Stinky

Why is Senator Chiz Escudero spending so much time and money – ours to be specific – going after ghost issues in election automation when, as head of the senate’s oversight committee he should be doing everything to help it along?

Simple: it keeps him in the limelight and – more importantly – keeps him RELEVANT. And, as the Senate starts moving into the elections canvassing mode, he wants to be relevant enough to become a leading voice in the electoral tribunal. After the Comelec does its job, that is the next seat of power. Who knows, if failure of elections as he has been preaching does come true, he may then be in a very “credible” position to take over the country via being in highest slot in the order of succession should there be a power vacuum.

Consider this: election automation is a massive failure, the revert to the manual system is a massive failure because of the extreme delays, no president can be declared, no Chief Justice has been appointed, Chiz moves in as Senate president and takes up post as president to sort things out – he has 90 days to do so. As such, he can make his deals with whoever he thinks should be president or – an that’s a big IF – tell the whole country “I told you so” and convince the masang pipol that only HE can do things right. Pipol power then seats him.

Nyahahahaha! This Tiyanak is sure having fun now.

Chiz needs this. This presidential bid folly rendered him inutile, especially with the way it happened.

Flashback (poof!) to when he thought of running for president. He goes to his godfather and party (Nationlist Peoples’ Coalition or NPC) head Eduardo “Danding” Cojuangco for advice (translation: to financial support). Danding, being the king maker and businessman that he is, was looking into not one but many at that time. Chiz could be the one, but there was also partymate Loren Legarda and nephew Gibo Teodoro, Danding thought.

So Danding humored Chiz, just as he humored the others, to keep them happy as he watched how they progressed. Danding told Chiz to go to Ramong Ang, his most trusted guy who holds the key to the empire, especially San Miguel Corporation. Ramon gave him a little cash, some use of the helicopter and private jet etc etc so that the young man could go around and do his thing.

In doing so Chiz gained confidence. And when the time came to go all out into the effort – shortly before declaring his candidacy and filing it in the Comelec – Chiz went back to Danding to get the godfather’s final blessing (meaning: the full political and financial commitment).

The norm for the presidential campaign budget is about P5 billion. And Chiz was going to Danding to show that this is how far he has gone, now let’s get serious.

SIDEBAR: Noli de Castro told his backers to hand over the P5 billion from the start and not in tranches, or he’s not running. The idea is so that everybody stays committed to the cause until the end, avoiding the old trick of giving installments and stopping payments unceremoniously if the candidate fails to make the grade in the course of the campaign. In the candidate’s eyes he will be left holding the bag and loses any chance of last minute rally. In the backers’ eyes he’d like to bet on a winner and may just end up financing the candidate’s retirement fund should he decide to quit the race.

Back to Chiz: so he went to Danding for the P5B – up front.

Danding told Chiz: Go to Ramon Ang.

Chiz went to Ramon in SMC, he waited, and when Ramon finally arrived Chiz was handed P10 million.

Chiz was in a daze, P10 million was a far cry from P5 billion. He ran back to Danding to complain about what Ramon did.

Up to this point, you tell me: do you run to Don Vito Corleone to complain about his consigliere Tom Hagen? ‘Nuff said.

Back to Danding, he made a call to Ramon. Then he turned to Chiz and told him to go back to Ramon.

Chiz returned to Ramon who then turned to him, smiled and said: “O, anong problema, bata?” (So, what’s the problem, kid?)

Yes, the kid got the message. Months of barnstorming and pre-election campaigning down the drain. He has become irrelevant. So now he has to raise a stink to ensure his comeback.

The latest stink Chiz has raised on election automation is the use of what he calls “unknown” freight forwarders and logistics companies. He already knows the answer to that, but he pretends to be shocked at the so-called discovery and now finds reason to call another long-winded committee investigation on it. But Chiz knows that Aboitiz, perhaps the largest logistics company in the country, backed out of the deal with Comelec and Smartmatic-TIM because they were afraid of it. Another big name, LBC, backed out also because they were afraid of the responsibility. So now Smaretmatic-TIM is using three forwarders who are smaller but definitely not fly-by night companies. In fact, one of them has been the forwarder of the Philippine Daily Inquirer for many many many years.

As the gourmets say, stinky cheese is delicious… no, great… no, heavenly!

But stinky Chiz is just what it is… stinky.

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