The Manila Saga

This trip to Manila was triggered by the prospect of meeting with a close buddy whom I have not met or in communication for the last 30 years. After trying

to establish contact which began in 2005 and finally knowing that Ben is some how connected to The Manila Yacht Club, I thought that at least I can pay the club a visit and take it from there. But divine intervention changed all that. Appended below is the sequent of events/communication that prelude the trip to Manila.
It began with this e mail.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- On Tue, Nov 11, 2008 at 9:40 AM, ben adam wrote:
Dear Ms Gladie A. Patawaran,
I am Lieutenant Colonel Abdul Rahman Adam (Retired) from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
I am taking the liberty to communicate with you in a long shot effort to trace my friend Vice Admiral Ruben S. Lista (Retired). We were classmate at SITS, Fort Bonifacio, Manila way back in 1979 where Ben was then a Lieutenant Commander. I have been trying to trace him since 2005.
When going through the Manila Yacht Club website I came across the name Ruben S. Lista (Director and Chairman-House Committee). I wonder if the gentleman is the same Ruben S. Lista that I know whose wife is the lovely Jenet.
So I am seeking your indulgence to extend this message to him. If he is my "Ben Lista" I am looking forward to renewing our link and my e-mail address is:
ar_benadam@yahoo.com
Indeed I am truly indebted by your kind assistance Ms Gladie A. Patawaran
Yours sincerely,
abdulrahmanadam
P.S.
My apology for gate-crashing through this contact e-mail not for the purpose it was made available for.
On Mon, 11/10/08, race myc wrote:
From: race myc
Subject: Re: Need Assistance to Trace a Friend
To: ar_benadam@yahoo.com
Date: Monday, November 10, 2008, 9:49 PM
Hi Sir, I will pass your email to the Committee Office. Apparently Gladie Patawaran is not working anymore at the club. its the same person your looking for. Will priority your email request. Thank you.
Best regards,
Pen Floren - AvilaRace
OfficeTel.526-7868Fax no. 523-7183
On Mon, 11/10/08, ben adam wrote:
From: ben adam
Subject: Re: Need Assistance to Trace a Friend
To: "race myc"
Date: Monday, November 10, 2008, 10:33 PM
Dear Pen Floren – Avila
Thank you! You are indeed a heaven-sent good Samaritan. Wau!! your reply is a cause for double pleasure for me because I was quite optimistic striking it right and my next trip to Manila would be more meaningful. Getting your response is a prayer answered.
Best regards,
ara
On Mon, 2/2/09, ben adam wrote:
From: ben adam
Subject: Fw: Re: Need Assistance to Trace a Friend
To: mycsailors@gmail.com
Date: Monday, February 2, 2009, 12:50 AM
Dear Pen Floren – Avila
I hope this mail finds you in good spirit. I am resending this since there is no come back after you have passed my message to the Committee Office. I am sincerely seeking assistance from your good self to pass this to Vice Adm (R) Ruben S. Lista. Alternatively, if you can furnish me with his e-mail address or telephone no, I can then write/contact him directly. I am planning a trip to Manila in the second week of April
Thank you for your assistance.
Best regards,
ara
On 03 11, 09, at 2:12 PM, ben adam wrote:
Dear Vice Admiral Ruben S Lista,
First order on line is for me to execute the time honoured military honorifics by standing at attention and salute you. Well Ben it is not everyday that one can claimed he's got a three star Admiral as a good buddy. Actually I do not know where to begin. I am so damn excited at finally seeing your sms. So I decided to forward to you the recent effort to trace you and share the high hope that I had and then followed by disappointment of sort when the lady that I gloated as a "heaven-sent good Samaritan" cannot deliver. May be its not that easy for her to get in touch with a three star Admiral I suppose. But then divine intervention took its course and another "heaven-sent good Samaritan" came a calling in the form of Lt Col Perfecto M Rimando PA. I met him and his Malaysian course mate at our Armed Forces Defence College, both of whom are under my