There’s the Rub: I have two hands

This is the way justice works in this country: On one hand, Jun Lozada is desperately fighting for his freedom, if not his life. One is tempted to add that for some people they are pretty much the same thing: Freedom is life, and life freedom, and ne’er the twain shall diverge. But it is literal in this case. The reason Lozada has guarded his freedom jealously, insisting on remaining with the La Salle brothers rather than seeking refuge elsewhere, or indeed going back to his former life, is that he fears for his life. In the hands of the authorities, his life is cheaper than a peso. The phrase in fact for him is, “in the clutches of the authorities.”

Lozada is fighting for his freedom now because another judge has reversed an earlier ruling dismissing Mike Defensor’s complaint of perjury against him. The new judge found merit in Defensor’s charge after all, proving that judges in this country are called that because they are able to weigh very carefully the value not of legal cases but of attaché cases, the merits not of oral arguments but of arguments on paper of the various heroes.

Such apparently is the court’s fear that Lozada will jump bail (after he has holed out for what seems a lifetime in La Salle Green Hills, despite not lacking in offers for asylum abroad) it refuses to release him into the custody of Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim.

Who is the man accusing Lozada of perjury? He is the same man who abducted Panfilo Lacson’s chief witness in his exposé on Jose Pidal and called it a rescue. He is the same man who brought in an American expert to say that the “Hello, Garci” tape was doctored, only to have the same expert say it was not. He has something profoundly in common with President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. And that is not height.

On the other hand, Jovito Palparan is enjoying the fruits of, well, he and his boss call it “labors.” The grieving widows and mothers and children of his victims have other words for it. He looks every inch like a cat who has just swallowed the canary having just been promoted congressman.

He has never been prosecuted for massacring political activists to fight communism even as his boss was busy selling this country to the biggest communist country on earth, which is China. In fact, his boss has been ecstatic about his work, promoting him to higher positions in the military.

Who has accused him of being a mass murderer? Jose Melo-at least when he headed the commission to investigate the killings, and was still bothered by things like this and still thought no nation ever moved forward without justice. And Philip Alston who carried the weight of the United Nations with him when he spoke. One is tempted to say that Raul Gonzalez should look in the mirror first before calling anybody a “muchacho,” but the absolute terror the image there is bound to induce in the looker must make you not wish that even on your worst enemy.

On one hand, Ted Failon continues to fear for his freedom as well. Despite all of his family, including all of his wife’s siblings, insisting his wife committed suicide the authorities are determined to find him guilty. The world saw the police in action last week, carting off Failon’s in-laws and staff while they tarried at Trinidad Etong’s hospital bed, giving her words of encouragement, egging her to live on. They went on to manhandle them because they would not leave. Elsewhere in the world, there is no more compelling reason to leave well enough alone than when someone demands to be on the side of dying kin. And Failon and his kin were not even suspects.

Today, despite the preponderance of physical evidence showing Trinidad to have taken her own life, the police are not satisfied. They are not satisfied because they say it is quite possible that Trinidad might have been murdered elsewhere and dumped in the bathroom. They are not satisfied because, as Gonzalez says, they have someone who claims to have been at the scene before everybody else, whose identity they cannot disclose, who says it was not suicide. In fact they are not satisfied because, attempting to prove their case by insinuation and innuendo, they find it quite impossible that someone who has been critical about the way they have been rubbing out suspects and the way this regime has been conducting business can possibly be innocent.

On the other hand, Daniel Smith has been sprung out of jail. Despite the preponderance of evidence against him, he has been found innocent by a higher-legally, if not morally-court. With no Nicole to insist on the crime, the court has ruled there is no crime. “Sprung out of jail” is a figure of speech; it is doubtful if he ever spent time in it, other than his short stint in a cell in Jojo Binay’s favorite city.

He is not the first criminal to be freed in this country in recent months. This year alone, several of them have been so or about to be so. They include: the murderers of Ninoy Aquino, despite the protestations of the Aquinos that the killers neither acknowledged their guilt nor repented; Claudio Teehankee Jr., the murderer of Maureen Hultman and Roland Chapman, who too never repented, and who, if the Hultmans are to be believed, might as well have been spending time in Boracay; Roberto Manero, the bald-headed cultist who ate the brains of Fr. Tullio Favali after he murdered him; Rodolfo Manalili who masterminded the murders of sweethearts Cochise Bernabe and Beebom Castaños; Romeo Jalosjos, the man who loved women, or loved to rape little girls.

