Resurgence 2.5

Former EDSA hero turned coup plotter turned Senator Gringo Honasan and APO Hiking Society's and fellow EDSA veteran Jim Paredes exchanged some sweet sarcasm on Twitter -- you can't see this everyday, so people, enjoy. Here's my contribution to the EDSA 25th anniversary celebration today. ;)

In connection with the 25th year celebration of EDSA People Power 1, Senator Bongbong Marcos issued a very bold statement yesterday: the Philippines would have been like Singapore economically should EDSA 1 did not happen. He further said that his father has great plans for the Philippines back then.

- Back then, everything is chaotic. 

- Economy is at all time low.

- Corruption is a way of life.

- The martial law was a failure. Human rights violations are not found in any law books.

- Plus, every body knows that his dad was very sick and dying.

So, I can't understand what's Sen. Marcos' basis for saying this. EDSA 1 might have failed us in a lot of ways, but can we agree that we're better off without a dictator?

I had a nice Twitter exchange with a good online friend and fellow technopreneur John Arce. John is very young, but at his age, he already has accomplished so much. He's a leader of a huge online organization of web enthusiasts and leads his own company. I see great future with this young man. I used to tell my wife that at John's age, I was busy running after her. :D

“Wala na ito, pare. There is a program to eat me.”

 MANILA, Philippines - The late Angelo Reyes would utter these words again and again to his longtime friend and Academy upperclassman, retired Navy Commodore Rex Robles, in the days following the first Senate testimony of Reyes’s former budget officer, retired Lt. Col. George Rabusa.

Reyes felt the die was cast, and that the ongoing inquiry would not just drag the military but his entire family down. “He was depressed,” Robles told Newsbreak.

The Senate hearing yesterday particularly singled out Reyes’s wife, Teresita, who was a close friend of another military wife, Erlinda Ligot. They were known ballroom dancing and traveling partners.

As someone who has his own intelligence network, Reyes knew that in due time, the investigation will bring out even “personal details” about his family, according to Robles.

After lunch also yesterday, Robles said Reyes got a call from former President Arroyo, apparently asking him about what he was planning to do in the wake of the investigation.

In particular, Robles said Mrs. Arroyo asked Reyes about a supposed letter he had sent to Sen. Antonio Trillanes last year, challenging the senator to name names and identify already the “man” behind former military comptroller Carlos Garcia. That letter was hand-delivered to Trillanes by a Trillanes classmate at the Philippine Military Academy, according to Robles.

It’s Robles’s theory that there is another “powerful Arroyo man” behind Garcia. But Trillanes has already said repeatedly it was Reyes.

Following Rabusa’s first appearance at the Senate, Reyes was “just gloomy” and refused to leave his home, according to Robles.

“Hawak nila ang lahat. Wala na ito (They control everything. I have reached a dead-end),” Reyes would constantly tell Robles.

Reyes and Robles go a long way. Robles, who graduated in 1965 at the Philippine Military Academy, was Reyes’s “yearling,” a PMA lingo for an upper class cadet assigned to take care of a cadet one batch younger.

Robles said he tried to put things in perspective for the retired chief of staff, reminding him of the book that Reyes himself had given to him titled “Gamesmanship.”

One option they discussed was for Reyes to call for an executive session, a closed-door hearing with the senators and congresspersons. But even that did not seem palatable to Reyes.

Robles said he told Reyes it would help if he considered this episode as a “game” and that “he should play along with it.”

“But I saw darkness, that he felt it was a dead-end for him,” Robles said. “He would always say, wala na ito, tapos na ito.” – Glenda M. Gloria