Senator Chiz Escudero, the vice presidential bet of the Nationalist People’s Coalition, is desperately downplaying the increasing popularity of his most formidable opponent, Senator Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. According to Escudero, he opposes Bongbong to prevent a repetition of what he considers “the abusive regime” of Bongbong’s late father, President Ferdinand Edralin Marcos.
Escudero’s tactic is sheer political duplicity. In local political parlance, he is a balimbing—a super balimbing even.
As discussed in this column last week, Escudero deliberately concealed from the voters that his late father Salvador Escudero was a devoted cabinet minister of President Marcos. Long after President Marcos passed away in 1989, the elder Escudero continued to publicly identify himself with the ex-president by sporting the colors of the Kilusang Bagong Lipunan (KBL), the martial law era political party of the late president, on his shirts.
Therefore, if the martial law era was the “abusive regime” Escudero now wants to portray to the voters, then his attack against Bongbong is an admission that Escudero and his relatives were staunch supporters of the same “abusive regime.”
The scheming and ambitious Escudero knows that if he admits to the voters his past ties to the martial law administration, his attacks against Bongbong will be empty rhetoric. That is why Escudero has been conveniently silent about his very close ties to the Marcos administration during the campaign.
Correctly or incorrectly, Bongbong finds nothing objectionable about the martial law era. Bongbong admits, however, that he cannot disassociate himself from his father’s name and legacy. Unlike Bongbong, however, Escudero is silent about his ties to the martial law regime. This inevitably indicates that Escudero publicly detests the martial law administration not because it is detestable, but because Escudero hopes that his public criticism of the martial law regime will make voters assume that he was never a beneficiary of martial law, and that voters will not learn about a past he now prefers to forget.
Speaking of martial law, Escudero’s political patron in the NPC, Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco Jr., was another loyal ally of ex-President Marcos. Cojuangco was in charge of the KBL campaign machinery in Central Luzon. He joined the Marcos family abroad during the 1986 Edsa uprising, and returned to the country years later.
In 1992, Cojuangco organized the NPC. Soon thereafter, almost every politician identified with the martial law regime found sanctuary in the NPC. One of them was the late Arturo Tolentino, an ex-KBL assemblyman and the vice presidential running mate of President Marcos in 1986.
Another NPC stalwart is Estelito Mendoza, Marcos’ favored solicitor general who defended the martial law regime in the Supreme Court. Mendoza has been Cojuangco’s personal lawyer for decades now.
Since very close ties exist between the NPC and many politicians linked to martial law, Escudero’s affiliation with the NPC and its martial law supporters deprives him of any moral authority to attack Bongbong and what Escudero duplicitously brands as “the abusive” martial law regime.
Political observers associate Cojuangco with the controversial coconut levy funds, which currently involves billions of pesos. Early into the political campaign, however, Escudero and his running mate Grace Poe publicly cleared Cojuangco of any culpability. How they arrived at that conclusion objectively, considering their ties to Cojuangco, is a mystery.
When Escudero got married a second time around recently, most of the principal sponsors of his wedding were big-time industrialists who own enterprises subject to strict regulation by government agencies directly under Malacañang. Can Escudero really turn down those wedding ninongs or ninangs in the event they run to him for help whenever their enterprises breach the law?
Escudero’s television advertisements focus on poverty and the inability of the poor to get a college education.
The advertisements suggest that if Escudero is elected vice president, that problem will be solved. Really? Under the Constitution, the sole role of the vice president is that of the president’s replacement. Escudero did nothing to stop poverty when he was senator. How then can he stop poverty as vice president? Escudero’s duplicity should not be rewarded with victory at the polls.
Incidentally, the same may be said of the equally ambitious Leni Robredo, the Liberal Party’s candidate for vice president, who has made promises which a vice president, by himself, is powerless to deliver. Her recent surge in some surveys is statistically impossible, considering that she has not participated in any ground-breaking issue sufficient enough to improve her fourth place ranking which she consistently held for the past several months.
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Senator Antonio Trillanes claims Davao City Mayor Duterte, who is leading in the latest surveys in the presidential derby, has secret bank deposits. If that is so, Trillanes’ timing is highly suspect because election day is a just days away. Why is he making this revelation only now?
The suspicious delay strengthens public suspicion that Trillanes was ordered by Malacañang to run for vice president for the sole purpose of throwing black propaganda at the political opposition, without making Mar Roxas, the administration bet, look bad and underhanded. That’s plausible because Trillanes owes President Benigno Aquino III a debt of gratitude after Aquino ordered his release from the military stockade in 2010. This is also confirmed by the failure of Trillanes to maintain a credible campaign.
Last year, Trillanes failed to produce any evidence to support his accusations against a ranking government official under investigation by the Senate. Why should the people believe Trillanes now?
Makati City voters aghast at being made to chose between candidates identified with the Liberal Party and those supporting the Binay family are pleased to discover that there is an independent bet for the congressional seat allotted for the city’s first district—Desiree Lastimer, an alumnus of both UP Los Baños and the University of London. If elected, Lastimer intends to use the economic bounty of the city to improve its health and education facilities to a caliber that fits the status of Makati.