnawing unease of having to master the game or be ultimately done in should a reckoning be allowed to happen. It is one the current ruling family now feels.
We have seen how this realization can be a motivation for unity among the usual suspects but it can be a cause for disunity because in the end its all about I, me, and myself. The veterans may appeal for solidarity but those enjoying the perks for first time can insist otherwise.
But my closing reflection is this. The public, the electorate, is evolving faster than the leaders who both fear and loathe the public but need it as the source of their mandate for office. The national parties are losing their relevance, local parties only think of their turf.
People vote with their feet: they go abroad or move elsewhere in the country. With that comes a dangerous independence as far as the local and national leaders are concerned. Because if what remains strong and may even be stronger are local versus national leaders, what is weak is their hold on power in their districts. Ties of shared community are gone; more often than not a cynical or desperate or both electorate wants elections reduced to a cash transaction. This has made the political clans evolve to survive: first they have stopped competing with each other so as to save money time and other resources: hence, more unopposed candidacies. But they are still faced with spiraling costs which means the recuits for politics are getting fewer.
There too remains the pesky problem that however much you figure out new tricks to turn the people against each other or tune in to your message, sooner or later old fashioned concerns like graft and corruption, or freedom, or simple basic good behavior will come back and matter and sway the opinions of many. Again interfering with the 10 year plan required to make change permanent.
So we have what we have: the public and the politicians exercising a veto power over each other. The public puts a veto on anyone or any group staying in power more than 6 years; no single group or attitude has full reign; and it can swing from one side to another to precisely prevent anything permanent from being accomplished. Where the public has consistently agreed on a way forward to effect change, say a constitutional convention to try and address the obvious defects of our system of government, the political class exercises its own permanent veto: the one way forward, a ConCon, is precisely what the political class refuses to consider because unpredictable. So it insists on Charter Change through schemes that are too predictable as always geared to what the public refuses: unicameral parliament that abolish national elections where public directly votes for the chief executive (not to mention senate: remember the survey when mindanao preferred retaining the senate but abolishing the House?).
So we have what we have: round and round with no resolution which in the end is more dangerous to the politicians than the public. But now there is the sense the damaged clans can finally achieve what they could already taste in 1992 — restoration — and it is entirely possible they will do so; but the campaign already reveals their own internal fault lines and furthermore points to what is ultimately a restoration that will ultimately rob them of what the crave most — vindication. Because for as long as people are people, the ingredients that led to their disgrace will continue to exist.
