THE LOPEZ FACTOR
But perhaps more than the reports of unethical journalistic practices, it is De Castro’s Lopez connection that is the public’s unspoken fear. Long a fixture in Philippine politics and business, the Lopezes preside over an interlocking web of business interests that range from power generation to power distribution, telecommunications to water concessions, infrastructure, to broadcasting and publishing. Because of some of their companies’ histories, the Lopezes are perceived by many as having monopolistic tendencies and prone to ruthless business tactics.

	A LITTLE HELP FROM HIS FRIENDS. The vice president, shown here during his days as a radio broadcaster, has strong links with the Lopez family which owns ABS-CBN.

Numerous focus-group discussions conducted by the TV industry show that the viewing public perceives the Lopezes to be using ABS-CBN to further their interests. The question many Filipinos have now is this: Would they likewise use de Castro for their own ends if and when he becomes president?

The group Freedom From Debt Coalition (FDC) says the Lopezes already have done that with the vice president. They say that President Arroyo, through de Castro, allowed the bailout of the Lopezes’ beleaguered Maynilad Water company by allowing the government water agency Metropolitan Waterworks and Sewerage System (MWSS) to shoulder some of the Lopez company’s debts.

Aside from this, the government allowed not only Maynilad Water to charge higher rates, but also let the Lopezes’s Manila Electric Company (Meralco) do the same. But Chavez insists, “Noli will never compromise or sacrifice the national interest to big business.” The vice president, says Chavez, understands these things and is aware of the country’s political and economic history and the role cronyism played in the past.

DE CASTRO’S INNER CIRCLE
Friends like Recto are also trying to correct that impression. Recto says de Castro isn’t the type “to favor anyone…He understands that for business it’s leveling the playing field (that’s important). He understands (the need for) equal protection of the law.

Simple naman ‘yun di ba (It’s simple, isn’t it)?” Well, not really, at least not for de Castro. One of de Castro’s former media colleagues says that Eugenio ‘Gabby’ Lopez III, President of ABS-CBN Channel 2, is the one person closest to de Castro, the person whose voice is the most often in the vice president’s ear, closer even than his friends in the so-called “Wednesday Group.”

The Wednesday Group is de Castro’s political gang, made up of four other senators he struck a friendship with when he began his political career in 2001. They are former human-rights lawyer Joker Arroyo, businessmen Manuel ‘Manny’ Villar and Recto, and ex-student leader and lawyer Francis ‘Kiko’ Pangilinan. The group meets at least once a week to exchange political gossip, give each other advice, and, since June, help de Castro prepare for bigger things ahead.

Recto describes how the group came together: “Joker became somewhat of a Yoda — considering his age and experience, he’s the eldest in the group. Manny and Noli are of the same age. Me and Kiko are of the same age. Joker, Manny, and I all came from the Ninth Congress so we’ve been together since 1992. Noli was a neophyte as well. We had good rapport in the session hall.”

But de Castro’s former media co-worker describe them this way: “Ralph and Kiko are the outer flank, Manny and Joker are the inner circle, and right beside Noli is Gabby Lopez.”

A “PROBLEMATIC” FRIEND
De Castro, however, has friends of his own outside the realm of politics and big business, and one of them actually put him in a bad light.

When de Castro was named head of the Housing and Urban Development Coordinating Council (HUDCC) and given the Housing portfolio after becoming vice president last year, he brought with him his friend Celso de los Angeles.

In September 2004, de los Angeles was appointed chairman of the National Home Mortgage Corporation (NHMFC), the agency that provides community mortgage programs to urban poor groups. De los Angeles didn’t last a year in office. He filed sick leave prior in mid-July, to going on terminal leave.

Nongovernmental organizations in the housing sector say that the few months that de los Angeles headed the agency was a time of “flagrant and brazen graft and corruption” at the NHMFC. By the last few weeks of de los Angeles’s term, these NGOs were asking President Arroyo to kick him out.

“We believe that one impediment in your housing program for the poor is Mr. Celso de los Angeles,” said the Philippine Undertaking for Social Housing and other groups working in the area of Community Mortgage Program (CMP), in a paid print advertisement addressed to President Arroyo on July 1, 2005. “We urge you to remove him from office because he is not morally fit to be in government.”

Their reasons had nothing to do with the fact that de los Angeles got into a very public fight with TV starlet Regine Tolentino over the P8 million worth of jewelry he supposedly gave her. Neither did they have anything to do with the fact that Ilocos Sur Governor Luis ‘Chavit’ Singson, in his testimony during the impeachment trial of former President Joseph Estrada, described de los Angeles as “isang jueteng operator din noong araw (someone who used to be a jueteng operator).”

INSTITUTIONALIZING PATRONAGE
What the housing NGOs had protested was the culture of palakasan and alleged increased incidence of extortion that prevailed at the NHMFC during de los Angeles’s watch. A turning point in the campaign against de los Angeles was the arrest of Nestor Favila, head of the Task Force Community Mortgage Program, on June 24, 2005. Favila was caught in an entrapment operation accepting P85,000. The sting operation had been prompted by several complaints against Favila for allegedly extorting from landowners selling land to the NHMFC.

On top of this, say organizers of the National CMP Congress, NHMFC officials encouraged urban poor residents’ associations to seek the intercession of congressmen, senators, and local officials in following up their community mortgage programs. The result: the institutionalization of patronage politics in the housing sector.

Nobody in de Castro’s circle of close advisers seems to know anything—or wants to talk—about his relationship with de los Angeles. Recto says he never heard of de los Angeles before, while Chavez would only say that de los Angeles was someone whom his staff saw in the 2004 campaign sorties twice or thrice. Yet he is apparently close enough for de Castro to have endorsed as head of a crucial government agency.

But de los Angeles did not seem that indispensable to the vice president. To de Castro’s credit, says Soliman, the vice president immediately took heed when told of reports of controversies de los Angeles found himself in. “Alisin na natin kung ganun (In that case, let’s take him out of that post),” Soliman quotes de Castro saying.

Hopefully, de Castro has no more friends like de los Angeles and Lopez waiting for him to be president. For sure, to most Filipinos, that would hardly be a “plus-plus.”