WHO HAS a franchise on the President? Or more crudely, who owns the President’s butt?
Every member of the Cabinet, regardless of size or shape, is supposed to be the President’s alter ego. Not all Cabinet members, however, are created equal. A few think they are more equal than others. It comes with the territory, or so it seems.
In a scene in the television series “West Wing”, the Speaker of the House had a one-on-one with the President Joshua Bartlet of the United States in the Oval Office of the White House.
“This office”, the Speaker told the President” is designed to throw people off balance”.
It may not just be the product of fiction. In real life, it could be the result of everyone working for and with the President playing politics to the hilt. And it could be worse than making people uncomfortable.
Last week, former Supreme Court Justice Antonio Carpio came out with a startling revelation of politics in Malacanang during the time of the late President Noynoy Aquino. There are two ways to look at his narrative. The first one is to accept it as a dead-aim honesty about the realities of presidential politics in Malacanang, which is sometimes described as a ‘pit of snakes’. Or it is a fantastic version of presidential political history.
Carpio carped about about factionalism among the President’s men. Not exactly a new phenomenon in any organization, political or otherwise. It happens when expertise and competence collide with sycophancy and turf zealousness. The dicey part comes when the President mistakes one for the other. Or,worse, could not distinguish which is which.
Carpio’ story revolved around the country’s problem with China in the South China Sea where the latter is expanding into the former’s territorial rights under its self-serving nine-dash line theory. The Philippine had apparently hired an American legal team to help in the legal battle.
According to Carpio, when the American team showed up in Malacanang to talk to Noynoy, it waited for four hours only to be told later that the President would not see them at all. It was later learned that Noynoy was never informed at all that the American lawyers were waiting for him.
In another instance, a letter for the President by then U.S. Ambassador Albert Del Rosario was supposedly rewritten to make it appear that the ambassador was not in favor of filing a case before the Arbitral Tribunal against China’s incursion into Philippine territory. Del Rosario, by Carpio’s account, had to bring his original letter to the President himself to correct it.
When the list of American and Filipino lawyers who would go to The Hague for the hearing was presented for approval by the President, Carpio said, his name was deleted. Upon learning this, Del Rosario reportedly told the President that ,without Carpio, he too was not going to The Hague. Carpio’s name was immediately put back on the roster.
As far as the South China Sea row is concerned, he said there were two contending groups of Cabinet officials in Malacanang: one was in favor of filing the case, the other was not. President Noynoy eventually decided it was in the country’s best interest to file the case against mighty China. The rest, as the say, is history. China’s nine-dash line was dashed. The Philippines was awarded its legal rights by the Arbitral Tribunal. Carpio described the victory as part of Noynoy’s enduring legacy to the Filipino people.
It’s a good thing that Carpio’s story came out after Noynoy is gone. It would have added to the pains of a broken-hearted President, as one former classmate and Jesuit priest-friends described Noynoy when he eulogized him in Ateneo.
From a personal knowledge, I can add a little to the conversation of Carpio’s narrative but it can help provide an insight. During the 2016 presidential campaign, a media friend, who was close to one of Noynoy’s future Cabinet members, asked me to join him in meeting him at his office. The meeting was later joined by another future presidential adviser. In the course of threshing out campaign issues, the future Cabinet member said something that was shocking.
“If Noynoy were to take the bar exam”, the future Cabinet member said, “ he would certainly flunk it”. Here was a future alter ego of the President already preemptive, if not prejudicial—even subtly contemptuous–about the future President’s intellectual, if not moral, ability. At least three tragedies tremendously weighed down on the national life during Noynoy’s presidency: the devastating “Yolanda” supertyphoon, the Luneta- hostage taking and the Mamasapano debacle. The last one has been described as the event that “ divorced” Ninoy from the Filipino people.
Is it possible that some of Noynoy’s Cabinet people contributed to the ill- decisions during those chaotic times? Was he ever aware at any time during his six – year tenure that some in his team were not working to support his agenda, maybe even sabotage them, wittingly or unwittingly ? That not all the President’s men were the President’s men?
Unfortunately, Noynoy didn’t leave a memoir to comment on the new information coming out after his death, particularly about Carpio’s story. The issues raised were serious. The people involved were serious people. There was deception, misrepresentation, fudging with facts and stealthy intervention right in the office of the highest official of the land.
It would not have taken his father Ninoy a long time to discover his people’s inconsistencies or disloyalty and promptly act on them.
While on exile in the U.S. Ninoy learned that one of his close aides had jumped to the Marcos side to save his skin. Ninoy immediately sent word to the man via another friend: sabihin mo sa kanya pagdating ko sa Pilipinas, dapat magbalot-balot na siya.
Of course, it never happened. Ninoy was shot at the Manila airport tarmac upon arrival in 1983. Ninoy was apparently more decisive, even with friends, than his only son.
