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Tuesday, June 28, 2005
Malilong: Good propaganda, nothing else
By Frank Malilong
The Other Side
Rep. Clavel Asas-Martinez (Cebu, 4th district) has been declared persona non grata in her own province because she said she was sorry that she campaigned for President Arroyo in the last elections. The news reports said she was waving a tape, which she asked the House committees hearing the “Hello Garci” tapes to play when she said that.
The manifesto that condemned Clavel as undesirable is good propaganda material but it does not have any legal force and effect. It would have been different if she were a diplomat (the term “person non grata” is usually associated with international relations, not with domestic politics). Her government would have been forced to recall her.
The manifesto is to the Cebuano political leaders who signed it what the resolution on Sugbuak was to the members of the Cebu Provincial Board. It is a mere expression of a collective sentiment. It is a strong one but it ends there. They cannot deport Clavel.
She could fall from presidential grace of course. Mrs. Arroyo has counted and continues to count on Cebuano leaders to rally behind her in critical moments like this. It must have been a shock to her when she learned that Clavel would publicly, albeit implicitly, endorse something that she (Mrs. Arroyo) had chosen to ignore.
The Martinezes were mainly responsible for carrying Mrs. Arroyo to a landslide victory in the fourth district.
During the campaign, emissaries for Fernando Poe Jr. tried to persuade them to switch sides but they stayed put, consenting to a strange arrangement that had Mrs. Arroyo having three candidates for governor in Cebu. Poe, on the other hand, had no gubernatorial bet of consequence.
Who knows what would have happened if the Martinezes and the fourth district went for the opposition candidate?
They were, like most of the others who helped her, justly rewarded. Clavel has been named to the powerful Commission on Appointments, a position that her critics claimed she used to persuade Interior and Land Government Secretary Angelo Reyes to yank Supt. Vic Loot out as Cebu provincial director.
I guess that makes them even now. And Clavel can speak her mind.
Why shouldn’t she? Why couldn’t she ask the President to end all the uncertainty about the tape without being condemned by her province mates as the second coming of Judas Iscariot? Is it wrong to ask the President to exercise moral leadership by example?
What would be wrong, in fact very wrong, is if Clavel asserts that we cheated for Mrs. Arroyo in Cebu. We did not. I will not tire repeating that the President won here fair and square. Anyone who claims otherwise is blindly, if not insanely, partisan.
Clavel knows that. That is why she defended the President during the canvass. I couldn’t blame her if she is sorry now. You always feel that when your client is uncooperative and difficult to defend.
(June 28, 2005 issue)
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