This regime may not be able to attract investors to these shores, but it will be able to attract murderers and rapists to it.

That is the way justice works in this country. If you are guilty, be happy. If you are innocent, be afraid.

Be very, very afraid.

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A column by Conrado de Quiros published in the Philippine Daily Inquirer on April 28, 2009.

There’s the Rub: One Ponce Enrile

There’s someone who’s more “malakas” [strongly favored] with all the presidents than Ronaldo Puno and Miriam Defensor-Santiago. That’s Juan Ponce Enrile.

Puno was “malakas” with Fidel Ramos, Joseph Estrada, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, and in part with Ferdinand Marcos. Miriam was “malakas” with Cory Aquino, Joseph Estrada and Arroyo. That’s chicken. Enrile was malakas with Cory, Ramos, Estrada, Arroyo, and above all Marcos. Hell, he was Marcos’ right-hand man.

Of course, only three of those people he was “malakas” with were real presidents. The first and last were/are not. Marcos was not when he became his right-hand man, which was during martial law. But Marcos was so before that, for two terms. That is something Marcos does not share with Arroyo. Pretty much everything else he does.

When Santiago demanded to know why Puno was so “malakas” with all the presidents (she was furious, remembering what Puno did to her in the 1992 elections, which in her view was to rob her of the presidency), her implication was that only someone so unscrupulous, so unprincipled, so opportunistic could possibly manage the feat. That was so because it required either reconciling a slew of conflicting beliefs or having none at all. Her implication further was that his opportunism had been a successful one. He had so gotten into the good graces of his patrons he could commit any crime and get away with it.

Of course, Santiago’s fury blinded her to the possibility the same question might be asked of her and the same inferences drawn from it. But surely what applies to both of them applies tenfold to the one person who was far more “malakas” with all the presidents most Filipinos have known in their lifetime?

And so let us ask: Who is Juan Ponce Enrile and how did he manage that feat? Well, the highlights of his long and seemingly unending career include:

He is the one person who triggered martial law by claiming an attempt on his life in the Wack-Wack subdivision in San Juan. Luckily for him (and not so for the rest of his countrymen), he escaped completely unscathed. Later, during Cory’s time, while depicting himself in his campaign ads as someone who had been stricken by light on the way to Damascus, he admitted lying about it. But still later, he would deny ever having made that confession despite the fact that the world had heard it, compounding one lie with another lie. That alone would have qualified him to be a dependable ally of Arroyo, as he was of Marcos.

Citing that assassination attempt as a last straw, Marcos plunged the country into deepest darkness. With Enrile as chief executor.

He is the one person who claimed to have mounted EDSA People Power I in 1986 and to have rescued this country from Marcos. It didn’t sit well with a people who could not believe he would be so confused about who rescued whom. Or indeed who would be so confused about the difference between rescuer and oppressor. They made Cory their ruler despite his efforts to lay claim upon the crown. For good reason: She embodied EDSA People Power I, she was EDSA People Power I. Enrile was just the tuta who lost out to the mongrel Fabian Ver, and who rebelled against his “amo” [boss] as a result of it. And whom the people rescued from certain death, which gave him a fate worse than death, which was to continue living.

Figuring however, like Santiago afterward, that he had been robbed of the presidency, his boys at RAM mounted one coup after another against Cory, and failed. His boys ended up in jail, spending no small amount of time ruing their sins. He remained free, confined only to ruing lost time.

He is the one person who, along with Santiago and Estrada’s boys at the Senate, defended their master with every trick in the book. The same book that reigned supreme during Marcos’ time, the book of law without justice. To no avail: The people, and not the senators, ultimately sat as judge and found Estrada guilty, sending him gliding in a lonely boat all the way to San Juan by way of the Pasig River.

Later, Enrile (and Santiago) would take turns goading Estrada’s legions to “sugod, sugod” [attack, attack] Malacañang, which those legions did. Several people died in the riots there, at Mendiola. Unfortunately, they did not include Enrile or Santiago. Again, Enrile (and Santiago) would remain free, confined only to ruing lost time.

