Wag the tail, not the dog

Franklin Drilon says the Liberal Party (LP) will meet to discuss the issue of Charter change. While at it, they’re going to discuss as well the issue of P-Noy running or not running again. The meeting was proposed by Butch Abad, he said, and he has endorsed it.

It should be good to take up the second issue, Drilon says, so we can settle it once and for all. So we can hear it straight from the horse’s mouth. He himself, Drilon says, believes P-Noy “is averse to a second term.” Let’s put that thing to rest.

I did think when I heard Abigail Valte announce that P-Noy had no plans to amend the Charter during his time to allow for a second term, the day after he suggested he might, that that wasn’t going to be the end of it.

At the very least, that is because Valte, like her boss, Edwin Lacierda, has a habit of going beyond reporting the President’s utterances—which is what a spokesperson is supposed to do, no more and no less—to interpreting them. That’s not how it’s done in other countries, which is why their press conferences tend to be short and authoritative. Their spokespersons do not say “we” in lieu of “the President,” and certainly they do not preface their statements with “I think.” They are not supposed to think, they are supposed to report, preferably with exact quotes. The only job requirement is the ability to be accurate, or faithful to the original.

Our situation makes constant clarification necessary. We do need to hear it straight from the horse’s mouth.

At the very most, what happened before, which was the President’s change of mind—“When I took this office, I recall that it was only for one term of six years… I have to listen to my bosses”—could happen again. The seeds of that thought had at least been planted in the public’s mind.

Despite the clarification, the speculation hasn’t ended, and has in fact taken a life of its own. I don’t know that Drilon’s announcement that the LP will meet to discuss Charter change and settle P-Noy’s political fate once and for all will settle things once and for all. The fact that it’s Abad who proposed the meeting with that agenda in mind can only reinforce widespread suspicion that P-Noy’s rethinking of his original position (which was that running again was unthinkable) was the thinking of his closest friends, or so they call themselves. P-Noy has nothing to gain from a second term; his friends, or so they call themselves, do.

So long as they’re there, so long will the public suspect that the pressure for P-Noy to reconsider is there. Especially if he is constantly sold the idea that once he’s out of power they’re all vulnerable to legal action owing to the Disbursement Acceleration Program.

Clearly of course, both changing the Charter and P-Noy running again are unpopular moves. P-Noy has been indifferent, if not opposed, to Charter change all this time, despite the fact that the call for it has come from a close friend and ally, Sonny Belmonte. Whose reasons for it have been definite from the start: He wants to change the Charter for purely economic reasons, specifically to loosen the current constitutional limits on foreign investments and ownership of property. P-Noy throws his support behind Charter change now and no one will believe he or the LP or both will limit the extent of those changes only to the ones the Speaker has in mind. It will be political in the extreme. It will be divisive in the extreme.

Apart from the possibility of allowing P-Noy to run again, it could open up the possibility of changing the form of government from presidential to parliamentary. P-Noy need not run again; a parliamentary government stands to be controlled by the party in power, which can vote to power its prime minister. Guess who that will be. Although given the way Mar Roxas keeps alienating people, it might not even be him.

As to P-Noy running again, we know how the public reacted to it the first time he hinted at it. The backlash was so swift and severe Malacañang  had to distance itself from it just as swiftly and severely. Allies themselves protested the idea, pointing out the harm it could do to P-Noy’s own credibility, quite apart from the harm it could do to the gains of the last four years.

There is really no need to meet about these things at all, it would just be doing what Robin Williams did last week. The fact that the LP wants to do so at all can only testify to the extent of their desperation, or indeed despair. Less than two years to go, and they have no candidate with the slightest crack at winning. Meanwhile, the opposition keeps making giant strides by the day. The latest to join the Binay camp, coming on the heels of P-Noy’s sisters—at least as reported, only Kris Aquino has made her sentiments unequivocally known in that respect—are P-Noy’s uncles, Butch Aquino, Paul Aquino and Peping Cojuangco.

I know ruling parties in this country since Edsa have had a talent for losing and going by the wayside afterward. But I do not recall any of those being in such dire straits as this one currently is—all the more so in light of its

(unofficial) head being one of the most popular presidents this country has seen. One where allies themselves are abandoning that party in power, one where partymates themselves are abandoning that party in power, one where the President’s relatives themselves are abandoning that party in power. I haven’t seen any party in power that’s so powerless about its future while still in power.

The LP wants to meet, it should really have only one reason to do so. That is not how to change the Charter, that is not how to make P-Noy run. Those things are just making the tail wag the dog. There’s a simple way to go about things: That is to make the dog wag the tail.

That is, to find an alternative bet.