| Credibility By Antonio C. Abaya July 01, 2004 Seventeen is about the most number of people I have ever invited to celebrate my birthday in all my 68 years. So it is beyond my ken to comprehend, and beyond my means to afford to be able to understand, why anyone will even think of inviting 1,700 guests to celebrate one�s birthday. Unless he or she is a Cleopatra, a Louis XIV, a Saddan Hussein, or an Imelda Marcos. Or a Mike Arroyo, it seems. That killjoy bishop who complained about the presence of 25 women �usherettes� in the Malacanang birthday bash last June 26, to help seat Mr. Arroyo�s 1,700 guests, failed to see the forest for the trees. And the forest is credibility. Just the day before, Mike�s wife, the President, had been intoning the choice mantras of the day: simplicity, frugality, austerity��which were all thrown out of the Malacanang windows into the Pasig River on that memorable Saturday evening. That celebration may have been Mr. Arroyo�s way of broadcasting the triumphalism of the Arroyo Malacanang after the apparent electoral victory of GMA, a primal scream � if you will � like Tarzan�s, to tell all creatures in the jungle, great and small, that the Arroyos remain master and mistress of all they survey, �so don�t mess with us.� But it does make mincemeat of all the sanctimonious calls for simplicity, frugality and austerity. At a conservative estimate of Pl,000 per, the tab must have run to a cool 1.7 million pees, excluding the drinks that flowed, the bands that played and the usherettes who danced, up to three in the morning. Pagcor may have picked up the tab, but Pagcor is supposed to be a government corporation. Was government money then used to celebrate Mr. Arroyo�s birthday? That should have been the concern of that silly bishop, not whether or not those 25 Pagcor usherettes were being used as GROs. Of greater concern to the greater number should be the tarnishing of the credibility of President Arroyo so soon, even before the start of her second term. In the coming months and years, credibility will be the most important capital that she can bring to bear as she grapples with the myriad problems besetting this country. She can promise ten million jobs, computer-equipped schools, power and water to every corner of the archipelago, automated elections, even the Philippine flag planted on the moons of Saturn. But if she is not credible, those promises would go in one ear and out the other without connecting any neurons in anyone�s brains, without motivating anyone to be law-abiding, without convincing anyone that we share a common destiny, without persuading anyone that the sacrifices that we have to make in the hard times ahead will be for the common good. During the decades of life-and-death struggle against the French, and later against the Americans, the Vietnamese people endured incredible hardships and privation and suffered death and destruction on a scale far beyond the limits of human comprehension. But in the end, they prevailed and won over the mightiest empires. And they did so because they believed in their leaders that they shared a common destiny and that all their sacrifices were borne by everyone and that all their hardships were endured for the common good. Neither Ho Chi Minh nor any of his relatives and lieutenants ever celebrated his birthday with 1,700 perfumed guests.***** And while we�re on the subject of credibility, let�s return to Namfrel, which is struggling to keep whatever is left of it. Wrote Namfrel CEO Bill Luz, again. (My comments are in parentheses): Thank you for allowing us to state our side. However, I noticed that you have cleverly been rather selective with statements attributed to me. I think we could all shed more light on this if you would just allow your readers to read my statement in full rather than merely excerpts of it. (As I explained in my reply, there was not enough editorial room to publish your entire letter, that that letter is archived in full in www.tapatt.org, and that you should send it as a letter to the editor of the Philippines Free Press, if you want it printed in full. Don�t you understand English? (As for your dig that I �have cleverly been selective with statements attributed to me,� let me return the compliment to you: you have been cleverly selective in not commenting on other points raised by my article, such as Roberto Verzola�s analysis, using Namfrel�s own data, that GMA�s final lead over FPJ may have been as small as 354,000 or 1.1%, that Namfrel was guilty of selective tallying that resulted in a skew that disadvantaged FPJ, and other valid points raised by Verzola) First, you might want to fully state the reasons why we could not pick up 100% of the election returns in spite of our best efforts. As I mentioned, some of those reasons included the BEIs not turning over the Election Returns or our inability to get into hotspots or the missing pages of some Election Returns. (I did write that 90% of the ERs, minus 10% defectives, [which is your own estimate of what you have] is