The “Bright Boys” defend Estrada.

by Vinia M. Datinguinoo

RODOLFO TAGUINOD Albano III still chuckles over how he and six other young lawmakers belonging to the ruling party came to be named "Bright Boys." The group was on a social call in Malacañang, and as Albano recalls, he was raving about his young colleagues while chatting with the President. "'Mr. President, matatalino talaga ang mga batang ito (these kids are really smart),'" he remembers saying. "And I think the President thought that these kids had a bright future ahead of them. Bright future, you know? So he thought of calling them Bright Boys!"

The Bright Boys is the other boy group in the House of Representatives. Made up of seven first-termers from the administration party LAMP, the Bright Boys consist of Albano—at 41, the group elder—of Isabela; Alan Peter Schramm Cayetano, 29, of Pateros-Taguig; Ace Durano, 29, of Cebu; Francis Joseph Guevarra Escudero, 30, of Sorsogon; Edmundo Ongsiako Reyes, Jr., 37, of Marinduque; Jurdin Jesus Modina Romualdo, 39, of Camiguin; and Gilberto Cojuangco Teodoro, Jr., 35, of Tarlac.

On their own, not one of the seven can be regarded a pushover, if education and wealth are the parameters. They are all highly educated and hold fortunes of their own. One of them is worth P76 million, the 10th richest in the House based on Statements of Assets and Liabilities they filed in 1998.

All are also part of families with stakes in Philippine politics. Albano III succeeded his father in Congress; his sister is a town mayor; and his grandfather was in Congress in the late 1950s. Cayetano's father is in the Senate. Escudero's father is a former agriculture secretary and congressman; an uncle is the current vice governor of Sorsogon. Reyes's mother sat for three terms in Congress and is now governor of Marinduque. Romualdo's father was a congressman and is now governor of Camiguin; his mother was a mayor for three terms. And Teodoro is a member of Tarlac's Cojuangco family.

Born to the right family, educated and wealthy. Some people say these are what brought them to their seats. Are they the same things that keep them from rocking the boat?

"I must admit that as a newcomer I'm more comfortable being a good soldier," says Durano. "The only way for democracy to work is if people will be given balanced information, and that's what we're here for."

They will not accept that they are apologists for the administration, but "we want to make the administration's good intentions happen," says Albano, who is also assistant majority floor leader.

That does not mean they are nothing more than lemmings, they insist. Says Albano: "I'd rather say that we're defenders of the realm," says Albano. "We're not here to sanitize the President, to make him look good. Hindi kasi ma-translate ng Presidente lahat ng nasa puso niya (The President cannot translate everything that is in his heart)…That's what we want to do, to translate his vision to reality."

To be sure, they have been doing their best as "good knights," as Albano describes them, of the administration. They first sallied forth during the peak of the Concord discussions last year. Or to be more exact, the Bright Boys were presented to the media as the "Speaker's Bureau" that would conduct, said the newspaper reports, a widespread campaign to defend the proposed amendments to the Constitution.

That was also when it was said a "showdown" with the opposition's Spice Boys was looming. Such a showdown never did take place, at least not the kind prophesied by the early media reports. The President himself also sort of pulled the reins a bit when the year opened, saying he was listening to the people and "grounding" Concord.

But other occasions soon presented themselves in which the Bright Boys clashed with the Spice Boys. A case was Securities and Exchange Commission chair Perfecto Yasay's testimony in a Senate hearing. Yasay said the President asked him to clear businessman and presidential pal Dante Tan of charges that insider trading at gaming firm BW Resources caused the company's stock prices to shoot up in such an incredible manner in such a short period of time.

Spice Boys congressmen were immediately quoted to have made demands for an explanation from the President. Just as quickly, a congressman with the Bright Boys was quoted to have said Yasay was a liar.

Then there were the budget hearings. Spice Boys congressmen Mike Defensor and Ace Barbers issued statements criticizing the yearly allocation of some P2.5 billion to pay for loans incurred from the construction of the mothballed Bataan nuclear plant. Says Durano: "It's true but we can't do anything about it. But there's something we can do about the huge subsidies given by government to Napocor (National Power Corporation), for instance, which we can get rid of."

Durano describes how they differ from the Spice Boys this way: "If they believe they can help the administration by being fiscalizers, that's good because we need them. But me and the other guys, we believe we can contribute by being constructive."

Albano is more mocking, saying of the other boy group of the House: "It's so easy to criticize, that's the easiest job to do in the world!"

He says it all boils down to this: The President admires them, and they admire the President. "We believe in his sincerity," says Albano. And so they organized themselves to help the President push his political and economic reforms by creating a common legislative agenda.

It's not just the President who benefits from the Bright Boys' efforts. More directly, it's the House Speaker, Manuel Villar, on whom they heap praises. "This is the most democratic Congress ever elected," Durano says of a House that observers say has lacked any semblance of a wise leadership. At the end of the first regular session, this Congress was able to pass the following bills into law: the 1999 Budget, the law on the disclosure of Y2K readiness, amendments to the economic zone authority act, and the Clean Air Act—a grand total of four laws.

But no one among the Bright Boys is complaining. The wheels may be slow in grinding, but for Durano it's "quality legislation" that matters.

Recently, too, the House has been besieged by allegations of financial mismanagement, corruption, even. Certain House employees are being investigated by an ad hoc committee for reportedly earning huge kickbacks from negotiated contracts for the procurement of supplies. Newspaper reports quoted sources in the chamber saying these irregularities have gone unabated for many years.