Not for long. For before you could blink an eye or say “one Ponce Enrile,” he (and Santiago) was lovey-dovey with the person he wanted “sugod-sugoded” at Palace by the Pasig.

He is the one person, who still along with Santiago but also now with Joker Arroyo, sought to discredit Jun Lozada, finding nothing wrong with a project that wasn’t just full of “bukol” [bulges—a street lingo for overpricing] but of malignant tumors. Indeed finding nothing wrong with the way Lozada was met and “escorted” by armed men and driven around, his fate hanging in the balance, before being delivered into the hands of the La Salle brothers. Well, he had seen worse as executor of martial law.

He is the one person who can be counted upon to thwart the “Joc-Joc” Bolante hearing, endorse Charter change, and keep Arroyo in power after 2010. Since he can no longer be king himself at 84 (though I hope age hasn’t dimmed his ambitions in that respect, if only so that he would collide with his current patron), he will be a queen-maker, or a queen-retainer. Along with Prospero Nograles, he will have Arroyo controlling both houses of Congress.

The senators who ousted Manuel Villar say Villar is not fit to lead them, his hands being tainted by corruption. They would rather have someone infinitely cleaner. They would rather have someone infinitely more progressive and democratic and libertarian. They would rather have someone this country can respect and trust and look up to.

They would rather have—one Ponce Enrile.

He is the president of the Senate today. He is master of the house today.

And he is back home, the right-hand man once again of another Marcos.

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Published by Conrado de Quiros, The Philippine Daily Inquirer, November 20, 2008

A crisis of forever

So today, I had to go grocery shopping since Jacey (my bebe buddha) will be coming home in less than a week. I bought food for him to munch on while playing his Tekken and Shrek games. There’s nothing unusual naman with my grocery shopping; I have always been the one tasked to do this, eons ago. The surprise came actually when I’m about to pay for the stuff already. How the heck did one cart accumulate 4k? And I didn’t even buy my usual gourmet-ish junks.

This global crisis in oil is making a problem out of everything it can touch. And believe me, it just about affects every single thing in this country, no, in this planet. As Conrado de Quiros once mentioned in his “There’s the Rub” column in PDI, this crisis on fuel, food, and every commodity like electricity, water, and such is here to stay. It’s not temporal. It’s not even gonna vanish in the long run. It is a crisis of forever–one that will ultimately pull as down on our knees (if we haven’t done this already) and pray (this I’m pretty sure only the desperate has done).

I cringe at the thought of how the more unfortunate people deal with the constant increasing of prices. For myself, I know I need not worry about it for my family will feed me as long as I need to be fed (which, judging from my inability to find a job, is gonna be pretty ‘long’) and my mother will support every little crazy thing I can think of. But, most Filipinos, are not as lucky as you and me. Most Filipinos, more than 80% to be exact, have to live by this creed: “Isang kahid, isang tuka.” It’s a small wonder then why almost half of this 80% result to stealing, robbing, and even killing just so they can feed themselves and their families. The greatest enemy of the eighth commandment is not temptation, it is hunger.  How do you expect a minimum wage earner to buy rice for P43 per kilo?  And send three children to school at that.  Juan dela Cruz is neither asking nor begging.  No, we are way pass asking for alms.  This is an altogether different route we’re trekking–one that is headed by a corrupt and shameless liar and her gang of worthless thieves.  So, if we’re going to question the losing moral values of the common Pinoy, why not look first on who stole from whom?

Is stealing a single loaf of bread more punishable than stealing what is more vital to us?  Our democracy.  True, democracy can neither fill our empty stomachs nor send children to school.  But it can change the way our lives are leading.  Democracy (which amounts to transparency and accountability these days) can feed us with dignity and self-preservation thereby, disallowing ourselves to resort to shameful acts of stealing and robbing and plain murdering.  Democracy (if it will ever grace us again) will make us fighters once again, standing up for what we ultimately believe in.  No, democracy will not stop hunger nor can it prevent us from getting poorer and poorer each day; but it will, at the very least, hinder the spread of desperation sweeping this country.  For as hunger is the nemesis of moral beliefs so is desperation to hope, to faith.

Because in these trying times, these are the things we need–hope to cling on and faith to hold on to.