Very few were surprised when, after six years of trial, the Sandiganbayan found ousted President Joseph Ejercito Estrada guilty of plunder and sentenced him to reclusion perpetua on September 12, 2007. Then, as now, many felt the case was primarily, if not purely, political; that there was no way to acquit Estrada without effectively finding President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo guilty of a worse crime.
Estrada and Arroyo were first elected president and vice president respectively, for a term of six years, in 1998. In 2000, Estrada was impeached by the House of Representatives and brought to the Senate for trial. But the trial ended in the streets when the prosecutors walked out, and anti-Estrada forces called for his ouster. The Armed Forces chief of staff then led a mutiny and the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court swore in Mrs. Arroyo as president, without a vacancy in Malacanang. That was January 20, 2001.
Intense pressure was promptly made to bear on Estrada to resign formally and leave the country, or at least to leave the country even without writing a letter of resignation. When he refused, he was charged with plunder, arrested and jailed on April 25, 2001. He has been in detention since.
The plunder law (Republic Act 7080) was enacted in 1991. It was meant to punish, according to its authors, “not simple cases of malversation of public funds, bribery, extortion, theft and graft, but [the] plunder of an entire nation, resulting in material damage to the national economy.” Thus, “any public officer who, by himself or in connivance with members of his family, relatives by affinity or consanguinity, business associates, subordinates, or other persons, amasses, accumulates, or acquires ill-gotten wealth through a combination or series of over or criminal acts…in the aggregate amount of P50 million shall be guilty of the crime of plunder and shall be punished by reclusion perpetua to death.” The death penalty has since been stricken off our laws.
To establish the crime of plunder, it is necessary to prove beyond reasonable doubt a pattern of overt or criminal acts indicative of a conspiracy or an overall unlawful scheme.
Estrada was accused of having amassed P4,097,804,173.17 by:
(a) Receiving or collecting P545 million from illegal gambling in
connivance with Charlie ‘Atong’Ang, Jose ‘Jinggoy’ Estrada, Yolanda T. Ricaforte, Edward Serapio, and John Does and Jane Does in consideration of “toleration or protection of illegal gambling”;
(b) Diverting P130 million from the tobacco excise tax share of the
Province of Ilocos Sur in connivance with Atong Ang, Alma Alfaro, Eleuterio Tan, Delia Rajas and other John Does and Jane Does;
(c) Ordering and compelling the Government Service Insurance System
(GSIS) to purchase 351,878,000 shares of stock, and the Social Security System (SSS) 329,855,000 shares of stock of the Belle Corporation for a total of P1,847,578.50, and collecting P189,700,000 as commission from Belle;
(d) Amassing P3,233,104,173.17 from commissions, gifts, shares,
percentages, kickbacks, and depositing the same in the account of Jose Velarde at Equitable-PCIBank.
The court acquitted Estrada on (b) and (d), but found him guilty on (a)
and (c). Estrada, through counsel, moved for reconsideration. On Oct. 19, the Sandigan heard oral arguments on the motion.
It was an education in the law, particularly on plunder. Arguing for the defense, lawyers Estelito Mendoza and Rene Saguisag pointed out why Estrada could not be held for plunder.
The crime of plunder, Mendoza pointed out, quoting the law and the Senate debates during its enactment, requires an overall scheme and a conspiracy to commit a combination or series of inter-connected acts which, when executed, results not only in the unlawful accumulation of P50 million or more, but also in material damage to the economy of the nation. The prosecution failed to show this, Mendoza argued; there is, therefore, no basis for the court’s conclusion.
In the case of the jueteng money, the prosecution built its case solely on the word of former Ilocos Sur Governor Luis “Chavit” Singson. He testified that he collected money from the jueteng operators over a period of time, recorded his collections in listahans, which he described as “ledgers,” turned over the money to Estrada in exchange for his “toleration or protection” of jueteng.
Mendoza pointed out that the only crime established by Singson’s testimony was his own. For Estrada to be held liable for plunder, he should have conspired with Singson and others. But the prosecution failed to allege a conspiracy, and Singson, who has confessed to his crime, is not named as a co-conspirator. Absent such conspiracy, Singson’s crime, which the state had chosen to condone in exchange for his uncorroborated testimony, cannot be attributed to Estrada or others.
The acquittal of Erap’s son, Senator Jinggoy Estrada, and his lawyer Edward Serapio, corporate secretary of the Erap Muslim Youth Foundation, which received and retains custody of P200 million from Singson, only makes the point clear. There can be no finding of plunder.
Another co-accused Atong Ang entered into a plea bargaining agreement with the state and was convicted of the crime of corrupting public officers. This effectively erased the original charges against him, and removes him as a possible co-conspirator.
Likewise, in the SSS/GSIS purchase of the Belle shares, purchase was done by SSS Administrator Carlos Arellano and by GSIS head Ding Pascual. Again, the prosecution failed to allege a conspiracy, and neither Arellano nor Pascual was named as co-conspirator. Estrada cannot be held liable for the acts of Arellano and Pascual.
Assuming the acts alleged in (a) and (c) have been committed, they do not constitute “a combination or series” flowing from a conspiracy or an overall scheme and whose execution materially damaged the economy of the nation. The prosecution failed to allege it and there is no evidence on record to show it.
Special Prosecutor Dennis Villa-Ignacio, mild-mannered and low key, read a prepared rebuttal. But it was mute on the specific issues raised by the defense. Mendoza took this to mean the prosecution was conceding the points of the defense. But even if the prosecution does not concede, the oral arguments succeeded in raising reasonable doubt about the correctness of the court’s decision. For this reason alone, the Justices may have to reconsider.
