Rizal in the American Congress, December 27, 1952

RIZAL IN THE AMERICAN CONGRESS
December 27, 1952

By Vicente Albano Pacis

IN the semi darkness of the ground floor of the US Capitol in Washington, I entered an office by mistake—and stumbled upon the author of the Philippine Bill of 1902—and an interesting episode in Rizalian lore.

It was 1926. Though perhaps not as critical as that of 1902, the American congressional situation with respect to the Philippines was serious. In Manila, General Leonard Wood, the Governor-General, and Manuel L. Quezon, the Senate President, were in the midst of a knock-down-and-dug-out fight. And friends of the general on Capitol Hill were active. One of them, tough and determined Congressman Robert Bacon of New York, had introduced a bill separating Mindanao and Jolo from the Philippines and retaining them under US sovereignty, should Luzon and the Visayas become independent, Senator Sergio Osmeña has rushed to Washington in alarm to try and block the shocking proposal.

A young Associated Press correspondent, I was closely watching the developments on the measure and was that day on my way to the office of Congressman Kiess of Pennsylvania, chairman of the House Committee on Insular Affairs, when I entered the wrong door. I was about to withdraw, having started to offer my excuses, but what the elderly female secretary said rang a bell in my head.

She said. “This is the office of Congressman Henry A. Cooper; can I help you?�

“Cooper of Wisconsin?� I inquired.

I had been in and out of the Capitol for five or six months and had not heard any mention of his name now seen him in the house session hall. I had no idea that he was still a member of Congress. But feeling sure now that the man into whose office I had gotten by mistake was none other than the man for whom the Cooper Act—the first Philippine Organic Law—was named, I decided to see him. I asked the secretary if I could do so.

Our issue for December 31, 2005

PHILIPPINES FREE PRESS

December 31, 2005 Issue

Main Features

1.Cover: Man of the Year —Archbishop Oscar Cruz

When Lingayen Archbishop Oscar Cruz launched his national crusade against jueteng in 2001, he did not set out to overhaul Philippine society. His goal was to save poor Filipinos from a vice in which they had been wallowing for generations. Neither did he believe he could eradicate jueteng. All he wanted to do was wake up the poor to their exploitation by the gambling lords and their political and police coddlers. To do that he needed to leave the sacristy and step out into the world to stand for morality, fast departing from the Philippines under the rule of politicians and their relatives who have no conscience. It was not difficult because he never believed that priests should confine themselves to their churches and leave the world to governments. His flock was out there, neither pulling themselves out of poverty nor being helped by the government to pull themselves out. Instead they were burying themselves deeper in poverty in trying to win a few hundred pesos and buy a good meal for one day—only a few were winning and just for show. Those who were getting rich were the gambling lords and their political patrons—mayors, governors, members of Congress—and corrupt police. The fall of President Joseph Estrada showed how high in the government the corruption had reached. But Estrada’s ouster did not even reduce official corruption from jueteng. Instead it worsened, the crusade found out. To carry out his self-imposed mission, Cruz would have to go up against the powers that be and work with their enemies. He would endanger many lives including his own. It didn’t matter. From talking to journalists about the wider spread of corruption from jueteng, Cruz went on to bring his crusades findings before an investigating committee in the House of Representatives, where nothing happened, and before two investigating committees in the Senate, where the bravest of his witnesses exposed the involvement not only of local government and high-ranking police officials but also of members of the family of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. None of the people whose greed had been exposed had been prosecuted, but two members of the presidential family had to leave the country for a while and jueteng lords had to rethink their illegal business. For a while, jueteng was reduced. President Arroyo appointed a jueteng fighter whose efforts might have helped a little to the reduction. Most of it was the result of Cruz’s fearless fight. He was not completely successful but he showed what determination driven by sincerity could do in fighting vice and corruption. For stepping out of the church and standing for morality on behalf of the poor, for fearlessly challenging the high and mighty, for showing that vice was never reduced but got worse under the Arroyo administration, and for creating a wider public awareness of the evil that is jueteng and its influence in the country’s corridors of power, Archbishop Oscar Cruz is the Free Press Man of the Year for 2005.

By Ricky S. Torre

Mr. Chief Justice, May 27, 1939

May 27, 1939

Front Page Faces

Mr. Chief Justice

WHILE small smart Jose Yulo was closing up the legislative mill in Manila, small wise old Ramon Avanceña was grinding away at the judicial mill in Baguio, with adjournment fixed for the end of this month. If the Assembly’s record of the fast but careful legislation was impressive, even more so was the Supreme Court’s record of swift justice.

