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Featured Stories

OVERVIEW
Anak ng Jueteng
by Sheila S. Coronel
Like Joseph Estrada, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has been accused of accepting money from illegal gambling.

THE CAMPAIGN
Jekyll-and-Hyde Campaign
by Yvonne T. Chua
Alongside the official Arroyo campaign was a parallel structure that operated secretly and with little accountability.

Presidential Makeover
by Ellen Tordesillas
A foreign PR firm is re-engineering Mrs. Arroyo’s image.

CAMPAIGN FUNDS
Running on Taxpayers’ Money
by Luz Rimban
Billions of pesos in government funds were used to pump prime Arroyo’s candidacy.

THE VICE PRESIDENT
The Man Who Would Be President
by Luz Rimban
Noli de Castro has come a long way from his days as a broadcaster; he may even end up in Malacañang.

CHARTER CHANGE
SOS: System Under Stress
by Sheila S. Coronel
Can Congress be trusted to hold a credible impeachment trial and to change the constitution?

IMPEACHMENT
Lights, Camera, Impeachment!
by Alecks P. Pabico
The impeachment proceedings should be the best show in town, but so far, it’s been a sleeper.

VOICES FROM THE PERIPHERY
For Visayans, The Center Does Not Hold
by Resil Mojares

The Moro People Can Be a Part of a Plural Society Without Losing Their Identity
by Omar Solitario Ali

The Time for Federalism is Now
by Rey Magno Teves

TWO AT EDSA
"When the Wheels of History Turn, You Hardly Expect the World to Turn Upside Down”
by Ed Lingao

“I Was at Edsa Out of Pure Disgust”
by Mylene Lising

FOCUS ON FILIPINO YOUTH: THE LOST GENERATION
Finding Spaces
by Katrina Stuart Santiago
They are the hi-tech generation, at ease with technology but otherwise lost when it comes to dealing with the complexities of a globalized world.

So Young and So Trapo
by Avigail Olarte
The Sangguniang Kabataan, training ground of future leaders, has fallen into the grip of traditional politics.

Teen and Tipsy
by Vinia Datinguinoo
More and more adolescent girls are drinking alcohol.

Perils of Generation Sex
by Cheryl Chan
Filipino women are having sex earlier, but are seldom aware of the risks, including sexually transmitted diseases.

The Business of Beauty
by Cheryl Chan
Shampoos, skin whiteners, and assorted other beauty products find a ready market among young women.

Machos in the Mirror
by Dean Francis Alfar
Filipino men are spending millions to look—and feel—good.

Male and Vain
Photos by Jose Enrique Soriano
Men are lining up to get facials, foot scrubs, and even dips in bathtubs filled with rose petals.

Growing Up Female and Muslim
by Samira Gutoc
Moro women still value religion and tradition, but are also responding to the challenges of modernity.

Alongside the official Arroyo campaign was a parallel structure that operated secretly and with little accountability.

by YVONNE T. CHUA

	THE TWO FACES OF GMA. Aides say that while the president has a reformist side, she has also accepted the realities of trapo politics, including paybacks and payoffs. [photo credits: Malaya]

IN THE May 2004 elections, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo maintained a campaign organization so elaborate it even included a group dubbed “Special Ops,” an infamous abbreviation for “special operations” that many equate with “dirty tricks,” or cruder still, poll cheating.

What the “Special Ops” group under then presidential liaison officer for political affairs Jose Ma. ‘Joey’ Rufino was tasked to do—or did exactly—was not known to the president’s official campaign advisers. Up to now, many of them are still clueless about that group’s tasks.

Former presidential peace adviser Teresita ‘Ging’ Deles can only say that Rufino’s activities were never taken up in the meetings of the executive council Arroyo convened to take charge of plotting and directing her campaign. Deles was part of that council, also referred to as the advisory council.

“We thought we were running the campaign,” says another council member, former social welfare secretary Corazon ‘Dinky’ Soliman. “We thought we were in the inner circle of the box.”

But since the wiretapped conversations between Arroyo and Commission on Elections (Comelec) commissioner Virgilio Garcillano became public on June 6, and the subsequent sworn statement issued on August 1 by Garcillano nephew and Rufino subaltern Michaelangelo ‘Louie’ Zuce, Deles and Soliman now know better. Quips Soliman: “Inside the box was a smaller box.”

