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Daily, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo is needled with “will-you- won’t-you” questions. She has responded with stolid silence. Just like the Sphinx?
Greek mythology tells of a winged creature, half lion and half woman. Wrapped in silence, the Sphinx devoured those who failed to answer its riddles.
Will Ms. Arroyo seek a Pampanga congressional seat? That riddle bugs ex-president Fidel Ramos and friends. “Tell us,” snapped an irritated Ramos. The President should share her plans with the nation and party of yes-ma’am followers.
Conviction for plunder hasn’t diluted former president Joseph Estrada’s gall. He, too, demands that the riddle be answered. But then, delicadeza and Erap rarely met in a long scandal-smeared career.
“Can you become prime minister, given the massive opposition to Charter change?” others wonder aloud. The partisans snarl: “Are your foreign trips scouting for future exile havens in Barbados, Brazil or Dubai?”
Ms. Arroyo, meanwhile, adopted the late US President Ronald Reagan’s style to start press conferences “Before I refuse to answer questions, I have a statement to make,” Reagan would tell assembled journalists.
In her last Cebu visit, Ms. Arroyo’s staff vetted pertinent, if loaded, questions. Only then did the President sit down for interviews. In Tokyo, she stopped “political questions” cold in their tracks. “Kun anong tanong, siyang sagot,” the Filipino proverb says. (“As the question, so will the answer be.”)
Irritation over zippered lips, of course, is not new. “How long will you keep us waiting?” fuming Pharisees told an impertinent Galilean. He ignored their credentials and referred them to his deeds instead.
“A beautiful and silent Sphinx has watched me / Through the shifting gloom,” Oscar Wilde wrote. “Inviolate and immobile she does not rise / She does not stir.” Fine. But is Sphinx-shushing contagious?
Ask Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile. He’s itching to grill Presidential Commission on Good Government’s Camilo Sabio. The PCCG chair traipsed allover Europe. He tagged along family, plus hangers-on. Did PCCG-sequestered firms, like coconut oil firms, pick up the tab?
The riddle intrigues Enrile. Taxpayers would also like an answer. But Sabio would out-sphinx the Sphinx. “I’ll answer questions at the proper time and at the proper forum,” he told Inquirer. That’s jargon for “never.”
A riddle bothers former senators Jovito Salonga and Wigberto Tanada, along with ex-reprsentative Oscar Santos. Were coconut levy funds – which belong to farmers – hijacked for San Miguel Corp.’s recent investments? Groups like Moro Farmers Association of Zamboanga del Sur ask the same question. All they get from government is Sphinx-like silence.
But what if the Sphinx stirs? Erap underestimated Ms. Arroyo’s capacity to go for the jugular. He lived to regret it. For possible answers, look at the context of power.
“Philippine Human Development Report 2009,” for example, analyzes institutions and skewed patterns of power. They explain why reforms haven’t transformed. Do they hint how the Sphinx can devour?
“Where is the root of all money?” Congress is the “House of Pork,” PHDR says. For 2009, senators and congressmen ladled for themselves P200 million and P13 million, respectively. Pork barrel allocations bolted from P2.4 billion in 2004 to P8 billion in 2008. The highest level occurred in elections years: P8.3 billion in 2004 and P11.4 billion in 2007.
But that’s just the petty cash. The “big ticket items” are found elsewhere, notably in “one liners.” Lump sums are tucked into obscure corners of the national appropriations act. For this year, one liners come up to about P224.4 billion. That’s roughly 16 percent of the total budget of P1.42 trillion.
This boodle does not include foreign funded projects, confidential or intelligence funds. The Presidential Anti-Organized Crime Commission has a cool half billion in a one liner. Department of Public Works and Highways has a P15-billion “one liner” for infrastructure.
“Which of these one liners are actually backed by plans?” asks PHDR. Or are they “simply discretionary funds?” That riddle is worthy of a Sphinx.
Congress boasts it has “power of the purse.” The reality is Malacañang long swiped the wallet. Flawed institutions, neglect and often sheer incompetence, lodge the cash with the President. “And whoever pays the piper calls the tune.”
Reduced to sari-sari store level, crafting a budget ignores policy. Legislators rarely hold agencies to account for performance. In one year, 18 out of 44 agencies failed audits. Yet, not one was pulled up short.
“Budget discussions, particularly in the House of Representatives, deal with parochial concerns,” PHDR notes. “Questions about agency performance are asked only intermittently and superficially. Cost estimates of budget proposals are rarely challenged”
Justice Secretary Agnes Devandera, meanwhile, announced: Government took fugitive Cezar Mancao into it’s flaky Witness Protection Program. Will this former cop finally sing? Are answers forthcoming on riddles about the Dacer-Corbito murder?
Who, for example is “Bigote”? Mancao’s men burned documents after the murder. Did these deal with the BW Resources stock scam? Senator Panfilo Lacson, who was Mancao’s superior, has lapsed into silence. Just like the Sphinx?