There may be a broader and highly compelling reason. This is the first plunder trial since the law was enacted in 1991. And the accused is a former President. There may be some pressure to affirm the conviction, but the precedent the court will set could very well apply to the next outgoing President, and the next and the next. In an imperfect system where today’s prosecutors may be tomorrow’s prosecuted, the court may not want to create a precedent that would make it so easy for any administration to let the last former president spend the rest of his natural life as a convicted plunderer.
Sunday, October 21, 2007
Glorietta bombing gives Gloria no special grace
At least nine people died and 129 were wounded from the explosion that tore through the Glorietta II shopping mall in Makati on Friday afternoon. It was the first bloody incident since the renewed call for President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s resignation began to gather steam, in the wake of the bribe-giving frenzy that had sought to protect her from the fallout of the $329-million ZTE National Broadband Network bribery scandal.
The victims were all innocent shopkeepers, sales clerks, shoppers, window-shoppers and plain passers-by, typical random victims of terrorism. National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales was quick to call it that ---an “act of terrorism,” but failed to identify the suspected terrorists. And no terrorist group has since owned the crime.
Senator Antonio Trillanes, the former naval lieutenant senior grade who remains under detention for his supposed role in the 2003 Oakwood Mutiny, was as quick to denounce the bombing as the handiwork of Gen. Hermogenes Esperon, the Armed Forces Chief of Staff, and Gonzales himself, who both denied the allegation.
“Terrorist” attacks are, by definition, staged by terrorists. They normally leave their fingerprints, and announce their purpose or motive. Some incidents, however, may be manufactured and made to look like the work of terrorists, to justify an extreme response that begins with the arbitrary suppression of human rights and civil liberties. Nobody usually claims credit for these.
Criminal regimes, confronted with rising opposition and dwindling public support, are likely to resort to this tactic. The Arroyo regime will resent being so classified, but that is how many observers regard it, after having been associated with so many incidents, the latest being the bribery scandal in the highly overpriced NBN deal and the second bribery scandal in the initiation of the nuisance complaint for impeachment against Mrs. Arroyo in the House of Representatives.
The new anti-Arroyo wave began after former NEDA director-general Romulo Neri told a Senate inquiry that Benjamin Abalos, then chairman of the Commission on Elections, had offered him a P200-million bribe to approve the NBN project; that he had reported it to Mrs. Arroyo; but that she did nothing about it.
Thereafter lawyer Roberto Rafael Pulido reportedly took a fee to file a preemptive non-complaint to immunize Mrs. Arroyo from being impeached for a period of one year, under the highly questionable Supreme Court ruling on impeachment. At least 190 congressmen were later said to have received P200,000 to P500,000 each to support the transmittal of the nuisance complaint to the Committee on Justice, which is now expected to kill it.
Unfortunately, the largesse spread to the governors who had come to Malacanang that same day, and Murphy’s law intervened. (“If anything can go wrong, it will.”) The visibly incredulous priest-governor of Pampanga, a first timer in politics, picked up the P500,000 he had received inside a brown bag in awe, and showed it on television. This was a first in the history of the Palace. It instantly exposed what the president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines called the “moral bankruptcy” of the regime, and quickly revived calls for Arroyo’s resignation. The same calls had dominated the headlines after the famous “Hello, Garci” tape revealed the cheating in the 2004 presidential elections and subsided only before the campaign for the 2007 elections.
It was at this point then, when Mrs. Arroyo seemed to be ripe for the coup de grace, that the Glorietta II explosion came. It quickly threatened to divert public attention from the smoldering bribery scandal that had brought the regime so close to the edge. Panicked by scandal, Mrs. Arroyo suddenly found the opportunity to appear on tv, looking glum and angry, and condoling with the victims and their families.
She then warned “destabilizers” not to exploit the tragedy for their own ends. She sounded dead serious, but her words did not quite blunt the accusation already making the rounds that it was a “bomb me” operation, as probably indicated by the traces of C4 at the point of impact. C4 is found in the military inventory alone.
Mrs. Arroyo was right to ask the nation to unite in trying to discover and punish the perpetrators. One way to do this is to bring in independent, reputable foreign experts, who will tell us the truth, rather that somebody’s propaganda line. But it would be totally wishful if she also expected the people to unite in supporting continued immorality in government.
Not even tragedy wipes out our sins. Mrs. Arroyo cannot possibly believe, or even suggest, that the Glorietta incident had earned her a reprieve from the rising call for her resignation and that of her entire government. For if the incident was, indeed, the work of terrorists, then the first conclusion that could be drawn from it is the appalling incompetence of her government.
There was a marked failure of intelligence. The C4 obviously went past the K-9 special agent and his dog deployed at every mall entrance to smell gunpowder, C4, dangerous drugs and other substances. Are we now to grant the point of the security critics when they say that because of inept and incompetent security policies and practices these dogs are not even able to smell these dangerous substances anymore?
How then can we depend upon the regime to ensure the physical security and safety of our people? Should the regime be given special grace for its demonstrated ineptitude and incompetence? Indeed, the bombing should unite us not only in grief but also in condemning the savagery of the unknown perpetrators. But what happens if it is ultimately shown that the “act of terrorism”, which we all condemn, was, in fact, as Trillanes and others suggest, an illegal military or police operation?
We should mourn the dead, show our compassion for the wounded, and do everything to make sure that the Glorietta incident does not ever happen again. But we should allow no one and no incident to deter us from insisting on having a government grounded on the truth, justice, and good rather than on falsehood, injustice and evil, and that will never exploit any human tragedy to prolong an immoral rule.
The victims were all innocent shopkeepers, sales clerks, shoppers, window-shoppers and plain passers-by, typical random victims of terrorism. National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales was quick to call it that ---an “act of terrorism,” but failed to identify the suspected terrorists. And no terrorist group has since owned the crime.
Senator Antonio Trillanes, the former naval lieutenant senior grade who remains under detention for his supposed role in the 2003 Oakwood Mutiny, was as quick to denounce the bombing as the handiwork of Gen. Hermogenes Esperon, the Armed Forces Chief of Staff, and Gonzales himself, who both denied the allegation.