supervision to complete their thesis as part of the requirement to graduate with a master degree to be awarded by my university. In less than 48 hours he accomplished what a lot of the people I consulted over the last 3 years cannot deliver. See my humble CV attached for an update on what I've been up to for the past 30 years. The good fortune really came at the right moment because Maznah and I shall be in Manila next month from 8 April-11 April. The Airasia flight AK 32 ETA Clark at 1115 hrs. We are booked through Airasia at Best Western Hotel La Corona. I thought as a last ditch effort I would go on the Philippines TV and appealed "for the admiral to come out of hiding" (lol). I hope to see you then Ben. I am going to post this one now and get to you later with more updates. Cheers.
With best wishes to you and Jan.
Ray
On Wed, 3/11/09, Reuben a Lists wrote:
From: Reuben a Lists
Subject: Re: Need Assistance to Trace a Friend
To: "ben adam"
Date: Wednesday, March 11, 2009, 2:04 AM
That's great! Clark is only an hour and a half from Manila. Give me your itinerary so we will know how and what to do. Do you play golf? What do you want to do? How about Maznah? Jennette is currently in Las Vegas but she will be back by then. Keep in touch. My cell phone is +639175478277.
Regards,
Ben
Sent from my iPhone
On 03 11, 09, at 7:11 PM, ben adam wrote:
Its great too to hear from you. Am making this quick response from my room at the National university. The system at my place of residence in KL was down for the past 3 days and still is. So I came to the univ after getting your first sms so as to get the Internet service. About the trip, we do not have any definite plan of our stay in Manila. I am totally out of touch with the happenings in Metro Manila Ben. We can probably work on it as we go along to include perhaps a foursome dinner afloat somewhere in Manila Bay I suppose!!!. Well I have given up golf for almost a dozen years since my back problem became a bother just after completing the 3rd hole. So I decided to give it up since I can't enjoy the game any more. Anyway I wasn't a golf addict to begin with. Whatever it is, meeting Jan and you is good enough and more like the icing on the cake.
With best wishes,
Ray
On Wed, 3/11/09, Reuben a Lists wrote:
From: Reuben a Lists
Subject: Re: Need Assistance to Trace a Friend
To: "Rahman Rey"
Date: Wednesday, March 11, 2009, 5:42 AM
Great! I have been looking for you for a long time. I met several of your Naval and military Attaches and gave them my contact numbers. They never tried hard enough probably. Anyway, it is nice to hear from you again. Hope your visit will be memorable particularly so that you are quite far from Manila. Clark is the former US Air force base in the province of Pampanga, north of Manila. It might be hard to commute due to traffics. Do you have anything to do at Clark? Why will you billet there? There is nothing to do there. Check with your travel agent and see the map too. Keep in touch. Regards,
Ben
Sent from my iPhone
Re: Need Assistance to Trace a Friend
Wednesday, March 11, 2009 10:48 PM
From: "ben adam"
To: "Reuben a Lists" rlista@yahoo.com
Hai Ben,
You must be at the golf course now. Am back in the office again. The system at home is still down. Well we both probably did not get the right candidate to help trace one another. I am surprised that the naval or defence attaché you asked do not know me because until 2005 I conducted/lectured the defence attaché course. They just do not think its very important. I had Anne Juloundo (not sure of the spelling) who was my student at IDFR and 2nd Sec at the Philippines embassy in KL to help out. But no result. Ok everything of that episode is moot now since we are back in communication. Ben I am billeting Best Western Hotel La Corona : 1166 MH del Pillar Corner, Arquiza,St. Ermita, Manila,Philippines. Its not at Clark. I have vague memories about Clark which I believed is closed to Angles City. So the hotel where we will be staying is smack in the heart of Manila I suppose. Have a nice day at the golf course.
Cheers
On Wed, 4/1/09, Reuben a Lists wrote:
From: Reuben a Lists

