Not everyone is for sale

by Lito Banayo, www.malaya.com.ph

Manny Villar thinks he can buy everyone with his money. In one instance, his lawyers and land experts produced titles to property that they would develop. The titles overlapped with an adjoining property owned by the family of the wife of a fellow congressman. It was property the wife and her brothers and sisters inherited from their father, a respected former cabinet member in a bygone day.

The congressman was a colleague when Manny Villar became Speaker of the House, by the grace of Erap and the grease of Villar’s money. The security guards of Villar’s real estate corporation barged into the property of the congressman’s wife, and only then did the real owners learn that their inheritance had been poached upon. The wife complained to her husband, who then approached his Speaker.

“Ah, sa misis mo pala ‘yun? Hindi ko alam…never mind, papa-ayos ko na lang”, intoned the Speaker, and days after, his real estate firms laid off the wife’s property. May ini-ilagan din pala. But wait till he becomes President.

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When Juan Ponce Enrile was selected by a majority of his peers to become their Senate President, with a resolution nominating him signed by the requisite 13 in the chamber, Villar casually proposed a deal: he would just resign, and Enrile would take over. But, retain the status quo in the Senate committee chairmanships. Enrile was aghast at the effrontery of the man. Villar was virtually proposing that he turn his back on the thirteen who supported him. Enrile may be everything you want to paint him, but a double-dealer and a traitor he is not. It was no deal, and Enrile went on to become the Senate President, and from there, re-organized the Senate committees. But one thing was certain — Enrile’s regard for the man he replaced had been so diminished.

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When Villar complained that he was being accused, prosecuted and tried by the Senate Committee on Ethics and Privileges, which was chaired by Panfilo M. Lacson, the man who discovered the double appropriations for C-5, Lacson proposed on the floor to constitute the whole chamber as a Committee of the Whole. That caught Villar by surprise. He simply had to face the music. But he could not. His political advisers, mostly hard-boiled politicians, told him he had to present his defense before peers, but his corporate vice-presidents, who knew every sordid detail of his companies’ wheeling and dealing, transacting and abusing, advised him not to. Baka nga naman masiklat; mahirap na.

But when the hearings had begun, and the documentary evidence piled up, and a report that would inevitably show how he abused his powers and betrayed the public trust, along with profiting handsomely from C-5 was about to be completed, he sought a meeting with Enrile in a posh hotel’s Japanese restaurant.

Enrile brought along his chief of staff, a lady lawyer. Villar began by observing that Enrile would be running for re-election, and intimated that he would love to have him in his senatorial ticket. Then he segued to his ability to help. “Alam ko namang magastos rin ‘yan…” Enrile got the message. Whereupon he told his predecessor off. “I assure you I will be fair. Present your side before the Committee, and I will be fair,” Enrile averred, and then walked out.

To the chief of staff, Villar reiterated his willingness to “help”. Humihirit pa.

When finally Enrile came out with the report last January 18, signed by a majority of senators, Villar cried foul, and once again reiterated his mantra that he was being prosecuted and harassed politically, just because he would be the next president of the benighted republic. Enrile got mad, and called him a coward. Later, Enrile could no longer contain himself, and revealed the indecent proposal that Villar had made in exchange for whitewashing the investigation into his C-5 shenanigan.

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Former Senate President Ernesto Maceda, Erap’s campaign manager has another story to tell. Villar had proposed that the former president withdraw from the presidential race and support his candidacy instead. In exchange, he would reimburse Erap’s expenses, plus some. Erap would have blown his top had Villar himself whispered the “deal” in his ear, so Villar, per Maceda, requested a “holy” man, Bro. Mike Velarde of the El Shaddai Movement, to whisper into Erap’s ears.

It will be recalled that the original C-5 route would pass Velarde’s property in San Dionisio, Paranaque, and for which President Estrada paid, after some haggling over the exorbitant price Velarde wanted for his road right of way compensation. The transaction cost the Republic close to 2 billion pesos. And then Villar proposed that the route be changed, the road re-aligned. The Republic spent more for the project, and Villar earned handsomely, apart from increasing the value of his properties many times over. Everything is charged to the people. The taxpayer pays, as always.

Erap refused the man who Villar thought Erap could not refuse. Velarde after all was Erap’s spiritual adviser. Villar of course denied. But Velarde was quiet. As a “holy” man, he could not lie.

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Now comes Dick Gordon, who also got an indecent proposal on the first day of Febraury this year. I thought it was Villar himself who proposed, they being neighbors after all in the country’s swankiest condominium.

In exchange for Gordon voting to elect Villar Senate President once more, in lieu of Enrile, thus preventing the airing on the floor of the C-5 Committee Report, and withdrawing his presidential bid, he would generously “re-imburse”. I wrote about this incident last February, but did not have the full details. Until Dick himself blew the whole thing up last Tuesday in a DZBB interview.

The day after, in another interview, this time over DZMM, before a duo of commentators who have always tried their best to hide the dirt about Villar hidden from public notice, Gordon next talked about part of the huge provenance of Villar’s fabulous wealth, how funds of the SSS and GSIS and Pag-ibig were channelled to the NHMFC to comprise untold billions of Villar’s low-cost housing empire.

“Akala niya lahat mabibili niya…hindi mabibili ang presidency”, Dick virtually summarized. But Dick said it was an emissary of Villar who approached him. Who? Abangan daw, Dick said.

I know. Any one of two former cabinet officials of two succeeding presidents, the incumbent and the one she deposed. Wait till Dick identifies.

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Villar is capable of paying every single commercial space in every single television station and every radio station in the land. Villar is capable of paying most reporters, most editors, most desk men, most writers, and depending on hefty “extras”, they would “kill” any legitimate story off the evening telecast or the following day’s front page. He can pay columnists and commentators to even print his press statement s and the spun-off propaganda prepared by his army of writers,