The Justices had rendered an average of five decisions a day, had by last week broken the standing record for the court’s summer sessions by deciding over 200 cases. The last Baguio session was held in 1935; 180 cases were disposed of. About 260 cases are expected to be cleaned up by the end of the 1939 session. This does not include resolutions, except those on motions for reconsideration of cases.

Their baby? Editorial for March 5, 1994

THEIR BABY?
March 5, 1994

A TWO-headed baby was born recently in the town of Taraclia, Moldova. Aside from two heads, the baby also has two hearts, two sets of lungs and two spinal cords but only one set of limbs. Doctors blame the 1986 Chemobyl nuclear disaster for the defects.—Reuters

THE Constitution is new. What’s wrong with it? Why amend it?

Abolishing the Senate will leave only the House of Turon to meet the problems of the nation. With what? A piece of the delicacy? The Constitution vests legislative power in the Senate and the House. Without the Senate, the people will be at the mercy of the House and its voracious appetite. The senate makes them more secure.

What are the problems of the nation? Mass poverty and unemployment; graft and corruption in the government; continuing violation of human rights; widespread rebellion; massive deforestation, which threatens to turn the country into a desert; mockery of justice: the rich few get away with robbery and murder while the poor feels its lash. And other evils too many to enumerate here. None of them is to be blamed on the Constitution.

If the senators were to agree to the scrapping of the Senate, they would become and insignificant minority of 24 against 180 and could do nothing to improve the performance of whatever the House would be called. They would be called the same as the company they kept. Good for nothing, if not crooks.

President Ramos would still hold on to power—as premier. By running for membership in the House or Parliament and after using his P10 billion pork barrel for the re-election of the members, he would get their votes as prime minister. They would lick the hand that fed them. Lie dogs.

True, he has sworn:

“I have no plan or ambition or inclination to stay on as President when my term ends in 1998. Even if the Constitution were amended to allow my re-election, I would not seek re-election. Even if the people want it and vote that I stay in office, I shall not serve. If the Constitution were amended to introduce the parliamentary system, I would not run for office; and if elected, I would reject it.”

Or he would argue:

“The voice of the people is the voice of God. Who am I to go against God?”

Or keep his word.

Or, Speaker Jose de Venecia would be premier. And “behest loan” the rule?

Why not leave the Constitution alone?

They ran under it and should defend it.

Constitutional Convention: Nakakahiya! February 26, 1972

February 26, 1972

The Constitutional Convention:
Nakakahiya!
By Edward R. Kiunisala

WHEN the history of the 1971-1972 Constitutional Convention is finally written, one dominant, if not domineering, figure will undoubtedly emerge: Pres. Ferdinand E. Marcos. Even during the pre-Convention days, he was already the center of controversy; he w as accused of buying delegates, of handpicking the charter’s body’s officers. He was accused of trying to control the Constitutional Convention.

True or not, the fact remains that no other political personality has been the cause of so much dispute and discord in committee meetings and plenary sessions of the Convention as President Marcos. No other issue has been more explosive and expensive than Marcos. If the Convention is as politicalized as it is today, we have only Marcos and to a certain extent Mrs. Marcos to thank for it.

Our issue for December 25, 2005

PHILIPPINES FREE PRESS
December 24, 2005 Issue

Main Features

1.Cover: The Consultative Commission (with 10-page supplement on the constitutional amendment consultations)

After three months of consultations across the country, the 55-member Presidential Consultative Commission submits its report to Malacañang this week. The report contains the commission’s proposed amendments to the 1987 Constitution that the Palace says it will respect. But the mood is different in the House of Representatives, which wants Congress itself to amend the Constitution. The House is waiting for the commission’s report and should this turn out radically different from the politicians’ plans, the House will challenge the legality of the commission in the Supreme Court. As of last weekend, the commission was redrafting the report to produce a compromise version free of the influence of the federalists in the consultative body. As it was, the draft report was partly based on the constitution of the Citizens Movement for a Federal Philippines and planned to be inserted into the Constitution. This will not do.

Joaquin Elizalde: Free Press Man of the Year for 1940

January 4, 1941
Joaquin Elizalde: Man of the year
By James G. Wingo
Free Press Correspondent in Washington

In 1938 the opportunity to have a representative in Washington able to handle the increasingly important U.S.-Philippine economic and trade problems presented itself to President Quezon. Taking advantage of it, the Philippine chief executive, despite bitter opposition from varied quarters, picked for resident commissioner polo-playing, socially attractive Joaquin “Mike�? Elizalde, one of the Islands’ topnotch business executives.

U.S. and Philippine businessmen hailed the appointment as a step toward better U.S.-Philippine relations because of his vast economic experience in private business and in the government.

Jose Yulo: The Old-Fashioned Virtues

The old-fashioned virtues
By Leon Ma. Guerrero
Free Press staff member
September 24, 1939

JOSE Yulo has most of the old-fashioned virtues.