“Terrorist” attacks are, by definition, staged by terrorists. They normally leave their fingerprints, and announce their purpose or motive. Some incidents, however, may be manufactured and made to look like the work of terrorists, to justify an extreme response that begins with the arbitrary suppression of human rights and civil liberties. Nobody usually claims credit for these.
Criminal regimes, confronted with rising opposition and dwindling public support, are likely to resort to this tactic. The Arroyo regime will resent being so classified, but that is how many observers regard it, after having been associated with so many incidents, the latest being the bribery scandal in the highly overpriced NBN deal and the second bribery scandal in the initiation of the nuisance complaint for impeachment against Mrs. Arroyo in the House of Representatives.
The new anti-Arroyo wave began after former NEDA director-general Romulo Neri told a Senate inquiry that Benjamin Abalos, then chairman of the Commission on Elections, had offered him a P200-million bribe to approve the NBN project; that he had reported it to Mrs. Arroyo; but that she did nothing about it.
Thereafter lawyer Roberto Rafael Pulido reportedly took a fee to file a preemptive non-complaint to immunize Mrs. Arroyo from being impeached for a period of one year, under the highly questionable Supreme Court ruling on impeachment. At least 190 congressmen were later said to have received P200,000 to P500,000 each to support the transmittal of the nuisance complaint to the Committee on Justice, which is now expected to kill it.
Unfortunately, the largesse spread to the governors who had come to Malacanang that same day, and Murphy’s law intervened. (“If anything can go wrong, it will.”) The visibly incredulous priest-governor of Pampanga, a first timer in politics, picked up the P500,000 he had received inside a brown bag in awe, and showed it on television. This was a first in the history of the Palace. It instantly exposed what the president of the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of the Philippines called the “moral bankruptcy” of the regime, and quickly revived calls for Arroyo’s resignation. The same calls had dominated the headlines after the famous “Hello, Garci” tape revealed the cheating in the 2004 presidential elections and subsided only before the campaign for the 2007 elections.
It was at this point then, when Mrs. Arroyo seemed to be ripe for the coup de grace, that the Glorietta II explosion came. It quickly threatened to divert public attention from the smoldering bribery scandal that had brought the regime so close to the edge. Panicked by scandal, Mrs. Arroyo suddenly found the opportunity to appear on tv, looking glum and angry, and condoling with the victims and their families.
She then warned “destabilizers” not to exploit the tragedy for their own ends. She sounded dead serious, but her words did not quite blunt the accusation already making the rounds that it was a “bomb me” operation, as probably indicated by the traces of C4 at the point of impact. C4 is found in the military inventory alone.
Mrs. Arroyo was right to ask the nation to unite in trying to discover and punish the perpetrators. One way to do this is to bring in independent, reputable foreign experts, who will tell us the truth, rather that somebody’s propaganda line. But it would be totally wishful if she also expected the people to unite in supporting continued immorality in government.
Not even tragedy wipes out our sins. Mrs. Arroyo cannot possibly believe, or even suggest, that the Glorietta incident had earned her a reprieve from the rising call for her resignation and that of her entire government. For if the incident was, indeed, the work of terrorists, then the first conclusion that could be drawn from it is the appalling incompetence of her government.
There was a marked failure of intelligence. The C4 obviously went past the K-9 special agent and his dog deployed at every mall entrance to smell gunpowder, C4, dangerous drugs and other substances. Are we now to grant the point of the security critics when they say that because of inept and incompetent security policies and practices these dogs are not even able to smell these dangerous substances anymore?
How then can we depend upon the regime to ensure the physical security and safety of our people? Should the regime be given special grace for its demonstrated ineptitude and incompetence? Indeed, the bombing should unite us not only in grief but also in condemning the savagery of the unknown perpetrators. But what happens if it is ultimately shown that the “act of terrorism”, which we all condemn, was, in fact, as Trillanes and others suggest, an illegal military or police operation?
We should mourn the dead, show our compassion for the wounded, and do everything to make sure that the Glorietta incident does not ever happen again. But we should allow no one and no incident to deter us from insisting on having a government grounded on the truth, justice, and good rather than on falsehood, injustice and evil, and that will never exploit any human tragedy to prolong an immoral rule.
Friday, October 19, 2007
We must now compel Arroyo to remove herself
The butchers of Burma may have made their country the most frightening in the world. But the Arroyo administration has made itself the most corrupt and morally depraved in Southeast Asia, if not in the world. Everyone else may only run for second place.
The moral decay did not begin on Oct. 5, 2007 when lawyer Roberto Rafael Pulido and Laguna Congressman Edgar San Luis initiated, reportedly for a fee, what is generally seen as a nuisance complaint for impeachment, purposely to protect rather than prosecute President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo for her role in the now-cancelled, highly overpriced, bribery-ridden $329-million ZTE National Broadband Network contract.
It did not begin on Oct. 11 when 190 congressmen in the morning and more congressmen in the evening, and 48 provincial governors in-between, reportedly received brown bags containing P200,000 to P500,000 each from unnamed official functionaries in Malacanang.
It did not begin when Pampanga's priest-Governor Ed Panlilio revealed that he had received one such brown bag containing P500,000 in five bundles of P1000 bills, and showed the money to the public during a press conference.
The moral decay had long set in. It was well in progress in 2001 when Mrs. Arroyo first seized the presidency in a judicially assisted military coup, supported by probably well-meaning but myopic and misguided members of the perfumed elite.
It was in an advanced state in 2004 when Mrs. Arroyo claimed victory in the presidential elections despite evidence of massive fraud, participated in by well-positioned military and police officers named in the infamous tape-recording of her highly incriminatory conversations with former Commission on Elections Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano, Jr.
