Panlilio's revolution in peril

DIE HARD III
Herman Tiu Laurel
12/19/2007



The 2007 Philippine elections saw two revolutions by election, the first was a national one when Lt. Senior Grade Antonio Trillanes IV was elected as senator by eleven million voters; that revolution was blocked from becoming a reality by the corrupt system of Gloria Arroyo that militarily and judicially stopped Trillanes from actually serving in the legislature to fulfill his campaign platform of purging government of corruption and Gloria. The second election revolution was Fr. “Among” Ed Panlilio’s gubernatorial victory in Pampangga which deposed the most trapo leadership of actor turned politico Lito Lapid and jueteng empress Lilia Pineda’s local government dynasty, now Panlilio is in peril.

Both Trillanes and Fr. Panlilio ran without large scale campaign funding against their respective profusely funded rival candidates; in other words, both won with little funding but huge popular support. Both ran against corruption, one on the national level and the other on the local level. While corruption on the national level is a complex issue, at the local level its really very simple – jueteng and Pampangga’s unique sand and gravel quarrying business. Jueteng was controlled by Mayor Lilia Pineda’s husband, Bong, and the quarrying revenues were all going into the pocket of then incumbent governor and movie stunt actor Lito Lapid.

About the multi-billion jueteng operations we need not elaborate, all the country knows what goes on there and the role of the Pinedas in that illegal gambling operation. On Pampanga’s quarrying business, the following shows how corrupt Lito Lapid was: under Lito Lapid Commission on Audit (COA) records showed that the provincial government had an income of only P45 million from quarry operations from 2002 to 2004, compared to P382 million collected over a similar three-year period from 1999 to 2001 when quarrying was still under the jurisdiction of the central government-owned Natural Resources Development Corp. (NRDC). Lapid, Gloria’s boy, was raking in hundreds of millions annually.

Fr. Panlilio beat the machinations of billionaire Mayor of Lubao and the stunt actor previous governor with multi-hundred millions. The people of Pampanga had finally grown up and tired of the lollipops and candies dole outs of corrupt trapo politics. They sought and found a new type of candidate, a priest named Ed “among” Panlilio who, after his election, did not fail his constituents. The first thing he did was report the actual revenue from the province’s quarrying business and restored the hundreds of millions of the province of Pampanga. Yet, today, Gov. Panlilio is under siege from his Vice-Governor and the local town mayors who want the largest chunk of the revenues it to go directly to local politicians.

What is at stake here is development funds for all of Pampanga which local politicians of the quarrying towns want all of themselves. Gov. Panlilio opposes this saying it would be at the expense of the social distribution of this provincial boon, especially to the under-privileged Pampangos, as well as the balanced and progressive development of the entire province while some selected and accidentally privileged local mayors, board members and baranggay officials wallow in the quarry funds just as Lito Lapid did – treating it as their personal milking cow. Now, these local trapos are threatening a recall election against Panlilio.

The local politicians may just succeed in getting the ten percent vote to recall the elected Governor Panlilio. We have seen how a few local town mayors cans succeed in recalling a popularly elected leader just by cajoling and bribing ten percent of the population, a perversion of a law that was intended to ensure accountability and democratic review of an elected candidate’s performance becoming a tool of the corrupt who capture the power they could not gain by popular mandate. In this case, the pro-Gloria and Cory ally vice-governor Guiao would overturn a popular mandate and take over from Fr. “Among” Ed Panlilio to bring back happy days of local trapos.

Fr. Panlilio’s local political miracle is in precarious straits today, such local revolution will be hard put to survive if there is no corresponding national revolution. A chick in an egg will not hatch if the political nest or environment does not provide right conditions for its incubation. In the Philippines today, the hen is a vulture that would eat the eggs that do not reflect its nature - corruption. Hence, the vulture hen is so intent on keeping at bay the national revolution represented by the victory of Senator Trillanes –keeping him from the Senate at all cost; but the Trillanes revolution will not be still born and the Manila Pen stand is only the first heave to crack the shell.

The situations of Senator Trillanes and the priest-revolutionary Gov. “Among” Panlilio points to the need of all progressive Filipinos, here and abroad, to focus on the challenge of revolution. This is a struggle that cannot be taken up only during elections and must be sustained every day - a full time task. Our rebirth of our nation and society is still some ways off, Gloria is prodding his corrupt generals with medals and other treasures to suppress the rising expectations and actions for change. The corrupt system threatens to overwhelm the revolutions by election – a sure way to ensure the bloody revolution, but for us there is no surrender.

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