Leader Brother Eddie Villanueva

June 23, 2005

Who’s Afraid of Bro. Eddie?

By Antonio C. Abaya

Written June 21, 2005

For the Manila Standard Today,

June 23 issue

Never before in living memory has this country been pushed to the edge of self-destruction as it has been in the past three weeks.

Whoever is manipulating all this has succeeded enormously in stripping President Arroyo and her government of the last semblance of credibility and moral ascendancy. She has become a hate object, the butt of text and email jokes, the target of derisive contempt and scathing insults. No national leader, male or female, can long stay in power carrying the baggage that she carries now.

President Arroyo is teetering on the brink of the precipice. And the only force that seems to be keeping her from being pushed into the void is the restraint and reluctance, especially among the middle class, dictated by self-interest: if she falls into the void, so will the rest of the country. Unless……….

Unless there is a credible and acceptable alternative leader or group of leaders who will provide the stability and the even keel to the ship-of-state in the coming storms, and the creative imagination to chart our way to a destination that we can all be convinced is our shared destiny.

Do we have such a leader or group of leaders in our immediate future, such as next week or next month or next year?

We probably do, but will he and they (never mind the ‘she’ for the time being) emerge triumphant in the inevitable squabbles that will ensue from an extra-constitutional demise of the Arroyo Government? Different groups will have differing agendas as they jockey for pre-eminence in the inevitable power vacuum.

And who will be the frontrunners in this jockeying for pre-eminence? In my column of June 01, I had mentioned that a five-person revolutionary council is being bruited about as the most likely core of a revolutionary government that will take-over if President Arroyo is forced out of power. But I did not name names.

In her June 14 column, Inquirer columnist Belinda Olivares-Cunanan, an unabashed defender of and apologist for President Arroyo, named four of those five: supposedly Susan Roces, Sen. Loi Ejercito, Fortunato Abat and Renato de Villa.

Cunanan pointedly excluded the rumored fifth, Evangelist Eddie Villanueva. Why she did not want to mention Villanueva at all is significant. Villanueva is the only one among the five who can excite and motivate a million people or more to attend a political rally at the Luneta, as he in fact did in the last days before the May 10 presidential elections in 2004. In other words, Villanueva is an actual potential threat, in fact THE only actual potential threat, to the Arroyo presidency, in terms of People Power mobilization. No wonder Arroyo-apologist Cunanan dared not mention his name.

Susan Roces can also draw a million people, but for an entirely different reason: out of sympathy for the death of her husband, FPJ, beloved of the star-struck masa and victim of massive fraud in the 2004 elections.

A combination of Villanueva and Roces – not necessarily as presidential and vice-presidential candidates – would be a potent political force.

Ms. Roces has repeatedly said she is not interested in entering politics and that a woman should not lead this country again. My information is that she and Villanueva have actually met and that she has explicitly deferred to Villanueva as the next leader of this country.

And this is not a sudden comradeship born out of the exigencies of the moment. In the funeral services for FPJ last December, at which politicians were pointedly barred from speaking, Villanueva and his religious group were the only ‘outsiders’ allowed to participate.

Villanueva, for his part, showed considerable political and mobilization skills in the 2004 elections, more than what the end results would indicate: he came out last in a field of five, after GMA, FPJ, Lacson and Roco, in that order.

A Villanueva-Roces combination would draw support from both the under-class and the middle and upper classes, which neither Erap nor Abat nor FVR nor the communists nor any of the trapos and family dynasts can match.

In presidential surveys in December 2003, Villanueva was getting only one percent. But this percentage kept on growing every month, until it reached five percent in the Pulse Asia survey of April 26-29 (with 9% undecided) and four percent in the SWS survey of May 1-4 (with 12% undecided).

His Luneta rally of May 6, a few days before Election Day, drew an estimated one million supporters, filling the park from the Quirino Grandstand to the Rizal Monument, by far the biggest rally for ANY candidate in the ENTIRE 2004 campaign.

In the SWS exit poll of May 10, Villanueva drew five percent (with 8% giving ‘no answer’). In the last publicly released Namfrel count of June 5, based on election returns from 79.21% of the precincts, Villanueva got 6.16% of the votes (versus 6.97 for Roco, 10.85 for Lacson, 36.97 for FPJ, and 39.05 for GMA).

So, from one percent in December to more than six percent in May, Villanueva’s share of supporters grew by more than 500% in only five months. Even granting that he was starting from a lower base, the growth of his support base was still phenomenal if you consider that support for Lacson actually decreased minimally during that period, from 13 to 11%, and so did support for Roco, from 16 to 6%, because of his illness.

Villanueva benefited from crossovers from Roco, as well as from many disaffected middle and upper class voters who could not stomach the idea of supporting either GMA or FPJ. And, of course, his biggest support base were the members of his charismatic religious group. What held them together was Villanueva’s rallying cry for a righteous leadership to extirpate the culture of corruption.