The rot spread when none of the generals so named were investigated or court martialed, but were promoted instead and put on top of their far worthier and more honorable comrades. It continued to assail our senses whenever a major scandal erupted, and the questionable transaction was cleared, the palpable wrongdoer absolved, and the whistleblower ended in the soup. One could expose the ugliest details of the most sordid crime by those in power, and the only response he got was: "So what? Is there anything you can do about it?" And there seemed to be no stopping it.
Constitutional and legal shortcuts abridged human rights and civil liberties, thrashed the principle of check and balance and the separation of powers, and made certain laws subject to whimsical and wrongful modifications by the Executive. The Supreme Court justices legitimated many of these abuses; on their own, they single-handedly destroyed the constitutional law on impeachment.
No public distinction seemed to exist anymore between truth and falsehood, between right and wrong, between good and evil. The strength of the law has been replaced with the law of the strong – the law of those in charge. And the only distinction that seemed to matter to them was between "we" and "you" ----"we are in power, and you are not."
After years of seeing their civil and political rights violently suppressed, many had come to believe it no longer made sense to protest against the criminal syndicate that has replaced government. All the syndicate had to do was to buy those who could be bought, and arrest, intimidate and physically silence by temporary or permanent means those who could not be bought.
It took the priest-Governor of Pampanga brandishing that venal bundle of cash on television, and Mrs. Arroyo maintaining a Sphinx-like silence for days while the headlines screamed rape for the people finally to see that official corruption and depravity had gone too far ---far beyond what they were prepared to tolerate.
No one is naïve enough to believe this was the first time money of this kind was ever distributed inside the Palace. The last two failed impeachment attempts against Mrs. Arroyo had been marked with similar stories about congressmen being bought by the Palace. But not a single courtesan squealed.
This was the first time physical evidence of political loot ever made the prime time tv newscast, courtesy of a political novice who was not suffering from a severe surplus of funds nor nursing a political grudge against Malacanang. But while all of Mrs. Arroyo's men with an IQ below room temperature were trying to explain the unexplainable, Mrs. Arroyo kept herself scarce, as though nothing had happened, nothing was happening, and nothing could ever happen to disturb her peace.
That tv footage, played and replayed over and over again, could yet do to Mrs. Arroyo what that famous photo of a Vietnamese officer about to empty his handgun on the head of a kneeling Vietcong man did to the United States and its allies in Vietnam during the war.
Had this incident happened in Japan, where we recently saw a spate of Cabinet resignations, Mrs. Arroyo and her entire government would have immediately resigned, with a profuse apology to the Filipino people. If she was impelled by a greater sense of honor and duty to the people, she might have committed sepuko and disemboweled herself within hours. Instead, she went missing from the scene for seven days and tried to distract herself and the nation from the burning issue of the day. Only then did she finally say the "cash gift" should be investigated.
Some senators also want it investigated. But it is no longer the season for such kneejerk. Almost everything in this country has been investigated; we are suffering from a surfeit of probes without purpose and without result. We must now compel Mrs. Arroyo and her entire government to act. They must learn from the Japanese and other civilized races and remove themselves from the scene, while it is yet possible to do so with some dignity and grace.
Otherwise, we must now do our duty and claim our rights, reclaim our country from the deep abyss where gross immorality has grounded it. This is no longer the time for anyone of us to be sending frivolous or insulting text messages as a way to get even with the object of our outrage. This is the time to be angry, as Jesus before the money-changers in the Temple got angry, yet to decide calmly and soberly that we will confront the evil and end it, whatever the cost or consequence. This has to be the point of no return. There should be no turning back.
Thursday, October 18, 2007
WE MUST NOW COMPEL ARROYO TO REMOVE HERSELF
The butchers of Burma may have made their country the most frightening in the world. But the Arroyo administration has made itself the most corrupt and morally depraved in Southeast Asia, if not in the world. Everyone else may only run for second place.
The moral decay did not begin on Oct. 5, 2007 when lawyer Roberto Rafael Pulido and Laguna Congressman Edgar San Luis initiated, reportedly for a fee, what is generally seen as a nuisance complaint for impeachment, purposely to protect rather than prosecute President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo for her role in the now-cancelled, highly overpriced, bribery-ridden $329-million ZTE National Broadband Network contract.
It did not begin on Oct. 11 when 190 congressmen in the morning and more congressmen in the evening, and 48 provincial governors in-between, reportedly received brown bags containing P200,000 to P500,000 each from unnamed official functionaries in Malacanang.
It did not begin when Pampanga’s priest-Governor Ed Panlilio revealed that he had received one such brown bag containing P500,000 in five bundles of P1000 bills, and showed the money to the public during a press conference.
The moral decay had long set in. It was well in progress in 2001 when Mrs. Arroyo first seized the presidency in a judicially assisted military coup, supported by probably well-meaning but myopic and misguided members of the perfumed elite.
It was in an advanced state in 2004 when Mrs. Arroyo claimed victory in the presidential elections despite evidence of massive fraud, participated in by well-positioned military and police officers named in the infamous tape-recording of her highly incriminatory conversations with former Commission on Elections Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano, Jr.
The rot spread when none of the generals so named were investigated or court martialed, but were promoted instead and put on top of their far worthier and more honorable comrades. It continued to assail our senses whenever a major scandal erupted, and the questionable transaction was cleared, the palpable wrongdoer absolved, and the whistleblower ended in the soup. One could expose the ugliest details of the most sordid crime by those in power, and the only response he got was: “So what? Is there anything you can do about it?” And there seemed to be no stopping it.
Constitutional and legal shortcuts abridged human rights and civil liberties, thrashed the principle of check and balance and the separation of powers, and made certain laws subject to whimsical and wrongful modifications by the Executive. The Supreme Court justices legitimated many of these abuses; on their own, they single-handedly destroyed the constitutional law on impeachment.
