Who said it was in the Arroyos’ name?

Not even the more scandalous, more below-the-belt Pidal episodes had the First Gentlepig answering the accusations, not even the Mahal-na-Doña herself. I heard Fatso’s lawyer saying on radio “kung sino man ang nag-uudyok o nagbibigay ng impormasyon kay Cong. Cayetano ay ipinapahamak lang siya”, hinting on the involvement, perhaps, of relentless arch-enemy Ping Lacson, or the Estradas.

Before we make any conclusions, let me share a little backgrounder. Whoever says that transactions in banks, especially in the West or Europe, are strictly guarded, does not know much.

The Brussels-based SWIFT (Society for Worldwide Interbank Financial Telecommunication) links about 7,800 banks and brokerages, the Philippines included, and handles billions of transactions a year. For years, it had resisted investigators who wanted access to the huge database to hunt down big time racketeers, kleptocrats, money launderers, the like. Until 9/11 came.

The recent furor over the revelations in a New York Times article exposing the CIA/Treasury Dept. secret program that led to the arrest of 2002 Bali bomber, Riduan Isamuddin Hambali by giving the CIA access to SWIFT records after Bush invoked the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, has broken wide open the myth of total bank secrecy. Aided by the US Patriot Act which targeted Combating Financing of Terrorism (CFT) and Anti-Money Laundering (AML), agencies like Financial Action Task Force (FATF) which blacklists non-complying countries such as the Philippines, US Treasury Dept.’s Office for Foreign Assets Control (USTD-OFAC) and Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (USTD–FinCEN) and other agencies in Europe (as named by Ellen in a previous thread), the once-sacred and impermeable confidentiality of bank accounts and transactions is now mere history.

All these notwithstanding, the criminals still find creative ways to circumvent all roadblocks by means of layering, low-value multiple transactions, diverse delivery channels, usually implemented in conventional checking or savings accounts. Or the more sophisticated, more expensive route of creating shell transactions by inexistent firms and individuals that is much harder, but not impossible, to detect.

What am I saying here? Alan Cayetano’s exposé, could go either way – a whale or a wind-up. Our very own Bonnie and Clyde pair will surely not have “secret” accounts in their own names, as they think all Pinoys are Simpletons that will believe that crap. I’m not even considering that it’s in the name of Nonong Cruz or The Cousin Pancho Villaraza or Pancho’s The Firm. The world’s king of boiler-room (stock market fraud), Pinoy Ding Pastrana who built a $6 billion empire at the age of 31, even bought a bank in Vienna to launder his money. This former McDonald crew member never even thought of putting his own name in any of his transactions, how much more this couple who are said to have graduated in Ivy League schools.

If such an account or accounts really exist, it would by now have been detected by US’ Treasury Dept. And if the money has left the German or Austrian or Swiss bank already, I have a feeling it’s now in circulation locally. Didn’t I predict the large dollar transactions after the impeachment murder? Look at the exchange rates!

The certification they have been showing media is nothing but unused toilet paper and a proof only of their last-ditch desperation shot at covering up what may be, as many have said here, the smoking gun.

The way information have been falling on our laps, whether volunteered by Lacson’s intel friends, or by Cayetano’s moles, or from the US embassy staff, speaks much of the abhorrence people have on this Criminal Couple and confirms that indeed, as Ellen headlined, THE NOOSE IS TIGHTENING.

With your indulgence, Ellen, and everyone else, let me express my unwavering support for my beleaguered Mayor, Peewee Trinidad, Vice Tony Calixto, and ten other councilors.

Simula lang iyan ng kampanya laban sa mga siyudad ng Metro Manila na tanging natitirang opposisyon. Ang binabantayan ng husto ngayon ay ang Pasay, San Juan, at Makati,(Kalookan din kaya?) kung saan siguradong opposisyon ang mananalo sa Congress sa susunod na eleksiyon. Sisiguraduhin ng mga Baboy at ng kanilang mga Biik na hindi aabot ng 79 ang mananalong oposisyon para sa Kongreso sa susunod na eleksiyon.

Pakiusap lang, pabayaan na ninyo kami sa Pasay. Sa loob ng mahigit na tatlumpung taon, ngayon lang kami nagkaroon ng Mayor na hindi nagpapayaman, na pinagtatawanan ng iba dahil sa kaniyang “unexplained poverty”, ngayon kakasuhan ninyo ng katiwaliang ilang taon nang ibinabato, wala namang pumapansin, kahit na ng COA, maliban sa kakampi ng Donya na kongresista naming ang tanging maipagmamalaki sa Pasay ay ang malaking sabungan nilang mag-asawa sa Cementina, at apat na konsehal na hindi nakasuhan dahil miyembro ng Lakas.

Pagkatapos ng anim na buwang suspensiyon, wala na silang babalikang posisyon dahil patapos na ang kampanya sa eleksiyon at ang pondo ng Pasay ay siguradong pinagpasasaan ng mga OIC na isisisi pa sa mga nasuspindeng opisyal.

Sa mga Mayor na nasa parehong situwasiyon, maghanda na ng maaga, dahil sigurado akong hindi ito ang huli. Huwag nating hayaang dumami pa ang mga kampon ng pambababoy sa kongreso, sa halip, paramihin ang alagad ng pagbabago.

