Baseless things

“Baseless accusations compelled me to leave.”

That was what Miguel Zubiri said when asked by reporters about his sudden decision to resign from the Senate. That has got to be the quote of the year.

Zubiri elaborated thus: “I did not cheat or ask anyone to cheat for me and my family. We would never tolerate any form of electoral fraud.” But with both Zaldy Ampatuan and Lintang Bedol admitting they rigged the elections in Maguindanao, he was forced to reconsider his post. “It’s a serious accusation, coming from two high officials of a province, like Mr. Ampatuan and Mr. Bedol.That means they know what happened, and I told myself that I don’t want the people to doubt my victory.”

The revelations by Ampatuan and Bedol have taken their toll. “My wife has had sleepless nights. My mother, who has undergone two major brain operations, is now constantly suffering physically and emotionally, together with my siblings who have been hurt and affected by such unfounded and baseless accusations…. My political detractors began calling me ugly names and sullying the name of my family.”

I’m sorry but I have neither sympathy nor admiration for his cause. Shortly after the 2007 elections, I wrote a column saying he should do then what he has done today and say then what he is saying today. The time for all that was four years ago, not now. I said then that Zubiri was still young and personable he could always wait till the next elections to press his cause. If he persisted in claiming a position that wasn’t his, he would end up like Esau selling his birthright for a pot of porridge, or in this case trading off his political future for a brief crack at the present. He refused to listen.

Dooming himself in the process. This country may be amnesiac but some things it won’t forget. Being known as Ampatuan’s and Bedol’s spawn is one of them. Koko Pimentel is certainly not going to forget and may be expected only to constantly remind the world of it.

Zubiri may not excuse himself by claiming ignorance. He himself deliberately tried to muddle the issue by calling for a recount of all votes when only Maguindanao patently showed political mayhem of the sort the Ampatuans would later translate into physical terms. It went past reasonable judgment to plain common sense. Where else in the country did you have 19 out of 37 senatorial candidates having zero votes? Where else in the country did you have all of the opposition candidates having zero votes? Where else in the country did you have an Ilocano like Chavit Singson being so loved in Maguindanao he topped the field, only to be replaced by Zubiri for that honored spot just when he needed it?

The election results were so unbelievable Benjamin Abalos himself, who is no stranger to unbelievable things having authored a good many of them, wanted the Maguindanao results scrapped. That was before he accidentally bumped—so he said—into Zubiri’s father while having lugao for breakfast at Shangri-la. Wow, pare, lugaw in Shang, the rest of us just have it in lugawans. And faster than you can say, “Zu bi it,” the Maguindanao votes got counted and Zubiri was it.

Zubiri’s resignation, for all its novelty—it’s not every day a senator accused of dagdag-bawas resigns any more than it’s every day a general accused of corruption shoots himself in the heart—doesn’t make things better, it makes them worse. It reeks of political calculation. It has carrot and stick written all over it. The stick is that Zubiri wants to avoid prosecution for electoral fraud by suggesting that though he was a beneficiary of it, he never had a hand in it. The carrot is that, who knows, stranger things have happened in this country, maybe its inhabitants will no longer remember it in 2013 and he can revive his comatose career.

Wrong on both counts.

His resignation, as Leila de Lima says, is not an impediment to having the Furies hound him to the ends of the earth. And if anything, this country will not forget his soon-to-be famous line: “Baseless accusations compelled me to leave.”

One never leaves on the basis of baseless accusations, one fights them till the end. If for that alone, Zubiri will have forfeited his right to public office. Filipinos may forgive many things, but not running away from wrongful accusation, from false accusation, from baseless accusation. That does not speak very well of character. But since no one believes the accusation is baseless anyway, that statement won’t be seen as a form of self-destruction, it will be seen only as a font of text jokes.

The one who deserves sympathy and admiration is Koko Pimentel, as well indeed as his father, Nene. They’re the ones who have suffered sleepless nights for years, wondering how God could send lightning twice upon this earth, one aimed at the father and the other at the son. Lest we forget, the elder Pimentel accused Juan Ponce Enrile of dagdag-bawas in 1995, and Enrile never resigned, he just brazened it out. But who knows? Strange things do happen in this country, maybe Nene will get justice too in time.

They are the ones who have endured pain and anguish with Jobian fortitude fighting off the taunts of their oppressors, fighting off the slurs on their name by their enemies, fighting off the sniggers of a jaded public about father and son being losers. I don’t know that they or their kin have had surgeries as a result of being victims of cheating, they probably didn’t need them. They are hardy folk, they are steadfast folk, they are fighters. I share their joy in their hour of victory, I share their elation in their hour of vindication. Baseless victories never daunted them. Baseless proclamations never stopped them dead in their tracks.

Baneful iniquities never drove them away.