No public distinction seemed to exist anymore between truth and falsehood, between right and wrong, between good and evil. The strength of the law has been replaced with the law of the strong – the law of those in charge. And the only distinction that seemed to matter to them was between “we” and “you” ----“we are in power, and you are not.”
After years of seeing their civil and political rights violently suppressed, many had come to believe it no longer made sense to protest against the criminal syndicate that has replaced government. All the syndicate had to do was to buy those who could be bought, and arrest, intimidate and physically silence by temporary or permanent means those who could not be bought.
It took the priest-Governor of Pampanga brandishing that venal bundle of cash on television, and Mrs. Arroyo maintaining a Sphinx-like silence for days while the headlines screamed rape for the people finally to see that official corruption and depravity had gone too far ---far beyond what they were prepared to tolerate.
No one is naïve enough to believe this was the first time money of this kind was ever distributed inside the Palace. The last two failed impeachment attempts against Mrs. Arroyo had been marked with similar stories about congressmen being bought by the Palace. But not a single courtesan squealed.
This was the first time physical evidence of political loot ever made the prime time TV newscast, courtesy of a political novice who was not suffering from a severe surplus of funds nor nursing a political grudge against Malacanang. But while all of Mrs. Arroyo’s men with an IQ below room temperature were trying to explain the unexplainable, Mrs. Arroyo kept herself scarce, as though nothing had happened, nothing was happening, and nothing could ever happen to disturb her peace.
That TV footage, played and replayed over and over again, could yet do to Mrs. Arroyo what that famous photo of a Vietnamese officer about to empty his handgun on the head of a kneeling Vietcong man did to the United States and its allies in Vietnam during the war.
Had this incident happened in Japan, where we recently saw a spate of Cabinet resignations, Mrs. Arroyo and her entire government would have immediately resigned, with a profuse apology to the Filipino people. If she was impelled by a greater sense of honor and duty to the people, she might have committed sepuko and disemboweled herself within hours. Instead, she went missing from the scene for seven days and tried to distract herself and the nation from the burning issue of the day. Only then did she finally say the “cash gift” should be investigated.
Some senators also want it investigated. But it is no longer the season for such kneejerk. Almost everything in this country has been investigated; we are suffering from a surfeit of probes without purpose and without result. We must now compel Mrs. Arroyo and her entire government to act. They must learn from the Japanese and other civilized races and remove themselves from the scene, while it is yet possible to do so with some dignity and grace.
Otherwise, we must now do our duty and claim our rights, reclaim our country from the deep abyss where gross immorality has grounded it. This is no longer the time for anyone of us to be sending frivolous or insulting text messages as a way to get even with the object of our outrage. This is the time to be angry, as Jesus before the money-changers in the Temple got angry, yet to decide calmly and soberly that we will confront the evil and end it, whatever the cost or consequence. This has to be the point of no return. There should be no turning back.
The moral decay did not begin on Oct. 5, 2007 when lawyer Roberto Rafael Pulido and Laguna Congressman Edgar San Luis initiated, reportedly for a fee, what is generally seen as a nuisance complaint for impeachment, purposely to protect rather than prosecute President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo for her role in the now-cancelled, highly overpriced, bribery-ridden $329-million ZTE National Broadband Network contract.
It did not begin on Oct. 11 when 190 congressmen in the morning and more congressmen in the evening, and 48 provincial governors in-between, reportedly received brown bags containing P200,000 to P500,000 each from unnamed official functionaries in Malacanang.
It did not begin when Pampanga’s priest-Governor Ed Panlilio revealed that he had received one such brown bag containing P500,000 in five bundles of P1000 bills, and showed the money to the public during a press conference.
The moral decay had long set in. It was well in progress in 2001 when Mrs. Arroyo first seized the presidency in a judicially assisted military coup, supported by probably well-meaning but myopic and misguided members of the perfumed elite.
It was in an advanced state in 2004 when Mrs. Arroyo claimed victory in the presidential elections despite evidence of massive fraud, participated in by well-positioned military and police officers named in the infamous tape-recording of her highly incriminatory conversations with former Commission on Elections Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano, Jr.
The rot spread when none of the generals so named were investigated or court martialed, but were promoted instead and put on top of their far worthier and more honorable comrades. It continued to assail our senses whenever a major scandal erupted, and the questionable transaction was cleared, the palpable wrongdoer absolved, and the whistleblower ended in the soup. One could expose the ugliest details of the most sordid crime by those in power, and the only response he got was: “So what? Is there anything you can do about it?” And there seemed to be no stopping it.
Constitutional and legal shortcuts abridged human rights and civil liberties, thrashed the principle of check and balance and the separation of powers, and made certain laws subject to whimsical and wrongful modifications by the Executive. The Supreme Court justices legitimated many of these abuses; on their own, they single-handedly destroyed the constitutional law on impeachment.
No public distinction seemed to exist anymore between truth and falsehood, between right and wrong, between good and evil. The strength of the law has been replaced with the law of the strong – the law of those in charge. And the only distinction that seemed to matter to them was between “we” and “you” ----“we are in power, and you are not.”
After years of seeing their civil and political rights violently suppressed, many had come to believe it no longer made sense to protest against the criminal syndicate that has replaced government. All the syndicate had to do was to buy those who could be bought, and arrest, intimidate and physically silence by temporary or permanent means those who could not be bought.
It took the priest-Governor of Pampanga brandishing that venal bundle of cash on television, and Mrs. Arroyo maintaining a Sphinx-like silence for days while the headlines screamed rape for the people finally to see that official corruption and depravity had gone too far ---far beyond what they were prepared to tolerate.
No one is naïve enough to believe this was the first time money of this kind was ever distributed inside the Palace. The last two failed impeachment attempts against Mrs. Arroyo had been marked with similar stories about congressmen being bought by the Palace. But not a single courtesan squealed.
