Body language

Was Ruby Tuason credible?

But of course she was. We all knew pretty much what she would say at the Senate last Thursday, we had advance notices of it, not least from Justice Secretary Leila de Lima. The only question was how.

And the only answer was: Triumphantly.

The senators in attendance would be at pains to find new ways to add to De Lima’s earlier description of Tuason’s testimony as a “slam dunk.” “A three-point shot,” the buzzer-beater that won the game, enthused Teofisto Guingona III, chair of the committee and moderator of the hearing. Which drew the ire of Jinggoy Estrada, one of the two subjects of

Tuason’s presentation of a study in corruption, who also gave a basketball metaphor in reaction. An “offensive foul,” he complained, which owed only to TJ trying to earn  pogi  points for 2016.

He sought to dismiss Tuason’s testimony thus: “It is quite obvious from Mrs. Tuason’s body language… that she had no recollection of events on her own. She had to confer with Benhur Luy and constantly referred to her affidavit and other papers. If she is really telling the truth, why can’t she recall such instances from her own memory and not rely from written statement? Mrs. Tuason is merely being fed all this information.”

What made this hilariously ironic, or ironically hilarious, is that Jinggoy read this from his own prepared written statement. If you can’t trust yourself to say exactly what you feel at this very moment, how can you trust yourself to say exactly what you did years ago? Naturally you need to confer with others to check your recollection of things. That was what the martial law human rights victims did, confer with each other, to recall their ordeal—even if torture is not a thing you easily forget—when they executed their affidavits in the class suit against Marcos. You want to get the details as accurately as possible.

Particularly, as in Tuason’s case, when you’re dealing with dates and vast sums of money. You’d be a fool not to check your 62-year-old memory against your documents. And Tuason is no fool.

More than that, Jinggoy must have been watching another TV program to have found something amiss with Tuason’s body language. Tuason was perfectly calm and composed, like someone who was finally at peace with herself. That was the first thing that struck you because she had described herself earlier as having been stressed out, which was when she first decided to reveal to the world how she brokered the transactions between Napoles and Estrada and Juan Ponce Enrile, or Gigi Reyes. It wasn’t just that she would be damning herself, it was also that she would be damning others, others being, as in the case of Estrada, hitherto close friends. It brought on sleepless nights.

There was none of that at the Senate. She was clearheaded, assured, and forthcoming, like Benhur Luy some months ago, speaking only about things she personally knew. Which made Miriam Santiago and Antonio Trillanes  bitin, and drove them to assert she knew more than she was saying. But that is their lookout, if they want to propose things like that. Tuason herself showed none of the hesitation, nervousness, fidgeting, evasiveness, “I don’t remember” answers, Napoles did when she appeared there. Certainly, she showed none of the signs of being frazzled that people who have “merely been fed information” do.

In fact, she looked every inch  a witness who, if you asked her to repeat her story 20 times, will give you the same story 20 times, give or take a minor variation or two. Which is how interrogators trip up suspects who are lying: They’ll stray from the details at some point when tiredness and sleeplessness set in. Tuason was unwavering on those details: She was clear on how much money she brought to Jinggoy and Gigi Reyes, how she brought it to them, where and when, who received them, how she assured her principal, Napoles, that payment had been made. She was even clear on how much she herself got from all this, 5 percent all the way.

What in fact is amiss is not Tuason’s body language, it is Jinggoy’s. To paraphrase him, it is quite obvious from Jinggoy’s body language that he is at his wits’ end and doesn’t know what to do. He’s fallen on quicksand, and the more he thrashes about, the faster he sinks.

His body language registers desperation. He looked not unlike this when he came out half a year ago, except that he opted to take the offensive rather than the defensive then, accusing P-Noy of buying off the senators during the Corona impeachment trial rather than answering the charges against him. Which surprisingly got a lot of traction. This time around he has been reduced to defending himself, he has no one to redirect or distract the public’s attention toward other than Tuason herself.

Alas—for him—he can’t supply a motive for Tuason to want to malign him. He proposes that that motive is that Tuason cannot abide jail, as she herself has admitted; but if so, why didn’t Tuason just stay put in the United States or move to some country that has no extradition treaty with the Philippines? Why go to the extent of bearing witness against friends—which is all the riskier if it is false witness as he suggests?

All Jinggoy has succeeded in doing this time around is make himself look like a husband who has been caught by his wife in bed with another woman but has adopted a policy of denying it to death. His explanation that Tuason was in fact bringing him trays of crisp sandwiches in lieu of crisp peso bills—which is bound to launch a thousand text jokes—sounds not unlike the husband saying, “I tripped on my way to bed and landed on top of her—how could I have known anybody would be there?” Talk of sex, lies and videotape.

Talk of body language.