The ‘Peanut Butter Defense’

Senator Jinggoy Estrada wasted few of the 6,000-plus words in his privilege speech on the Senate floor to refute the plunder charges filed against him in the Office of the Ombudsman. He forfeited, therefore, the chance that he claimed he was denied “to confront the evidence.”

He did not explain why he decided to direct his Priority Development Assistance Fund to the Napoles NGOs. He did not detail the benefits that his projects delivered to the community. He took a different strategy, the essence of which the Inquirer banner headline on Sept. 26 distilled as: “Jinggoy rats on colleagues.”

Litigation lawyers, when confronted with damning evidence, joke that the respondent’s recourse is to hide behind the “Peanut Butter Defense”—spread the blame. One website condensed the thrust of this strategy thus: “I am a thief, but I am not the only one.”

But Senator Jinggoy spreads the blame beyond personalities. After brushing his colleagues with the black paint of corruption, he generously excuses them and himself by blaming the system: “I believe that we are all victims of a flawed system, which is so ingrained that it has been institutionalized.”

By casting all who work within the flawed system as “victims,” he again suggests that all senators disposed of the PDAF as he did, even as he graciously covers them with the protective cloak of victimhood. But Senator Jinggoy’s assessment of the system as “flawed,” even if self-serving, is one point in his speech few will dispute.

The spin recalls another old joke, morbid, cynical, and, because factually accurate in its details, black-humor-funny. A young man not yet of legal age kills his father and mother to collect on their insurance benefits. He then appears before judge and jury and pleads for clemency—because he is a minor and an orphan.

Apart from the fact that he is no minor, Senator Jinggoy takes an altogether too narrow a view of the “system.” Thus, his concluding statement in Filipino, narrowly focused and innocuous, fails to rise to the challenge of changing what he acknowledges as an “ingrained” mentality:

“We can only speak of a truly straight path once the rotten system has been changed, the corruption corrected and the wrong made right” (my free translation).

The senator omitted the issue of punishment of the guilty—an element essential to excising a defect deeply embedded in the system.

Variants of the pork barrel system have been in play for many years. The pained response of various legislators to the proposed abolition of the PDAF suggests their familiarity with its uses for political purposes. Far from being surprised by the system, they looked forward to participating in it.

The Peanut Butter Defense is weak because, sadly, prevailing laws still permit the lawmakers to receive pork barrel funds. But Senator Jinggoy did succeed in muddying the waters. The media have played up the question of whether the administration had the authority to channel budgetary savings to legislators through the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP).

No one has so far surfaced evidence of corruption in the use of DAP funds. But the issue that has provoked public outrage about PDAF is how the legislators used the funds entrusted to them.

Given the family background and track record in politics, can anyone believe that Senator Jinggoy reached the Senate virginally innocent of potential pork barrel opportunities? Like the appeal of the orphaned young man in the joke, Senator Jinggoy’s self-portrayal as “victim” strikes a discordant note.

The “Orphan Defense” is both weak and offensive, especially to those who voted for the accused legislators. Granting that the system was flawed, it begs the question of responsibility for creating the conditions that corrupted the system.

Senators are not ordinary mortals helplessly caught in a web of structures they are powerless to alter. They hold political positions of enormous powers. As movers and shakers at the center of the web, they cannot easily disclaim responsibility for cultivating and embedding the pork barrel mentality.

It was the individual and collective obligation of Senators Jinggoy, Ramon Revilla Jr. and Juan Ponce Enrile—as well as their colleagues in the legislature—to correct the flaws of the system, not to institutionalize and exploit them for personal gain. With their potential involvement in crimes now exposed, they bemoan their plight as victims of the flawed system they helped to create and now promise to reform.

How many Filipinos truly benefited from the millions of pesos released from the senators’ PDAF through the Napoles NGOs? How many lives might have been lost because funds were unjustly denied to the right programs and their rightful beneficiaries?

If people raging against the pork barrel corruption now appear bloodthirsty in their demand for justice, can they be blamed? They know they are the real victims.

Edilberto C. de Jesus ([email protected]) is professor emeritus at the Asian Institute of Management.