This was the first time physical evidence of political loot ever made the prime time TV newscast, courtesy of a political novice who was not suffering from a severe surplus of funds nor nursing a political grudge against Malacanang. But while all of Mrs. Arroyo’s men with an IQ below room temperature were trying to explain the unexplainable, Mrs. Arroyo kept herself scarce, as though nothing had happened, nothing was happening, and nothing could ever happen to disturb her peace.
That TV footage, played and replayed over and over again, could yet do to Mrs. Arroyo what that famous photo of a Vietnamese officer about to empty his handgun on the head of a kneeling Vietcong man did to the United States and its allies in Vietnam during the war.
Had this incident happened in Japan, where we recently saw a spate of Cabinet resignations, Mrs. Arroyo and her entire government would have immediately resigned, with a profuse apology to the Filipino people. If she was impelled by a greater sense of honor and duty to the people, she might have committed sepuko and disemboweled herself within hours. Instead, she went missing from the scene for seven days and tried to distract herself and the nation from the burning issue of the day. Only then did she finally say the “cash gift” should be investigated.
Some senators also want it investigated. But it is no longer the season for such kneejerk. Almost everything in this country has been investigated; we are suffering from a surfeit of probes without purpose and without result. We must now compel Mrs. Arroyo and her entire government to act. They must learn from the Japanese and other civilized races and remove themselves from the scene, while it is yet possible to do so with some dignity and grace.
Otherwise, we must now do our duty and claim our rights, reclaim our country from the deep abyss where gross immorality has grounded it. This is no longer the time for anyone of us to be sending frivolous or insulting text messages as a way to get even with the object of our outrage. This is the time to be angry, as Jesus before the money-changers in the Temple got angry, yet to decide calmly and soberly that we will confront the evil and end it, whatever the cost or consequence. This has to be the point of no return. There should be no turning back.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
How long before all hell breaks loose?
We are at the lowest point of our political life as a nation.
Fearing the worst fallout from the $329-million NBN-ZTE broadband scandal -- where she confirms having been told of then-Commission on Election chair Benjamin Abalos’s offer of a P200-million bribe to then NEDA chief Romulo Neri to facilitate the project, but did nothing to prosecute or punish Abalos -- President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has compelled the House of Representatives to receive a bogus impeachment complaint which is intended to prevent the filing of an honest-to-goodness impeachment complaint against her for at least one year.
Amid reports that the congressman who had endorsed the questionable complaint had been paid to do so, and that other congressmen were being offered P2 million each to do the same, Speaker Jose de Venecia had decided to freeze the transmittal of the complaint to the House Committee on Justice. But when Mrs. Arroyo threatened a showdown with De Venecia, whose son had blown the whistle on the bribe offers and kickbacks after losing his bid for the fat contract, the Speaker backed down, and allowed Deputy Speaker Raul del Mar of
The Committee on Justice is now expected to throw out the complaint for being insufficient either in form or in substance. Thereafter, no impeachment complaint may be filed against Mrs. Arroyo for at least one year, pursuant to the Supreme Court’s 2003 ruling on the law on impeachment.
Under the Constitution, the House shall have the exclusive power to initiate all cases of impeachment. And the Senate, the sole power to try and decide all cases of impeachment. As written in the law, the House initiates a case of impeachment when -- and only when --- it sends to the Senate the Articles of Impeachment against an impeached official. Unless and until that happens, there is no impeachment case and no impeachment proceedings initiated exclusively by the House. There is a nonbiodegradable legal distinction between a complaint filed by one or several complainants, and a case initiated exclusively by the House.
The language of the Constitution is clear. You don’t need a lawyer or a Supreme Court justice to interpret it. But in 2003, then Chief Justice Hilario Davide, Jr., who now serves illegally as the Permanent Representative to the United Nations, in violation of the Foreign Service Act, and without having been confirmed by the Commission on Appointments, faced certain impeachment for his alleged misuse of the Judicial Development Fund. In order to save him, his colleagues ruled in Francisco vs. House of Representatives, 415 SCRA 44, that since a previous complaint against him had failed to prosper, he could no longer be subjected to an impeachment complaint that same year. That ruling saved Davide, but it completely destroyed and made a mockery of the law on impeachment.
The original sin, therefore, lies not with lawyer Oliver Lozano, who filed the first two ludicrous impeachment complaints against Mrs. Arroyo, or with Roel Pulido, who filed the present complaint. Nor with the first congressman who was reportedly paid to endorse Pulido’s complaint. Nor with the 190 others who were reportedly “fixed” to junk it. It lies with the honorable justices of the Supreme Court.
Although the Supreme Court is trying very hard to look good these days by taking initiatives that properly belong to the Executive, it has constitutionalized patently unconstitutional acts of the Arroyo administration, and allowed Mrs. Arroyo and her minions to make a mockery of the law on impeachment, prohibit Cabinet members from appearing before Congress without the President’s prior consent, and require those who appear there to deny Congress rightful access to executive information and data by invoking “executive privilege.” These court decisions have made Mrs. Arroyo a law unto herself.
Under the Constitution, a Cabinet member needs the President’s consent only when he volunteers to appear before Congress, not when he is summoned by its Members. But Executive Order 464 requires the President’s consent for all Cabinet appearances, and the Supreme Court has validated this unauthorized and invalid revision of the Constitution. The Court has also legitimated “executive privilege” to deprive Congress of its rightful access to necessary information from the Executive.
The term “executive privilege” does not appear in the Constitution at all. What the Constitution says is that whenever a Cabinet member appears on his own initiative before Congress, or upon invitation by its members, when “the security of the state or the public interest so requires, and the President so states in writing, the appearance shall be conducted in executive session.” This means the public may not share any state secrets, but the Constitution never contemplated withholding any secrets from Congress, which alone has the power to levy taxes, appropriate public funds, and declare the existence of a state of war --- vital powers denied to the President.