He is intelligent. He passed the bar examinations at 19, was not given a license to practice law because he was under age. But in his thirties he was already topnotch Philippine corporation lawyer, helped draft the Philippine corporation law. His briefs were so logical and forceful that he seldom had to appear in person for his Big Business clients.

Our issue for December 17, 2005

PHILIPPINES FREE PRESS

December 17, 2005 Issue

Main Features

1.Cover: Twisted Key

Virgilio Garcillano faces the congressional investigation into the Arroyo tapes on Wednesday without even the slightest credibility. Sen. Joker Arroyo is unwilling to get the Senate involved in the proposed joint hearings with the five House committees investigating the scandal because the exercise will just be a waste of time. It is now clear that since his return last week with incredible tales about his nearly six months’ disappearance that Garcillano, once believed to be the key to explaining the tapes to the nation, did not come out to tell the truth about last year’s presidential election. He came out to force a closure to the scandal as Malacañang, which is now protecting him, has designed it so that the opposition will have no strong evidence to bring another impeachment case against President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo next September. Garcillano will answer any question except about the tapes, central to the investigation and evidence of the fraud. His reason is that the tapes have been illegally obtained and cannot be used in any investigation. He is right under the law and that will be his shield during the investigation. But the Filipino people have already heard the tapes and no explanation by any legal light, even by the Supreme Court perhaps, will convince them that their votes were not stolen. And that is why no matter what Garcillano say during the investigation the people and even the investigators will not believe him. More important to the investigation now is Samuel Ong, the former NBI deputy director who knows the provenance of the tapes. Both houses of Congress want to talk him but his too scared for his life to come out.

By Ricky S. Torre, Wendell Vigilia and Butch Serrano

Our issue for December 10, 2005

PHILIPPINES FREE PRESS

December 10, 2005 Issue

Main Features

1.Cover: Pag-IBIG Fund Anniversary (with 8-page, full-color supplement)

2. Garci Talks

Virgilio Garcillano surfaces and claims he has never left the Philippines during the five months that he disappeared after the Arroyo tapes scandal broke out. Singapore’s Foreign Ministry must have been lying when it informed the Philippines that Garcillano transited Singapore on July 14 on his way to another country. He says he had been moving around fearing for his life because he had learned that Sen. Panfilo Lacson’s men were looking for him. Lacson? Why Lacson? That’s Malacañang, of course. Without Fernando Poe Jr. and Raul Roco, Lacson, the third-placer in last year’s presidential election, is the biggest threat to Mrs. Arroyo—as a possible alternative to her, that is. So Lacson’s men are no longer looking for Garcillano, that’s why Garcillano has decided to come out? No. He says that “after [he was] convicted before the bar of public opinion, the people are now ready to hear the truth.� How’s that—after convicting him, the people are now ready to listen to him? To his lies, the opposition says. Opposition leaders says Malacañang is behind Garcillano’s return. That’s most likely true. Malacañang has been insisting on closing the book on the Arroyo tapes scandal, but has acknowledged that there can be no closure unless Garcillano comes out and tells all. So here is Garcillano saying Mrs. Arroyo did not rig the election and setting conditions for his appearance before the Arroyo tapes investigation in the House of Representatives: lift the arrest warrant issued against him, recall the bounty offered for his arrest, and he won’t talk about the tapes during his questioning. He has also asked the Supreme Court to quash the warrant and stop the House investigation because the tapes were illegally obtained. The man just doesn’t want to be investigated. Without discussion of the tapes, what will the congressmen discuss with him? If the investigation is not completed, the accusation of electoral fraud against Mrs. Arroyo remains and she will have to defend herself in another impeachment in Congress next September. It is doubtful, however, that the Supreme Court will meddle in the business of Congress, a co-equal branch of government. Besides, before Garcillano can complain of being the victim of illegal wiretapping, he first has to admit that he is indeed Mrs. Arroyo’s phone pal and they are really the ones talking about rigging the election on the tapes. If he does, he confirms the charges against Mrs. Arroyo. She faces impeachment, he faces six years in jail (for electoral fraud alone). The congressional investigators are willing to accommodate him: if he is willing to talk, the warrant and the bounty fly. His supposed fear for his life doesn’t sell: he is more valuable to the opposition alive than dead; the reverse is true for the administration. Lacson says it is to his interest that Garcillano lives so that he can tell the truth about the election. PDP-Laban Rep. Teodoro Locsin Jr. of Makati, chairman of the House Committee on Suffrage, says, “Everybody wants him alive so we can catch him in his contradictions.�

By Ricky S. Torre, Wendell Vigilia and Butch Serrano