Yuchengco on Erap disaster
By Victor Agustin
September 16, 2009
COUNT on Ambassador Alfonso Yuchengco to oppose the threatened return of Joseph Estrada to Malacaņang.
In his limited-edition biography, To Leave A Good Name, the taipan did not hide his contempt for the former actor and described Estrada’s abbreviated presidency a “disaster.”The owner of RCBC bank and the Malayan Group of insurance companies also hinted that Yuchengco money helped finance the opposition’s activities against Estrada in the same manner that his wealth helped financed the opposition’s activities during the Marcos years.
“I participated in People Power 2,” the billionaire told biographer Nick Joaquin in 2003. “That’s how we got rid of him.”Asked by the incredulous Joaquin how, Yuchengco quickly added, “Some businessmen were secretly financing them [the protesters] because they were afraid to come out in the open.”
But Joaquin, true to his working habits, was drinking during that question-and-answer session that he failed to properly follow up, prompting an exasperated Yuchengco to chide the writer to “stop drinking,” and supply him with a follow-on answer.“I think Estrada’s rule was about the worst for the Philippines, perhaps even worse than Marcos,” Yuchengco said. “At least Marcos was very intelligent, he was a lawyer. Although he did many bad things, they were all within legal limits.”
“But Estrada, he didn’t care, especially, all those decrees that he signed, at 2 o’clock in the morning when he was dead drunk.”
Yuchengco, now 86, was said to be still be in New York when his counsel from the Carpio Villaraza Cruz released yesterday a short statement confirming the allegation made by Senator Panfilo Lacson about Estrada having bullied the taipan into selling his minority PLDT stake to the First Pacific Group.
The two-sentence statement from Yuchengco was also being charitable to Lacson in that the Yuchengco camp kept the fact to themselves that the taipan himself had already disclosed even more intimate details about the 1998 PLDT transaction in his biographical book, published in 2005, than what Lacson had adverted to in his Senate speech the other day.