Subject: Re: A new Slate

To: "Rahman Rey" ar_benadam@yahoo.com

Dear Rey,
I forgot that it will be our Lent season when you are coming over. Can you move it after the 12th because we will be out of the country too. We will be in Guam for vacation because it's a long vacation starting this Saturday.
I can ask one of my drivers to help you out if you can not move your visit.
Regards.
BenSent from my iPhone
On 04 1, 09, at 4:22 PM, ben adam wrote:
A tiny setback Ben. I'll try for the move. But knowing how these people treat such request I am doubtful that we can get the date changed. What I have in mind planned after the Manila RV is to get you and Jen to come to KL. With the Manila meeting out its all the more incumbent that we do it in KL. Who knows that I can arrange a surprise golf for you too. Cheers
Rey
From: "Reuben a Lists" rlista@yahoo.com
To: "Rahman Rey" ar_benadam@yahoo.com
REY,If you can not move it, I will instruct my driver to bring you around. There's no fun in Manila during Lent. Take care. Ben
Sent from my iPhone
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
What appeared above is the climax to the search. But alas the meeting do not take place because Ben had already planned to be in Guam during the Lent holidays. Thus the Manila Saga.We arrived by Air Asia at 1145 hrs and took the shuttle bus to Pasay. Paid 220 pesos for the taxi ride to Ermita where our hotel is. We were thankful that the reception upgraded our room and we were able to enjoy the better facilities. Try to sort out our itinerary since we were told that Manila is a ghost town during Lent holiday. We bought a local sim card at 7 Eleven and contacted Col Alex ex-student of MAF Defence College. Alex promise to meet us at 1000 hrs Thursday. Also manage to at last contact our DA on Thursday morning. BG Khlair ( I didn't know that he's a 1 star general until we were at his house that afternoon). Both Alex and Khlair make our otherwise boring sojourn in Manila into a memorable one. So also the Ambassador and his lovely and caring wife.
Both the DA's staff collected us early Saturday morning and drove to Clark Airport for our trip home. Arrived KL LCCT at about 1520 hrs. Rin drove us home to Ampang

The Unmaking of History

For me that fateful day is marked by the swearing in of Najib as the new PM. There is bad karma that I can feel about his ascendancy to the country highest office which is hard to explain. Hovering above Najib's head are a lot of unanswered or related events that defied political and legal logic. I am only hoping for divine intervention to show him the way out. Right now the nation is being fed with a lot of Najib's theatrics. A very sleek manoeuvre of playing to he gallery - with the bulls of 1Malaysia as his slogan. So be it!!!! Read this accompnying article:

MALAYSIA: UMNO and the next Prime Minister
by C. S. Kuppuswamy
“UMNO is not Malaysia and by the same token Malaysia is not UMNO. It is this inability to distinguish between the party and the government that has cost the UMNO its attractiveness as a party of the people and that would work against UMNO in the next general elections”. - Tunku Abdul Aziz, The Malaysian Insider.
United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), held its 59th annual general assembly at Kuala Lumpur from 24 to 28 March 2009. This is the dominant party of the ruling coalition known as the Barisan Nasional (BN).
This is the biggest political party of the country with over 3 million members amongst the country’s population of around 25 million. Over 2500 delegates attended this party congress to elect the president, the deputy president, three vice presidents, the chairman, the youth chief, the wanita (women) chief, the puteri (youth- women) chief and 25 supreme council members. In all there were 267 candidates who had ventured to get into the party’s main body.
The general assembly was scheduled to be held in December 2008, but was postponed consequent to Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi’s decision to hand over the reins to his deputy Najib Razak and to cater for the transition process.
This is the first general assembly of the party after the poor showing in the last general elections held in March 2008. UMNO won only 79 of the 222 parliamentary seats as against 109 out of 219 in 2004. The ruling coalition won a mere 51.2 % of the popular vote as against 64% in 2004. For the first time since independence in 1957, the ruling coalition lost its two-thirds majority and lost control of four more of the 13 states to the opposition besides Kelantan which was already under the opposition rule.
Both the outgoing party president and the new one had harped on the fact that the party had been disowned by a major chunk of the population in the last election and that there is an urgent need for a strategy to regain the confidence of the public. Discussions on other topics such as, improvement of economy, the Malay superiority, the emboldened opposition, the racial disharmony and the impending by elections are also believed to have taken place.
Dato Seri Najib Razak was elected unopposed as the President. The challenge to him by the veteran Tengku Razaleigh fizzled out as he could not obtain the required nominations for contesting. Tan Sri Muhyiddin Yasin was elected as the Deputy President in a straight contest with the party information chief Muhammad Taib. By convention the president and the deputy become the Prime Minister and the Deputy Prime Minister.
Najib Razak is the son of the second prime minister of the country, Tun Abdul Razak. The British educated Razak, aged 55, is in politics for three decades and has held various portfolios before reaching this top slot. It is a strange coincidence that he is also becoming a prime minister like his father at a time when UMNO has had a major set back. His father took over in 1970 after the infamous racial riots of May13, 1969 and its after effects.
Due to the unquestioned supremacy for the last 50 years, UMNO had become over confident and arrogant in bulldozing its policies with scant regard to other coalition partners or the minorities of the nation. (For a detailed description of the current political state of affairs please see this author’s paper “Malaysian politics – getting murkier” Paper No. 3066 dated 23/02/2009 (http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers31/paper3066.html)
The party is plagued with infighting and corruption. Even in this assembly there were reports of two factions one aligned to Badawi and the other with Najib Razak. Najib was presumably working behind the scene to get more of his men elected. There was commotion and exhibition of disgruntlement by the Najib faction when Badawi’s son-in-law was declared elected as the youth chief.
“The underlying problem – for UMNO and Malaysia – is the favored euphemism, ‘money politics’, meaning backhanders paid for public-sector contracts or, where UMNO is concerned, seats at the high table. On March 17, the party’s disciplinary board said it had found 15 members guilty of money politics. They included Ali Rustam, chief minister of Malacca State, who was campaigning to become deputy party leader”. Though he was disqualified he has not stepped down as Chief Minister.
The prime minister elect Najib Razak is a known protégé of Dr. Mahathir. A few days before the assembly, the government banned two opposition party news papers, refused credentials for two popular on-line media for covering the General Assembly proceedings and the police dispersed a rally of the opposition leader Anwar Ibrahim on the ground that a permit for holding the meeting had not been obtained. All these actions are being considered as the handiwork of Najib.
Najib is also being credited (discredited) for toppling the opposition government in the state of Perak by enticing three state legislators to defect and support UMNO. The state legislature is in a state of suspended animation with the matter having been referred to court. Hence there is a general feeling that Malaysia is returning to the Mahathir era.
Dr. Mahathir, who had quit the party last year in protest over Abdullah’s leadership, has decided to rejoin the party. He remarked in an interview with AFP, that he thinks “Najib will be more firm - not necessarily oppressive but firm in his decision and acts”. He added that people are calling it “Mahathirism” but justified the controversial acts during his term in power were aimed at preserving peace in a country with a racial mix of Muslim Malays with ethnic Chinese and Indians.
Under what was often referred to as a controlled democracy, Mahathir had reigned for over two decades but can Najib afford it and survive for long as prime minister. This is the question.
Najib is expected to take over as prime minister from Abdullah Ahmad Badawi during the first week of April though Abdullah declined to give a firm date for the handing over.. He has a long list of things to be done and perhaps more to be undone to retrieve the image of UMNO. Much is going to depend on his cabinet which is bound to have some new faces. His team has to be more professional especially on the economic front
The first test is going to be the impending three by elections on April 7, 2009. Though he has nominated his deputy responsible for the campaigning, the results will reflect on people’s acceptance of Najib’s leadership.
Though he has repeatedly denied any involvement in the murder of a Mongolian model in Malaysia in 2006, the case is repeatedly hogging the limelight of the local media with more inputs from foreign media on the alleged involvement of his personal staff and thereby implicating him. Hence he has to get his name cleared in the eyes of the public.
The Ketuanan Melayu (Malay superiority) and the interlinked affirmative action policy is now being debated openly. Malays feel; it is under threat while the others feel it is being used against their interests. To find a solution acceptable to all is no easy task.
As the finance minister, he had announced an economic stimulus package. Under the looming recession much more requires to be done for lifting the Malaysian economy.
A strong opposition with his nemesis Anwar Ibrahim as leader, is more vocal, aggressive and has the backing of a sizeable segment of the country’s population. Repressive action alone may not be able to silence or overcome the opposition.
Najib Razak, the country’s sixth prime minister is going to be on a hot seat and his performance in the first year or so is going to be crucial for the party and the ruling coalition to continue in power and help regain the political stability in the nation as before.
http://www.southasiaanalysis.org/papers32/paper3124.html