‘Talk-alese’
Like President Rodrigo Duterte, I failed to attend the 30th founding anniversary of The Philippine
STAR last week. Our anniversary cocktail party was held at the Grand Ballroom of Shangri-La at The Fort in Taguig City last July 28.
I was not around because we joined the official delegation for the signing of the sister province partnership agreement between Palawan and Ningxia Hui autonomous province of China. It was a private sector-led initiative by former Philippine special envoy to China, ambassador Carlos Chan and Palawan Gov. Jose Alvarez.
Incidentally, President Duterte noted with satisfaction that people-to-people meeting continues between the Philippines and China like the sister partnership entered into by Palawan and Ningxia. The President welcomed the initiatives of ambassador Chan and Gov. Alvarez as other ways of “back-channeling” to help restore strained bilateral relations with China.
Much earlier, President Duterte declared he would not like to attend events outside Malacañang Palace, in particular around Metro Manila. The President apologized for not accepting invitations that will require him to leave Malacañang because he does not like to add to the traffic gridlock in the metropolis.
So instead, President Duterte invited Miguel Belmonte, president and chief executive officer of The STAR, to come along with several of us editors to visit him at Malacañang. Despite his busy schedule, President Duterte squeezed in his appointment with us at the Palace last Wednesday at 2:30 p.m.
Arriving an hour early for our courtesy call, Palace aides informed us that the President’s schedule that day was very tight. The Palace aides asked us to be mindful of the 30 minutes allotted for our courtesy call because President Duterte has other schedules lined up after us.
Our group of 10 people was first herded to the waiting room. A glass of juice and a plate of spaghetti in cream sauce, topped with two pieces of prawn were served to us.
Executive Secretary Salvador Medialdea and National Security Adviser Hermogenes Esperon Jr. came in to join us in small talks and banter. Saying he was the Cabinet-in-attendance that day, Esperon helped us take selfies at the Palace, which used to be my beat as a reporter.
Time passed without me getting bored because I was reminiscing with Palace old guards like Janet Mariano from the media relations office and some Presidential Security Group (PSG) troopers who were assigned at the Palace when I was still pounding the beat.
I covered four past presidents – the late President Corazon Aquino, Fidel V. Ramos (FVR), Joseph Estrada and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo – until 2005, when I got promoted to news editor. This was why I got the 20 years in the loyalty service award from The STAR during our anniversary.
After his meeting with Marion Derckx who is the ambassador of The Netherlands, President Duterte finally showed up at 4 p.m. for The STAR courtesy visit. He was apologetic for keeping us waiting. But he’s the President. The President is never late. It’s just that some visitors came too early. That’s the presidential protocol I have learned through the years of my Palace coverage.
It was, however, worth the wait. It was actually my second time to meet up close and personal with the newly installed President. The first time was during The STAR roundtable interview as one of the candidates in the May 9 presidential elections.
Five days before the elections, we finally buttonholed the erstwhile Davao City mayor to attend our presidential roundtable. It was during the time when he was consistently topping both the Pulse Asia and Social Weather Station pre-election surveys. He flew all the way from Davao City to our editorial office in Port Area, Manila. He was the last presidential candidate to attend The STAR roundtable and got the largest crowd waiting for him, many of them from the Muslim community around our office in Port Area.
He saw for himself the traffic gridlock that made him late for two hours to get to The STAR office in Port Area from the domestic airport in Pasay City. His executive assistant, now Presidential Management Staff Secretary Christopher “Bong” Go updated me by phone on their whereabouts until they reached Bonifacio Drive where they were stuck anew in traffic because of the container trucks on the road. He took the occasion to hold his press conference at
The STAR office before conducting our exclusive roundtable interview with him. After almost two hours of his press conference, it seemed the 71-year-old Duterte had a rewind battery and went through our roundtable grilling for another three hours.
During our roundtable interview, I teased the mayor that he has cussed 37 times in the course of his almost one hour of peroration against Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV, who was then running for vice president and accused him of alleged unexplained multi-million peso and dollar bank deposits. Trillanes lost his VP bid and is now back at the Senate for his second and last term ending in 2019.
The mayor promised he would try his best to be “presidential” and in “best behavior” if ever he wins the election.
Three months after that STAR roundtable, President Duterte’s greeting upon seeing me again while shaking my hands was: “Ma’m, I am a good boy.”
We talked a lot about substantive matters that found their way to the front page and other news pages of The STAR yesterday and today. But what struck me most was a new word coined by President Duterte when asked about his guidance to FVR as his “special envoy” to China.
The President clarified FVR’s trip to Beijing is not yet part of the official negotiations on the South China Sea row. In fact, he said, the former president will not be holding formal talks with Chinese officials but with his “friends” in China. The President quoted FVR as telling him: “I’ll just go fishing. I told him, that’s good. Go ahead.’”
But for now, President Duterte quipped, FVR’s mission to Beijing would be all “talk-alese” to keep PhilippineChina relations on track while we stand by the July 12 The Hague decision that nullified the nine-dash-line claim around the South China Sea.
The mayor promised he would try his best to be “presidential” and in “best behavior” if ever he wins the election.