Viewing the ‘dream team’

By Herbert Vego

IF President Rodrigo “Digong” Duterte is really running for vice-president with Senator Christopher “Bong” Go as running mate for President – a “dream team,” according to their bootlickers — does it make sense?

To us yearning for real change, it does not.  But let us momentarily give Digong the benefit of that doubt based on his own recorded statement.

“I am seriously thinking of running for vice president. If I run for vice president and the elected president is not a friend, the situation would arise where I would remain an inutile thing there,” he said during his meeting with PDP-Laban officers the other day.

He added a more specific ground: “The president who will win must be a friend of mine whom I can work with.”

The undisputed fact here is that he would not be comfortable retiring from politics if and when an “unfriendly” successor takes over.

Is that not a clever way of saying that he would want to control the next President?

Bong Go was a mere sidekick or “alalay” behind Duterte during the run-up to the 2016 presidential election. Even until now when he belongs to the legislature which is another branch of government, he tails the President in and outside Malacañang?

If you can’t imagine the two changing places, then what you have in mind is the prospect of a vice-president lording over the President.

In a scenario where Go bags the highest political office, he could simply declare himself “indisposed” and allow the vice-president to run the government.

As he himself publicly stated, Duterte would not want to go down into a “lameduck”.  He just run short of saying that he would dread to be pushed around and be made accountable to the crimes imputed against the present administration.

To the opposition, the duo’s “dream” is a “nightmare” aimed at perpetuating the failure of Duterte to stop illegal drugs, extra-judicial killing and subservience to China.

No wonder the emerging political coalition, the 1Sambayan, is marching its legal luminaries to question the constitutionality of the outgoing President seeking the vice-presidency.

“A mockery of the Constitution” was how Atty. Howard Calleja, 1Sambayan convener, described the emerging pair.

As reported by Manila newspapers yesterday, no less than lawyer Christian Monsod — one of the framers of the 1987 Constitution — said he would file a complaint against President Rodrigo Duterte should he file a certificate of candidacy for vice president, which would allow him to play the role of President once again.

“If you allow the President to run for Vice-President,” Monsod said, “that [presidential] vacancy could be created for a self-serving purpose

Under Article VII, Section 4 is, “The President shall not be eligible for any reelection. No person who has succeeded as President and has served as such for more than four years shall be qualified for election to the same office at any time.”

Go could go the hard way against Vice President Leni Robredo, assuming she consents to run for President.  While the administration has yet to weave believable propaganda against her, Go has become punching bag for former Senator Antonio Trillanes IV, who vowed to sue him for plunder “pagdating ng tamang panahon” over P6.6-billion worth of road widening and concreting projects awarded to companies owned or managed by his father and half-brother.

The citizenry, however, feels that there remains the problem of whether the Commission (Comelec) on Elections could still be trusted to count votes correctly, since it is suspected of having colluded with commercial pollsters SWS and Pulse Asia, and with the Smartmatic (provider of vote-counting machines) in rigging election returns in the past.

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BIG FELLAS BEHIND ‘SYNDICATED ESTAFA’ CASE

ATTY. HECTOR TEODOSIO called our attention to the story that the Iloilo City government had pushed through with the filing of a syndicated estafa case against Panay Electric Co. (PECO) over alleged non-remittance of  P51 million in franchise taxes collected from power consumers collected in 2019 and 2020. He said the case could not prosper without the names of high-ranking individuals behind the corporation.

In fact, however, Atty. Edgardo Gil as city legal officer had furnished City Prosecutor Peter Baliao with the following names of individual respondents: Luis Miguel Cacho as president, Roberto Cacho Fernandez, chairman of the board; Ma. Elena Cacho, vice-president; Jon Mikel Cacho Afzelius, corporate secretary; Marcelo Cacho, assistant corporate secretary; Emmanuel de Jesus Lubis, treasurer; Mariano Cacho Jr., Maria Elvira Cacho Tolentino, Jaime Cacho Fernandez, and Francis Saturnino C. Juan as members of the Board of Directors.

The franchise tax collected could never be owned by PECO, which was just serving as a collection agency.  It could only legally claim the distribution fees it used to collect while still the power distributor in Iloilo City.