Apparently working alongside Arroyo’s official campaign team was an informal network that included Garcillano, Comelec field personnel, the police and the military, freelance political operators, and perhaps a banana-chips processor and assorted businesspeople in Mindanao and elsewhere. Said to be on top of it all was First Gentleman Mike Arroyo, ably assisted by now Antipolo Rep. Ronaldo ‘Ronnie Puno, a veteran campaign strategist who was part of the Marcos, Ramos, and Estrada campaigns.

These “backroom operators,” as one ex-Palace insider describes the motley team, made up several groups whose functions ranged from the seemingly mundane, such as quick-counting votes, to more questionable tasks that could have had electoral manipulation among them.

These parallel operations seem to come as little surprise to those who have worked for the president, given what some describe as her “dualistic” nature. A former aide notes that during the canvassing, Arroyo was going around the Carmelite convents, including those in Bacolod and Iloilo, even as she was then placing “improper” calls to Garcillano. “It’s like Jekyll and Hyde,” says the ex-aide.

At the height of the political crisis, even her Cabinet split into two groups: one concerned with the president’s “survival at all cost,” the other pushing for “reforms.”

Soliman, a former Arroyo confidante, says of the president’s personality: “She was exposed and has accepted the practices of traditional politics such as paybacks, payups, operations of dirty tricks. At the same time she also believed in instituting reforms in the economic, social and governance spheres using principles of transparency, accountability, and service to the people. She believed that both worlds can exist in one person and the dissonance and disconnect will not clash in her and in her actions.”

Soliman says that in a crisis, such as now, when the two parts of the president become dissonant, Arroyo is more comfortable with traditional politicians and reverts to the old world of wheeling-dealing and compromises that she knows so well.

THE OFFICIAL COUNCIL
When she was with her executive council during the campaign, it was the no-nonsense technocrat Gloria Arroyo that presided over the meetings. The council shared with the president the top rung of her official campaign organization. From January 2004 to the elections, the council met weekly to hear and analyze Palace pollster Pedro ‘Junie’ Laylo’s report on the province-by-province surveys he was running. It identified strategies for Arroyo in areas where her showing was weak, to turn “swing” votes among the undecided voters to her favor, and to maintain her showing in places where she was likely to win.

Former President Fidel V. Ramos co-chaired the meetings with Arroyo. Aside from Ramos, council members included Deles and Soliman (both of whom represented civil society), campaign manager Gabriel Claudio, and campaign spokesman Michael Defensor. Also part of the council were the leaders of the political parties that made up the administration K-4 (Koalisyon ng Katapatan at Karanasan sa Kinabukasan) coalition: Speaker Jose de Venecia and then Defense Secretary Eduardo Ermita of the Lakas-CMD, Senate President Franklin Drilon and then Batanes Rep. Florencio Abad of the Liberal Party, Sen. Manuel Villar of the Nacionalista Party, and National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales of the Partidong Demokratiko-Sosyalista ng Pilipinas.

Businessman and Philippine National Oil Company president Paul Aquino occasionally sat in the council meetings in his capacity as K-4’s consultant. Then presidential adviser for media and ecclesiastical affairs Conrado ‘Dodie’ Limcaoco, who was in charge of the K-4 senatorial slate, was also in the meetings.

Initially, the council met at the Palace. But when Cabinet meetings became irregular in the runup to the polls, the council would get together at the old Macapagal family residence in Forbes Park, Makati. Drilon also took over in the latter part of the campaign, says Deles.

At the Cabinet, then Executive Secretary and now Foreign Secretary Alberto Romulo was in charge of how members were to campaign for the president. Cabinet members, for example, were told to make a pitch for Arroyo when they distributed Philhealth cards. “We asked if we could campaign and they said we could legally because we were political appointees,” says Soliman.

On election day onward, Cabinet members fanned out to the provinces to gather the provincial certifi cates of canvass and the accompanying statements of votes. This time they took their cues from then residential legal counsel and now Defense Secretary Avelino Cruz, who had set up a quick-count center at the basement of the Olympia Towers in Makati.

Cruz also headed a legal panel assembled for the president’s election bid. Operating out of Olympia Towers as well, the panel included former local governments undersecretary and now Government Corporate Counsel Agnes Devanadera, ex-Comelec Commissioner Manuel Gorospe, and election-law experts Romulo Makalintal and Al Agra.