And if the elections had been scheduled for, say, September, instead of May, the growth momentum of his support base would have catapulted him above Roco and Lacson and would probably have placed him within striking distance of the presidency. He just plain ran out of time in 2004.

Is he now, in 2005, a political has-been, as another Arroyo defender in media describes him? That remains to be seen, if he were now to decide to flex his political muscles. Unless proven otherwise, Villanueva, supported by Ms.Roces, remains the only real potential threat to GMA, on the basis of mobilization capability and the broad spectrum of his support groups..

By contrast, the others in Cunanan’s four – Loi Ejercito, Fortunato Abat and Renato de Villa – are no threat to anyone except to themselves, assuming they are indeed members of the putative revolutionary council, which is by no means certain. Collectively, they could not draw 5,000 people to the Luneta even if they were to announce that they would sing and dance stark naked at the Quirino Grandstand.

Whoever is/are manipulating this train of events, he/they should realize that he/they need Villanueva-Roces on his/their side more than Villanueva-Roces need him/them on theirs, to attract the strongest support from the broadest sectors for a revolutionary council.

Who’s afraid of Brother Eddie? Everyone with a moist eye on Malacanang including its present occupant.

Reactions of acabaya@zpdee.net or fax 824-7642. Other articles in www.tapatt.org

DEAR GLORIA HELLO GARCI SPEAK UP BY ATTY. ROWENA GUANZON

Perspective
with Rowena V. Guanzon
Just say it
There is no way the president can survive the problem of the tape without saying a word about it. She just has to say if she called Comelec Commissioner Garcillano or not during the presidential election. If it was her, she can save her country the trouble and pain by resigning so that Senate President Franklin Drilon can call for elections and or a constitutional convention. If it wasn’t her, then she can help set up an independent and reliable mechanism for ascertaining the truth of the tape. But she cannot go about her daily business without giving us an answer. That’s not being honest, and that is not fair.
Now dubbed as “Gloriagate,” taken from the “Watergate” scandal during U.S. President Nixon’s term, the people’s recent dissatisfaction (according to a survey, the most unpopular president ever) is heightened by GMA’s ” I won’t dignify it with an answer” stance. It will not do to blame the opposition for this problem. It is not only the opposition who are calling for an answer. . Fernando Poe Jr. is dead. People like you and me are not interested in this issue because we want him or Susan Roces in Malacanang. We want a president who is not corrupt, and one who will not lie to us. We want a president who will not spare even her own husband if he has done something wrong. The reason for the unpopularity of Mike Arroyo is because the First Gentleman is suspected of having placed his friends in positions of tremendous power, and GMA has allowed it. Those who were appointed because of Mike Arroyo’s influence and who have a conscience should resign now. If they don’t, they are doing GMA a big disfavor. Resign, all of you who got your posts because of presidential patronage, especially those in government corporations.
The people, including those groups who supported GMA’s rise to the presidency are demanding an answer. Already, civil society groups are talking and the consensus is going towards a demand for the president to make a statement and say it once and for all, say whether it was it her or not in the taped conversation with Garcillano. Others are going to demand that she and Vice President Noli de Castro resign and the Senate President can all for a special election.
Garcillano and the Comelec are also not helping by keeping mum about it. Instead of an answer, all we have is a conspiracy to keep silent about it. If it was not Garcillano how come he is not saying so? He is hiding because he does not know what to say or he is still planning what to say.
GMA has a leadership duty in this issue, if only to avoid instability that is now affecting the economy. She should come out and say if she talked to Garcillano during the lections or not. If she says it was not her, the people must be assured of an independent and impartial way of finding the truth. There aren’t too many people in government that we can trust, but surely there must be three people who are acceptable to the people who can compose a commission. If only the politicians in the House of Representatives will conduct the investigation, they all have vested interests and cannot assure us of an impartial and speedy investigation.
Comelec Chairman Benjamin Abalos also has a duty. He cannot wash his hands and say we will get to it when a case is filed. That is a lot of hogwash. Your commissioner is being charged by the public with fraud in a presidential election and all you can say is you will wait if he is formally charged? If the people cannot trust the Comelec, why should we put our nation’s future in elections? Abalos does not only have a duty under the law, he should be mindful that an honest Commission on Elections holds the difference between the people’s belief in elections in this country and a revolt, where they can line up the corrupt against the wall.
And what is this talk that if you play the tape, you will be liable for sedition? Excuse me but I thought Martial Law ended in 1986. We had 14 years of that and there is no way we will take it sitting down. I can’t believe that there are people in this government who think we are stupid or have a short memory. Either that or they think we are all cowards.
We struggled against a dictatorship so that the future generation can be free. We (our generation) are not even dead yet and already, prior restraint on our freedom of speech is held over our heads like an executioner’s ax. I won’t be surprised if tomorrow some nut in the National Telecommunications Commission will say that downloading the “hello Garci” ring tone” is an act of sedition. The website has crashed due to the volume of texters who want the ring tone. Jokes about GMA’s silence are the new craze in textmania. If only we could do people power the “virtual” way by texting, this government would now be packing its bags.*