In the Senate hearing on the NBN-ZTE deal, Neri invoked “executive privilege” to avoid giving further information, after saying that he had informed Mrs. Arroyo of Abalos’s P200 -million bribe offer to him in exchange for his approval of the project---a detail which Mrs. Arroyo later confirmed. Neri would probably not have done so, had the senators only asked him the right questions. But instead of asking him specific questions about his talk with Mrs. Arroyo, they chose to ask him an inept blanket question----“what else did you talk about?” You ask a silly question, you get a silly answer.
The senators then decided to go into executive session. But once they were closeted inside, Budget Secretary Rolando Andaya, Jr. walked in and presented himself as Neri’s counsel. Neri was entitled to a counsel of his choice, but Andaya is a Cabinet member, prohibited by the Constitution from practicing his legal profession. He was a “stranger” there, but the senators could not even evict him from their meeting.
Since then, the new NEDA head has also invoked “executive privilege” to hold on to minutes of the NEDA meetings on the NBN-ZTE project, which are not even secret documents. Some senators have threatened to hold him in contempt, but the senators have not lately been able to enforce their own rights, nor follow their own Rules.
Thursday, October 4, 2007
Citizens vs. Corruption Task Force Press Statement on Abalos Resignation
Abalos resignation bogus, House urged to push impeach bid
Former Senator Francisco S. Tatad today said there appears to be no record of Chairman Benjamin Abalos of the Commission on Elections having submitted a formal written of resignation to President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and of her having accepted such resignation, thereby rendering questionable the veracity of his announced resignation.
"The published statement attributed to Presidential Legal Counsel Sergio Apostol saying that Abalos will be on terminal leave until his compulsory retirement on February 8, 2008 confirms the fact that Abalos has not resigned, and that there is no factual or legal basis for the House of Representatives to abandon the impeachment complaint against the Comelec chief. Unless and until he resigns formally and that resignation is accepted by the appointing authority, he remains an impeachable officer, and the interested parties have every reason to proceed with their impeachment complaint against Abalos," said Tatad, who chairs the Philippine Democratic Caucus and the Citizens vs. Corruption Task Force.
"The theory of constructive resignation, which the Supreme Court invented to justify the ouster of President Joseph Ejercito Estrada in 2001, does not and cannot possibly apply to Abalos. He has to submit a formal letter of resignation, and President Arroyo must accept it in order for the same to become effective, and place him beyond the reach of the impeachment process. Otherwise, the announced resignation, which Malacanang wants now to translate into a mere terminal leave of absence, is completely bogus, and he would have succeeded in playing the entire nation for fools," Tatad said.
Former Senator Francisco S. Tatad today said there appears to be no record of Chairman Benjamin Abalos of the Commission on Elections having submitted a formal written of resignation to President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and of her having accepted such resignation, thereby rendering questionable the veracity of his announced resignation.
"The published statement attributed to Presidential Legal Counsel Sergio Apostol saying that Abalos will be on terminal leave until his compulsory retirement on February 8, 2008 confirms the fact that Abalos has not resigned, and that there is no factual or legal basis for the House of Representatives to abandon the impeachment complaint against the Comelec chief. Unless and until he resigns formally and that resignation is accepted by the appointing authority, he remains an impeachable officer, and the interested parties have every reason to proceed with their impeachment complaint against Abalos," said Tatad, who chairs the Philippine Democratic Caucus and the Citizens vs. Corruption Task Force.
"The theory of constructive resignation, which the Supreme Court invented to justify the ouster of President Joseph Ejercito Estrada in 2001, does not and cannot possibly apply to Abalos. He has to submit a formal letter of resignation, and President Arroyo must accept it in order for the same to become effective, and place him beyond the reach of the impeachment process. Otherwise, the announced resignation, which Malacanang wants now to translate into a mere terminal leave of absence, is completely bogus, and he would have succeeded in playing the entire nation for fools," Tatad said.
Sunday, September 9, 2007
Don’t worry about a coup, guard against a civil war
The justices of the Sandiganbayan form part of the structure that upheld the legitimacy of the regime that grabbed power from President Joseph Ejercito Estrada and jailed him on charges of plunder in 2001. They cannot possibly contradict themselves now and dismantle the basis of Mrs. Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s presidency by acquitting Estrada of the charges for which he has been detained these last six years.
They are expected to convict Estrada, and very few doubt they will do so. What penalty they will impose is still an open question, but in what direction they will rule is no longer one. How the people will judge the Sandigan and the Arroyo administration is now the more important question.
Technically, the Sandigan will be the one handing down the judgment. But as far as the people are concerned, it will be President Arroyo herself who will be pronouncing the sentence. Most people believe Erap’s case is purely political; that Estrada is in jail because Mrs. Arroyo is in Malacanang; that had Estrada agreed to sign a letter of resignation and leave the country after he was driven out of office on January 20, 2001, he could be sunning himself by the sea in Sta. Barbara, the French Riviera, or
The Sandigan will do everything to show that its ruling is in accordance with law. That will not be enough. The ruling must above all satisfy what John Rawls calls the society’s “public conception of justice.” There must be a consensus that the judgment is just, and that will most certainly be difficult to achieve.
Not everyone may grant Estrada’s innocence. But even those who do not believe he is innocent know that he is being persecuted by people who have committed and continue to commit infinitely worse crimes, for which they have not even been charged in court. On the eve of the verdict on Estrada, the nation is reeling from a multi-billion peso scandal in which at least ten billion pesos are expected to go to some government officials in illegal payoff.
In the Estrada case, not many understand why the former provincial governor who had confessed to having diverted One Hundred Thirty Million Pesos from the provincial treasury of Ilocos Sur was given immunity from prosecution just because he was willing to allege, without any credible corroborating evidence, that he delivered the same amount to Estrada. In the normal operation of the law, the least guilty party may be offered immunity in order to act as state witness and go after the most guilty, not the other way round.