Kailangan namin ng tulong ninyo sa Pasay, gaya ng suporta na handa naming ibigay kay Alan Cayetano at kaniyang kaanib sa mithiing gaya nina Mayor Peewee at labing-isang kasama, na ibalik ang Pilipinas sa pagiging disente, pagiging makatotohanan, pagiging makatao, at pagiging maka-Diyos.

Salamat.

Jun could be one of Luli’s boyfriends.

Jun, what about another fishing expedition at Pasig River?

Gago ka rin Jun ano? Paanong naging masama sina Marcos at Erap? Mga Santo iyan kung ikumpara sa pangit na tiyanak ngayon. Umalis ka nga dito sa blog na ito at baka bumalik na naman ang mataas kong BP. Kalalabas ko lang sa hospital dahil sa mga punetang tulad mo!

A Stonehill for the edifice

I was listening with some sense of amusement to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo when she came out swinging and lambasted Taguig-Pateros Rep. Alan Peter Cayetano for his “shameless lies.” Without batting an eyelash – perhaps honed by years of politics plus her own genes (more on this later), PGMA referred to Congressman Alan’s late father by saying she expected more of the son, since his father had been a respected legislator.

Whether she knew it or not, PGMA opened herself up to father-child comparisons. Like Alan, she too idolizes her own father; like Alan, she too must be sensitive when the clay feet of the idol-father is discussed.

And did Diosdado Macapagal have clay feet? Some would say yes, summed up in the name “Harry Stonehill”.

Repeat after me; “Harry Stonehill’.

To Pinoys of my generation and later, Harry Stonehill is a non-entity. Unless your parents were particularly political in their interests (as mine were, to some extent), or unless you were yourself politically inclined (as I was and have always been) you would not know that Harry Stonehill was one big American businessman who in the 1960s was said to have most Filipino politicians in his pocket. Most, including, we are told, the president of the Philippines, Diosdado Macapagal.

This was the gist of the Stonehill scandal that was provoked when then Justice Secretary Jose W. Diokno investigated Stonehill for his alleged corrupt practices. The investigation unearthed a “black book” in which Stonehill is supposed to have listed names and codes for politicos and the corresponding monies he was giving them.

Reading history books that account for those times, one is made to understand that the list spanned both the ruling Liberal Party and the opposition Nacionalista Party, and included, other than the incumbent president, the names of his predecessor and his wife, former President Carlos and Mrs. Leonila Garcia.

What is interesting in the story of the Stonehill investigation was that, right in the middle of it, President Macapagal fired Pepe Diokno, his own justice secretary. Why he did that, only God knows, although maybe there is an explanation for that somewhere in Macapagal’s autobiography entitled “A Stone for the Edifice”. But Diokno was fired – because he was not of the same caliber as Raul Gonzales, ha ha! – and a new justice secretary was named. But by then the scandal was getting out of hand with everyone demanding to know who was on the list and who was not, and denials and threats of libel suits were flying all over the place.

The story was made more interesting because then-Vice President Emmanuel Pelaez – who for years has been known as a man of integrity – was implicated in the Stonehill scandal by his own partymates, apparently on the instigation of Malacañang. Why? We are told that Pelaez’s name was dragged into the scandal even if his name had not appeared on the Stonehill list because he, Pelaez, was a potential rival of Macapagal’s for the 1965 presidential nomination of the Liberal Party. Never mind that Macapagal had been promising potential rivals such as Pelaez and Ferdinand Marcos that he was good only for one term and thus sought their support in 1961; it was a promise he would not keep – a genetic trait apparently!

And so Pelaez, incensed, rushed to the Palace to demand an explanation as to why his honor was being besmirched. To which the reply allegedly was that his honor was simply being “borrowed’ by the Palace.

Hmmm…Ignacio “I have two discs” Bunye should have learned from Emmanuel Pelaez.

Oh, here is one more interesting analogy.

When the danger was imminent that Stonehill would be forced to reveal all – with the potential scandal resulting in an impeachment of a sitting president – Macapagal signed a deportation order for Harry Stonehill, with the result that Stonehill was forced to leave the country and was then unable to testify. Being an American, Stonehill obviously did not have to have his visa canceled upon his arrival in the United States; whereas our favorite fertilizer fund scam expert Joc Joc B did not have that benefit.

But I think this is where the daughter learns from the father.

You see, history tells us that in 1965, the Filipino people overwhelmingly rejected the “Poor Boy from Lubao” because by then his image had been tarnished by the stench of the Stonehill corruption scandal and some suspected he was a poor boy no more. What DM may have erred in not doing was to convince the House of Representatives to push for Charter Change, including the abolition of the Senate and the cancellation of the 1965 elections. And then again, maybe DM was simply at heart a decent man still, despite the troubles brought upon him by his inner circle – and that innate decency kept him from even tinkering with the idea of changing the charter just to save his political neck.

Which brings us back to the present, and PGMA lambasting Alan Cayetano for failing to follow in the footsteps of his father.

There is a dangerous hint there. Promises not to run not kept; witnesses to scandals sent abroad to be beyond the reach of Philippine law; what else will PGMA do that her father did? And, worse, what else will she do that her father had the decency not to do?

Maybe the legacy of this Macapagal administration will be a rewrite of the “Stone for the Edifice” because the ghost of Harry Stonehill survives to this day.

Norpil, the one I posted was taken from one column in Malaya and not my own analogies. I forgot to include the writer’s name. I don’t write that well. The column was so interesting that I wanted to share with the group.