Beyond the stutters

Listen  beyond Vice President Jejomar Binay’s  flustered stutters whenever  a  sensitive question is lobbed.

Queries range  from the P15.6 million Redwood type three-bedroom unit of The Woodlands at Tagaytay Highlands,  overpriced beds at the Ospital ng Makati  or whereabouts of top aides, like Gerry Limlingan,  who’ve dodged below the radar screen.

That takes some doing. Front pages, end-to-end Senate  hearing coverage  plus  evening broadcasts or talk shows  are  plastered with  his denials   “Vice President Binay categorically denies the malicious and baseless accusation that he owns a three-bedroom log cabin,” said Joey Salgado, Binay’s spokesman, thus, the vice-president’s  statement of assets and liabilities didn’t jot the cabin down naturally.

Eight out of ten Filipinos, however,  want the vice president to face the Senate Blue Ribbon subcommittee probe,  reports  pollster Social Weather Stations.

In a nationwide survey conducted from September 26 to 29, 79 percent of 1,200 respondents said Binay should personally refute graft charges. Only 11 percent of respondents wavered.  And 10 percent of respondents  thumbed the idea down flat.

SWS noted that the clamor for Binay to attend the Senate probe spreads across all social classes. Four out of five  who were satisfied with Binay  still want him to appear in the  Senate.

That fell on deaf ears. His spokesmen reiterated that the vice president won’t amble into what he sees is a  booby trapped proceeding. The absent, however, is always  wrong.

Witness former Vice Mayor Ernesto Mercado filled the vacuum and  told a Senate blue ribbon committe hearing: Wife of the Vice President, Dr. Elenita Binay, and daughter Senator Nancy Binay   allegedly signed billing statements and receipts  for the Tagaytay Highlands  mansion.  These included membership in the International Golf Club in Tagaytay Highlands.

More documents  have surfaced since. One is  an official receipt dated Sept. 2, 1997 showing   Limlingan bought  a P564,000  manager’s check . It bore  the address 8514 Caong St. San Antonio Village, Makati City —   a known address of the Vice President.

Inquirer, however published a   document,  dated Jan. 31, 1997, addressed to  Binay, then mayor of Makati City, “You have been allocated a Redwood type three-bedroom unit of The Woodlands at Tagaytay Highlands.” It   asserted “the purchase price  P15.6 million.”

Another document  dated May 9, 1997, said that a 10-percent discount amounting to P1.56 million, slashed  the net price of P14.04 million. Terms of payment were  extended to 20 months.  “TO: M1 [code for Binay] Your copy on the price and schedule of payments. Gerry.”

Asked about the property, a spokesperson from the SM group said in a text message: “We have no records” [of the alleged transaction]. The Sys of the SM group became majority owners of Belle Corp. in 2010.

Look beyond the interlocking scams to equally pressing  national concerns.

Four out  of every ten Filipinos today   are homeless, notes John F. Lagman in the study: “Anatomy of the National Housing Problem.” It is a problem that has been  compounding, over the years, from a stew of  population growth, poverty, armed conflict in some places to policy gaps.

In the early part of the post-war period in 1950,  just a little more than five million or about one-fourth (27 percent ) of Filipinos  clustered  in urban areas, mostly Metro Manila.   Four decades later, the country’s urban population surged to well over 29 million. That  was  or almost one-half (48 percent to be precise) of  country’s   total population then.

By 2005, the urban population totalled more than 53 million or over 60 percent of the country’s population. Add to  that  300,000  displaced by conflict as in Mindanao.

And  come  2050, some 117 million or 84 percent of Filipinos will be urban dwellers. Few could afford a Redwood  type three-bedroom unit of The Woodlands at Tagaytay Highlands.

Increased population concentrations in Metro Manila  and other cities  jacks up  rent and   cost of land  among people with stagnating incomes, note Dr.  Anna Marie Karaos and John Nicolas of the John Carrol  Institute of  Church and Social Issues.  Lots can range from P3,000 to P42,000 per square meter. That’s petty cash for  Tagaytay highland owners. But that prices  out the poor.

Such  valid  concerns  are  relegated to the backdrop  as  charges-counter charges  fly. Blue ribbon committee chair, Sen. Teofisto Guingona III, said he was accepting Binay’s challenge, made in a TV interview. The vice president said he’d  appear before the Senate if the invitation would come from the mother committee.

Guingona appeared for the first time in the subcommittee hearing  to say the Vice President would be given the opportunity to explain and would be given respect.

But has  the Vice President started to hedge?   “Binay would consider the invitation,” his spokesman stressed. Among the bookies, the odds favor those who say  Binay will  backpedal pronto.

Something will have to give soon.  Makati’s  “Camelot days” of “happily ever aftering” is over for the Binays and their die hard  followers. The question only is when. “The strategy of  evasion  may

work for sometime,” Sun Star’s Bong Wenceslao notes. “But it  won’t work in the 2016  presidential elections.”
As the late star  Mikey  Rooney said: “Once upon a time, I  lived happily ever after.”

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