Of what charges then will Estrada be convicted? If plunder, the people will want to know on what evidence he is being convicted. If a lesser offense, the people will want to know why was he ever accused of a non-bailable offense if all the government could prove was a much lesser crime?
A partial acquittal will only confirm the sordid capriciousness of the charges. Convicting Estrada on all the charges, on the other hand, would not only show the brutish nature of the regime but above all provoke a spirited reaction among his supporters. It will also set the standard by which future prosecutors could deal with Mrs. Arroyo when her time of reckoning comes.
Grim as it may look, it could be a win-win situation for Erap, and a lose-lose situation for Mrs. Arroyo. If acquitted, Erap wins; if convicted on any of the charges, he becomes a political martyr. For Mrs. Arroyo, however, it is like going to
Mrs. Arroyo’s dilemma on how to end this case without creating a firestorm is the clearest proof that there is nothing right about the jailing of Estrada. Thus, the question is no longer how the justices will judge Erap but rather how the people will judge the justices and the Arroyo administration. The law and those who enforce and interpret the law have long become suspect. But justice requires that the law be above suspicion--- in its formulation, in its interpretation, in its enforcement.
As Pope Benedict XVI points out in his celebrated exchange with the German philosopher Jurgen Habermas, the strength of the law, not the law of the stronger, must always prevail. Suspicion of the law, revolt against the law will arise, he writes, when law itself appears to be no longer the expression of a justice that is at the service of all, but rather the product of arbitrariness and arrogance of those who have the power to use the law on others for their own ends.
The use of several thousand troops, as announced, to suppress any spirited reaction to the verdict will demonstrate not the strength of the law, or the justness of the sentence, but rather the law of the stronger. It could suppress any spirited reaction, but it cannot possibly quench the outrage and spirit of rebellion that might consume the hearts of those who believe justice has once again been stepped upon, and that it cannot go on forever.
Injustice can only be allowed to go so far; a point is reached, Albert Camus has long warned, when even the slave in chain will rebel. Mrs. Arroyo is understandably concerned that the verdict on Estrada does not provoke a military coup; we should be more concerned that it does not provoke a mass revolt or a civil war.
Sunday, September 2, 2007
Marcos honor or Marcos wealth?
One of the saddest stories we read today is about Rep. Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos, Jr going to court to “recover” from Mr. Lucio Tan, the tobacco, beer, hotel and airline tycoon, what the congressman says are corporate assets that belonged to his late father.
Particularly painful is the fact that former Secretary of Justice Estelito Mendoza, the late former president’s ablest and most trusted lawyer, is the one telling Bongbong, on behalf of Mr. Tan, that he has no valid claim.
There appears to be a similar effort to “recover” from Gilberto Duavit, a former Malacanang official, purported Marcos shares in GMA Channel 7, which used to be owned by Bob Stewart, an American citizen, before martial law closed it down. Duavit became its principal “owner” when it finally reopened; but it was never adequately reported how Stewart lost it to Duavit.
There could be a few more such cases.
Why do we find these sad? Because not everyone accepts the caricature of Marcos drawn by his political enemies, yet these stories tend to confirm their claim that he spent his presidency piling up so much hidden wealth, which he put in the hands of his cronies.
For as long as Marcos lived, he vehemently denied such charges. He broke with the Lopezes while Fernando Lopez was his Vice President after the Lopez-owned Manila Chronicle started running a daily editorial cartoon which satirically suggested that he owned almost everything in the Philippines. In 1973, Lopez’s position as Vice President was formally deleted from the Constitution.
One expected the Marcos heirs to be particularly sensitive to this issue. But in publicizing their claim to hidden assets supposedly owned by Marcos, they unwittingly relegated his reputation to the background. Of course, it remains to be shown in court whether the wealth in question was legally acquired or ill-gotten, but history rarely relies on the courts when judging eminent men. This is what truly saddens.
In 1969, I joined the Marcos Cabinet at the ripe old age of 29. For ten years, I served Marcos at close range. His brilliant mind and extraordinary political will captured my imagination, as they did most of the nation’s. He bested all his adversaries in their own game, and for all the attacks that he took, he stood taller than those who tried to promote their own venal selves by depicting him as evil.
Even Marcos’s old ideological enemies on the Left grudgingly concede it now. A random survey conducted not too long ago among professors and students in the hotbed of anti-Marcos activism before and during martial law rated Marcos as the president who had done the most for the country, bar none. He had a clear and unclouded view of the national purpose, and he fought for it when dealing with friend and foe alike. His resolute defense of the national interest brought him in conflict with the strongest forces, and finally brought him down. But he did not fall because he had become hopelessly corrupt; he became corrupt because he fell.
Once he fell, everything was done to damn him as evil. On their first day, rapacious elements of the new regime carted off valuable jewellery, priceless paintings, works of art, monetary instruments and mountains of cash as spoils of power, and simply assigned their grand theft to the fallen “kleptocrat.” Large vats of “demonstration” caviar and countless invoices and receipts from the most expensive shopping centers abroad mysteriously materialized amid the debris inside the sacked presidential palace, oddly untouched by the surging mob, for the exclusive delectation of the foreign press.
Imelda’s shoes were then put on display in a final condemnation of her profligacy, unmindful of the nameless other women in the rich enclaves of Metro Manila who probably owned as many pairs. And then the deluge of hurriedly written books, by foreigners who knew nothing or next to nothing about Marcos or the Philippines, all in an attempt to inscribe for posterity the reasons why Marcos had to be taken out.
Twenty-one years after the event, some serious scholars seem finally prepared to do an honest reassessment of Marcos, in light of what has since happened to the country, to Southeast Asia, to
The Marcos heirs should be the first ones to see this. They should be the first ones to avoid creating a distraction that could prevent this first sliver of light from breaking through the thick fog of political prejudice and hate.
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