The governor’s gambit

Governor Joel T. Reyes is taking a calculated risk that could land him in the list of the most ignominious LGU leaders under the present administration.

Rallying the governors’ league to shield President Arroyo from the scandalous gift giving in Malacanang two weeks ago, Reyes has declared that it was them who gave half a million pesos in cash each to Governors Ed Panlilio and Joselito Mendoza during the ULAP meeting in Malacanang over a week ago.

The League of Provinces in the Philippines (LPP) as an institution cannot be dragged down any further than where it currently sits by way of credibility. But Governor Ben Evardone and Reyes have placed their individual integrity on the line, with the odds stacked against them with the way they are playing the Goebbel’s game.

I was miffed upon reading Reyes’ first statements to media two days ago. Yesterday, he granted me an hour long phone interview (we were cut off only when his battery apparently went dead) while he was in Manila. Judging from the tone of his voice, he wasn’t too excited with the current role he was playing. “I have to speak for the organization otherwise I have no business being in this position (as executive vice president),” he says.

Peopled by staunch pro administration governors led by Eastern Samar’s Ben Evardone (who incidentally was a media colleague, a former reporter of Malaya, back in the early 90s), the LPP has a penchant for inserting itself in controversial situations to buffer GMA from her critics. Once, for example, it tried to stop the Senate from conducting its probe into the NBN bribe deal, an issue that is quite remote from its concerns.

In this present controversy, JTR is the designated hitter for the group. Working in tandem with Evardone, the two have commandeered the organization and took it on a roller coaster ride in a rather farcical attempt to rescue the President. They made up convoluted and inconsistent tales that have caught even their own members by surprise.

For instance, hardly anyone had heard about the P6 million fund for Capacity Building Program where Panlillo’s wad of crisp P1,000 bills supposedly came from. Suddenly, the LPP had so much money it was giving away funding support to new governors like Panlilio and Mendoza without them even asking. Reyes had produced a cleanly typed resolution supposedly executed by the Executive Board to that effect, and had blamed the secretariat for failing to inform its members about it.

The LPP story didn’t quite stick because it raised more questions than answers.

a) How did they choose the two as beneficiaries when neither had asked for it? And by Reyes’ own admission, they have not yet established a procedure for availing of the fund.

b) Why hand the money in cash inside Malacanang premises when the secretariat had all the time and resources to make arrangements for a more regular turnover of funds (how about a pictorial while handing over the check?)

c) Was it mere coincidence that the paper bag shown by Gov. Panlilio during his press conference looked exactly like those being carried by Congressmen coming out of the Palace as they were caught on camera after the gathering?

d) Why didn’t Evardone speak up right away after Panlilio blew the whistle? He was there when it happened and was in fact in a better position to speak about it than Reyes who was his mere second in the organization and out of the country while the whole thing was unfolding

Inquirer’s story headline describing Malacanang as distancing itself from the LPP stand was not quite accurate. Without having to add any spin on the tale, Malacanang is in fact using it to stonewall. It has built a rampart of straws and twigs that further exposed the Arroyo administration to political destabilization.

When interviewed on local radio DYPR, Gov. Reyes flinched on the criticism that a reward was afoot for his defense of the President, and that it is most likely the release of the coveted Malampaya funds that Malacanang is trying to keep to itself all these times. “So be it,” he’d say, stating that it would be great for Palawan.

Maybe he’s right after all, and the personal insults and eroding credibility is a price worth enough to pay for gratuitous funds that can improve people’s lives here in Palawan. But how do you trust a leader who puts a premium on blind loyalty over the truth?

This is such a tough world to live by.

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