sufficient to tell which COCs are arithmetically supported by correct ERs and which are not, so fraud can be detected if you really had a mind to search for it.) Second, your question about our terminal report matching the Congressional canvass leaves out the fact that I stated our match in tallies referred to a list or a rank rather than a number. It stands to reason that NAMFREL's 80 percent tabulation cannot be an exact match to a 100 percent canvass by any other agency, be it COMELEC or Congress. (In your letter of June 22, in reaction to my article �Namfrel Defended�, archived in www.tapatt.org, you wrote:�. �Namfrel�s tally of COCs for President and Vice-President were also an exact match with the Congressional canvass, including the Overseas Absentee Voting countries where Namfrel had operations�� (Neither Comelec�s nor Congress� canvass is worth a fiddler�s fart since both are based entirely on COCs some of which may not be supported arithmetically by ERs and are therefore fraudulent. Only COCs arithmetically supported by ERs can be considered honest and authentic, but the majority party has consistently blocked any attempt to open the ERs of even only three COCs. (Since Namfrel has copies of both the ERs and the COCs, a supposedly impartial Namfrel is in a unique position to determine which COCs are supported arithmetically by ERs, and which are not. Your plea that Namfrel has only 80% of the ERs is lame and unconvincing Even Grade VI arithmetic can tell you what 100% looks like from 80%.) Incidentally, NAMFREL has always believed that if any party felt that its copies of the COCs were not arithmetically supported by the ERs and SOVs in their possession, then by all means they should bring them out in the public eye. We ourselves have not seen any copies of these documents, other than the ones we have. We are not aware of any copies produced in public by any of the political parties. You are correct in pointing out that NAMFREL and the political parties hold official copies of the same documents. As part of its terminal report, NAMFREL will release its results with a provincial breakdown for ALL provinces, not just the 14 provinces which Senator Angara refers to. It will certainly be interesting to see the political partoes do the same to support their own findings. We plan to release ours before June 30. Perhaps you can write in your column how you would like to see others do the same as I notice you only focus on NAMFREL. (We await with bated breath your �terminal report� which you promised to release �before June 30.� It is now July 5. In the three broadsheets that I get, the only mention of that terminal report came out in the Inquirer of July 3. But 14 out of the 17 paragraphs in that Inquirer news item were about the Biazon-Barbers senatorial rivalry, only three paragraphs had to do with the presidential elections, and ABSOLUTELY NO MENTION was made of your promised �provincial breakdown for ALL provinces, not just the 14 provinces which Senator Angara refers to.� (Until that �provincial breakdown for ALL provinces� becomes publicly available and stands public scrutiny, Namfrel�s credibility hangs by a thread.) ***** The bulk of this article appears in the July 10, 2004 issue of the Philippines Free Press magazine. OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO Reactions to �Credibility� Tony, Well said! I look forward to reading your views re Cha Cha. Mabuhay ka! Dick Powell [email protected] July 05, 2004 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww . Mr. and Mrs. Arroyo are practitioners of realpolitik. Unlike us mere mortals who insist on a naive form of morality. To these two past masters of the Machiavellian arts, power is its only morality; to have it is not just everything, it's the only thing. Not all the rantings of the good Bishop will amount to spit. They're not about to give up their ways, nor will they give up power, its privileges, or entitlements. As one President, who isn't far too different, put it, "Inggit lang kayo!" I recall the rationale for the Pidal account. Mr. Pidal quoted the Prince of Orange, "Non rapui sed recepi." ("I didn't steal; I received.") And he said it wasn't government money in any case. Vicente C. de Jesus [email protected] July 05, 2004 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww Amen, Tony! I have been holding my breath, too, for that final Namfrel report. ~Rudy Villarica [email protected] July 05, 2004 wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww |
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| ON THE OTHER HAND |
| I AGREE WITH YOU 100%. IT SEEMS GMA'S IDEA OF FRUGAL IS WEARING A RECYCLED TERNO TO HER INAUGURATION (BY INNO SOTTO, NO LESS). HER CREDIBILITY HAS ALWAYS BEEN, TO ME AT LEAST, AT AN ALL-TIME LOW. THAT BASH FOR FAT MIKE'S BIRTHDAY IS AS IMELDIFIC AS THEY COME. SHAME ON MR AND MRS MIKE ARROYO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Ed Valenciano [email protected] July 14, 2004 OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO |