THE YEAR THAT WAS: Year of P-Noy and the great automation

MANILA, Philippines – The year 2010 was a rare one that saw the election of an unlikely president, Benigno Aquino III, who won a six-year term to high office in the country’s first automated polls.

Neither numerology nor doomsayer could deny Aquino’s pedigree as son of a democracy icon and a martyred senator, and the automated elections were a bright spot in a year rife with unpredictability in the transition between governments.

Such a year – the last two numbers exactly half of the first two numbers – comes only every two hundred years: the last one was in 1809, and the next in 2211.

And so the stories came to fill the pages of this newspaper, from cover to cover and from South China Sea to Sulu Sea:

• Benigno Aquino III is elected in May, winning by a landslide over his closest rivals former President Joseph Estrada and Senate colleague Manuel Villar. It was election carnival season again complete with buntings, and the Liberal Party experienced a revival of sorts, but the new chief executive ran into some legal entanglements with some of his initial executive orders failing to pass muster of the Supreme Court that, incidentally, was dominated by appointees of his predecessor. P-Noy in his first six months as president was everyman, without wang-wang and the people his boss. A sidebar was the successful automated polls where results were known within days, instead of the usual drag of several weeks in past elections.
Workers from the Commission on Elections check voting paraphernalia for the country’s first automated polls.

• The Aug. 23 hostage crisis that claimed the lives of eight Hong Kong tourists in Quirino Grandstand during the feast of the hungry ghosts had ramifications not only in the peace and order situation and the tourist industry, but also foreign relations with China. The dismissed policeman went on a shooting spree while the assault and rescue team subsequently tried to break into the tourist bus amid a downpour, the image a frontrunner for photo of the year –especially that one with a rescuer wielding a sledgehammer as hell broke loose. The Palace-formed incident investigation and review committee found several officials, policemen and even journalists liable for the botched rescue.

• Manny Pacquiao wins his 8th world title in as many weight divisions by pummeling Mexican Antonio Margarito in November in Texas. The congressman from Sarangani proved that his boxing triumphs could not be confined to the sports page, and that politics could find a way inside the ring. Yet, for a while there, the nation held their collective breath when the Pacman’s opponent hit him with a roundhouse to the liver, and the after match analysis had commentators pondering whether the Pambansang Kamao should hang up his gloves unless Mayweather agrees to fight. Also on the sports page, the Azkals signaled a rebirth of Philippine football by crashing into the semifinals of the regional Suzuki Cup.

• “Juan” (international name Megi) was the strongest typhoon that hit the country this year, cutting a path of destruction mostly through the northern provinces of Isabela and Cagayan in October, leaving more than a dozen dead, several more injured, and an estimated P10-billion damage to crops and property. Earlier, storm “Basyang” veered off its predicted course and directly hit Metro Manila, causing the relief of the long-time head of the weather bureau, who at first was transferred to another department but eventually retired.

• Sen. Panfilo Lacson continued to be missing in action since early January, shortly before he was to be served a warrant of arrest for the Dacer-Corbito murders a decade ago. Lacson was said to have fled to Hong Kong, and later to other countries, but the usual reliable sources said the fugitive senator was very likely just hiding out somewhere in the country, still signing disbursement checks for his office and vowing that he’d rather be taken dead than alive.
An ex-policeman held a group of Hong Kong tourists hostage inside this bus at the Quirino Grandstand in Luneta. Eight of the tourists were killed.

• Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV set foot for the first time in the Senate in December since being elected to office in 2007, courtesy of his former Senate colleague President Aquino’s Proclamation 75 granting amnesty to soldiers who participated in uprisings against the previous Arroyo administration in 2003, 2006 and 2007. Trillanes, the former senior grade Navy lieutenant, participated in the Oakwood mutiny in July 2003 and the Peninsula Manila hotel siege in November 2007. Despite being behind bars the detained senator was one of the big spenders in terms of office budget. He did not look forward to running into his old nemesis Arroyo, now a congresswoman and so ranked lower than him.

• Hubert Webb and six other accused walked free after 15 years in prison for the Vizconde massacre of 1991, the Supreme Court acquitting them by a vote of 7-4-4 and denying closure to the 72-year-old patriarch who lost his wife and two daughters. A majority of the justices ruled that the convicts’ guilt had reasonable doubt, pointing out the infirmities in the testimony of star witness Jessica Alfaro, now incognito in a foreign country. The loss of a semen sample taken from the elder Vizconde daughter’s body seemed to have worked in favor of the accused, even as the Justice department ordered a reinvestigation in a race against time before the prescribed period for the case lapses in six months.

• The Morong 43 were ordered released and all charges against them dropped after spending almost a year in detention since their arrest in February on suspicion of being members of the communist New People’s Army. The 43 said they were health and community outreach workers but the arresting team claimed they were in a bomb making seminar at the time of the raid on a farmhouse in Morong, Rizal. The Justice secretary said the procedure of their arrest was flawed, and international rights groups also called for their release, even as five of the group preferred to stay in military custody, fearing they’d be targeted by their comrades. Long stalled peace talks with the Left are to resume in February in Oslo.

Strong winds blow off the roof of a house at the height of typhoon ‘Juan’ in Isabela. JONJON VICENCIO

• Former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo made history by sliding down to lower office of Congress, a first for a former chief executive of the republic. Though Arroyo opted to be media shy during her first weeks as Pampanga congresswoman, there was no denying the clout of an ex-head of state as she quietly stirred a viable opposition to the new administration. She becomes the fifth Arroyo in the House of Representatives but surely the most influential.

• Last year’s top story that was the Maguindanao massacre entered a slow and painful resolution as the so-called trial of the century began with the arraignment of primary suspects the Ampatuans while petitions for bail and other counter-arguments from the defense were heard and most of the 196 accused remained at large. At least a couple of witnesses said the clan had planned the massacre of the convoy of a political opponent, more than half of them media, over dinner at one of the family mansions. At the rate the trial was going, one senator commented that it might take 200 years. –Juaniyo Arcellana (The Philippine Star)