Lite Moments with the Heavyweights

YESTERDAY, TODAY & TOMORROW
Linggoy Alcuaz
9/14-16/2011



Exchange among Publisher Ray L. Junia and Editor-in-Chief Luchie Aclan Arguelles and Newsboy Linggoy: at the OpinYon Editorial Offices at the Lower Ground Floor of Cityland 9 Building, # 7648 along de la Rosa Street in Makati City:

Newsboy Linggoy - Boss, Let’s launch our third weekly issue ASAP. Since we already have OpinYon Regular and OpinYon Lite, let us call it OpinYon Zero.

Publisher Ray L. Junia & Editor Luchie A. Arguelles - We thought you were complaining about OpinYon Lite. Can you write five columns (including two days, Monday and Friday in Diaryo Pinoy) per week? Can you still carry a hundred to a hundred and fifty copies at a time?

Newsboy Linggoy - Zero stands for zero criticism. So I’m disqualified from writing for the Zero issue just as Ka Mentong is disqualified from writing for the Lite issue. His topics are always heavy and serious. So, I will keep on writing four times a week but deliver five issues per week. That’s my problem.

With GMA
Let’s go on with other heavyweights as I recall my light moments with them:

In 1997 former President GMA was still Senator but angling to run for President in May 1998. She had just organized the Kampi as her own political party. She convinced former Cong. Jose “Peping” Sumulong Cojuangco to be her campaign manager and Cong. Emigdio “Ding” Tanjuatco to be the Kampi Chairman, President or Secretary General.

The whole of 1997, a full year before the election, she was going all over the country.

Her goal was to match her late father, former President Diosdado Macapagal, Jr., and visit all the 1,560 municipalities before the Presidential elections.

4 by 4s
When she sortied in Davao del Sur, I (As the Kampi Regional Desk Officer for Region II composed of four Davaos, Gen. Santos City and South Cotabato.) was one of those who escorted her. She was using a Ford F 150 4 x 4 which was a bit high for her shortness.

However, she always managed to climb up to the front passenger seat.

Until one time, the driver failed to see that he had stopped right beside a big pothole.

The depth of the pothole was just enough to make it impossible for GMA to climb up.

It so happened that I was the person nearest to her. My choices were to either carry her bodily or go done on all my fours and let her step on my back and use me as a bench to get up and on to the front seat of the F 150 4 x 4.

On my 4s
Guess! What did I do?

If I carried her, I might hold a wrong part of her body.

What would happen when she became President and remembered the “chancing”?

So, I went down on my fours. Let the indignity be mine and not hers.

But if this is a true story, she should have appointed me to something better than a member of the PCSO Board of Directors.

The story is apocryphal.

Sorry! I just like to imagine what could have been…

With Erap
Former President Joseph “Erap” Ejercito Estrada and Story Teller Linggoy have too many things to share that it would take a book thicker than his biography.

We will have to wait for a future time to share these stories with you.

But hold on please. “Baka may daplis sa baba.”

With FVR
In 1991, former President Fidel V. Ramos wanted to run for President but he did not have a political party to run under.

FVR joined the Lakas ng Demokratikong Pilipino. He ran against Speaker Ramon V. Mitra in a series of informal Regional Conventions.

He lost in the vast majority of them.

With Cory
Although Cory had fired me as Commissioner of the National Telecommunications Commission in November of 1989, Mitra and the LDP had not fired me as the LDP Intelligence Officer.

Cory fired me for publicly predicting the December 1, 1989 Coup.

In December 1992, our intelligence indicated that FVR was going to bolt the party and still run for President.

FVR Cornered
FVR and I met at a baptism of the daughter of DZRH’s Eloy Aquino.

The reception was at a Chinese restaurant. We were seated at a typical round table.

Aside from FVR, Eloy, her husband, and I, former General and then EIIB Director Jose Almonte, Jr., Rey Langit and several other media practitioners were with us around the table or within earshot.

I had picked up a few bits of information from my classmate, friend and sometime lawyer, now Justice Antonio T. Carpio.

He had been helping FVR. He told me that FVR had been scheduled to bolt the LDP a few nights before but at the last minute postponed it.

I filled in the blanks and bluffed FVR:

I said: “Sir, the other night, the LDP held a meeting at the sixth floor executive lounge of the Jose Cojuangco & Sons Building on de la Rosa and Palanca Streets in Legaspi Village, Makati City.

“After the meeting, you and Peping went up to his office on the seventh floor. After a brief talk, you went back to the lounge, picked up one of the phones beside a couch and called your backroom boys in your war room at Perea Street. ‘Hindi tuloy. Pwede na kayo umuwi’. , you whispered.”

So I asked, “Sir, anong hindi tuloy?”

Riding the Tide
The table burst in intriguing laughter. Rey Langit kidded FVR that I was the master spy and expert in electronic surveillance and that I was bugging him.

FVR’s face turned red.

Later on, I found out from his boys that he inquired whether all the phones in their political headquarters and offices were being swept.

When told that they were doing it every day, he ordered a morning, noon and night routine.

For the Books
The light and heavy moments between former President Corazon Sumulong Cojuangco Aquino and NTC Commissioner and Coup prophet and seer Linggoy Alcuaz will require another book.

However, just to give a preview, let me say that Cory appointed me in spite of being Ninoy’s friend and fellow conspirator for several reasons.

When I visited them in Boston from 1980 – 82, I did not smoke. I often offered to help Cory with the dishes. I never took Ninoy out.

We met and talked in their home, either in his study or in the dining room.

To do justice to former Speaker Ramon V. Mitra and the LDP and as their former Intelligence Officer, another book will be up coming.

Oh my God, there is so much justice to be done! Let me give you a preview of parts of my future books.

Snippets
Miriam in wrong meeting: Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago once went to the wrong room, intruded into an ongoing committee hearing and called the hearing to order again. Nobody dared to tell her that she was wrong.

‘Sticky’ Nani: I designed and printed stickers with a moustache (representing DOJ Sec. Nani Perez) for Cong. Mark Jimenez. However, since he was handcuffed, Cong. Prospero Pichay and Willie Villarama had to be the ones to distribute and stick the stickers.

Slice of the Cake: I requested former Senator and Executive Secretary Bert Romulo in October 2001 to replace me as a PCSO Director with my wife, Baby, so that as Big Mike put it, I could have my cake and eat it too.

Blank Check: I owe my promotion to NTC Commissioner to Senator and former Executive Sec. Joker Arroyo and his one-minute rule. On July 4, 1986, during the Manila Hotel incident, he gave me a blank check.

Funny Moments in Next Issue:In future columns, I will share with you my funny moments with: Press Sec Bunye in Muntinglupa and at the PCSO; Press Sec Noel Cabrera and the lababo; DOTC Sec Nani Perez; DOTC Sec Rainerio Reyes; DOTC Usec Maning Domingo; PC Chief/INP Dir. Gen Ramon Montano, and many others.