There is something in our political history that is triggered by the picture of houses.
When I was a grade school student, and Carlos P. Garcia was president, a colorful politician from Zamboanga City, Cesar Climaco, climbed a tree in what was then called Bohol Avenue in Quezon City, and took a picture of the house built by the Nacionalista president. Climaco, a member of the opposition Liberal Party, made it to the front pages of the major dailies, claiming that the “mansion” built by the sitting president who was due for re-election, was scandalously expensive.
It really was not all that grand. It sat on a huge property though, but at the time, land in what seemed like far-away QC was not really expensive. Garcia lost his reelection bid to his vice president, Diosdado P. Macapagal, the Liberal Party candidate who was called the “poor boy from Lubao,” because he indeed came from poor origins.
But so was Garcia of humble origin, the son of a public school teacher. In any case, Macapagal also had a single term of four years, defeated by then Senator Ferdinand E. Marcos, his former protégé in the Liberal Party who transferred to the Nacionalista Party the year before the elections of 1965.
Macapagal, after the defeat, also built his own house—in Forbes Park. Again, it wasn’t that luxurious a home by today’s standards, but then again, that was millionaire’s row, then and now.
The issue against the public school teacher’s son, Garcia of Bohol, was “corruption.” The issue against Macapagal was likewise “corruption.” Both built houses, then labeled “mansions” by their political enemies, but history now vindicates them as upright and honest leaders. Yet the houses seem to have “proved,” at the time’s public perception, that they were less than clean.
Then there was Ferdinand E. Marcos, the political star of the North. He had a huge house in what was then Ortega St. in San Juan’s undulating hills, built even before he became president in 1965. But after moving to Malacañang, winning reelection in 1969, and thence declaring Martial Law that ushered in a dictatorship of 13-and-a-half more years, he built so many houses for himself and his family that one could only describe as excessive by any standard.
There was a Malacañang of the North overlooking Lake Paoay, while his wife Imelda built a beautiful mansion in Tacloban, plus a seaside home in Tolosa by the Leyte Gulf. There was another mansion atop a hill in Canlubang, overlooking the golf course where the president loved to play. There was a huge house in Baguio, in the Mines View Park area, supposedly acquired from pharmaceutical king Jose Yao Campos. And another, a so-called “palace in the sky” in Barangay Calabuso in Tagaytay, supposedly built for Ronald Reagan to spend a night during his state visit to his bosom friend Ferdinand. There was a seaside villa in Mariveles, where the former strongman loved to water-ski.
After Ninoy Aquino died on Aug. 21, 1983 (yesterday marked the 33rd anniversary of the death on the tarmac), then opposition leader Salvador H. Laurel sent a rag-tag team of then Batasang Pambansa member Orly Mercado (later to become senator after the Edsa Uno revolt), Sal Marte and a videographer to the United States. There, on a shoestring budget, they took pictures of the Trump Tower on Fifth Avenue in Manhattan where the First Lady, Imelda Marcos, supposedly owned a luxurious apartment. It was a beautiful townhouse filled with precious art on Park Avenue in uptown Manhattan, proximate to the Central Park. And a lovely mansion in Long Island, again supposedly owned by the First Couple.
Replicated via beta-max all over the country by the then-struggling opposition, the extravagant lifestyle became one more reason for the public, already incensed by Ninoy’s murder (which incidentally has yet to be convincingly solved up to now), to get more resentful at the long reign of the Marcoses.
Then came President Estrada. Already rich because of movie fame to begin with, the president had a taste for beautiful houses. In the year 2000, when Chavit Singson exposed the president’s supposed jueteng payola, pictures and plans of mansions here and there were exposed to the public. A big house in Wack-Wack, a “Boracay Mansion” in New Manila upon which property bought from the Madrigals our newly minted vice president now holds office. A significantly noisy and militant opposition, egged on by media exposés, shortened the reign of the idol of the masang Pilipino.
Now both traditional and social media are “scandalized” at the pictures of a pair of houses supposedly built by a female senator for her “driver” in a sleepy barangay in a sleepy part of central Pangasinan. There is a “white house” and an “orange house”.
How could a driver, people ask, no matter how powerful the boss he was driving for, afford such houses on what ought to be “measly” pay? So our fascination over houses once again becomes grist for gossip and speculation on the lives of public figures.
Especially when the accuser is, no matter the fact that he is now president of the Republic who for almost 30 years presided over the richest city in Mindanao, still lives in a house that looks nothing compared to the stately “digs” of the female senator’s supposed driver.
One wonders if there is a lowly “tabo” in the bathroom of the “white house,” like the one in the mayor’s, now president’s abode in a middle-class subdivision in Davao City.
Ah, how all these houses have discombobulated public lives!