MANILA, Philippines - In the cloud cuckoo-land where Miriam Defensor-Santiago’s consciousness dwells, where might makes right and the letter trumps the spirit of the law, the best she can offer the electorate is to whinny like an old nag in a pale imitation of the free-spirited mare she once was. Senator Nightmare, at least, can still make the country laugh, which explains the kind of eye-rolling affection in which she’s still held. Yet her antics reveal the essential futility of her position as a formerly free-spirited prisoner in the administration stable of draft animals.

She and the other curious caricatures of their former selves, from toothless so-called People’s Dragons to the Christian Senator from Maguindanao to the formerly awe-inspiring Lord of Port Irene, are now confronted with the ghost of reputable Senates past.

The Senate, if you’ll recall, conducted hearings on the fertilizer scam from October to December 2005. Joc-Joc Bolante, Rotary notable and administration lackey, was summoned to the Senate to explain why funds for fertilizer seem to have passed from pocket to pocket without any real fertilizer actually being bought, sold, much less used. His response was to ignore the subpoena and go abroad instead, in the tradition of Garcillano and Lozada. In response, the Senate cited him for contempt and ordered his arrest. Instead of being able to do a Garcillano or a Lozada (hide away overseas until the government could declare the coast was clear back home), Bolante got stuck in America in July 2006, after the US Embassy revoked his visa just as he arrived in Los Angeles.

Meanwhile, Ramon Magsaysay Jr. did his job and put together a damning report saying there was enough evidence to indict Bolante and invited the Ombudsman to take the evidence and do her job. She filed away evidence and potential charges and was notable only in her lack of action on the case.

Fast forward to Bolante wrapping up his detention time in a Federal facility and his impending deportation after he lost every appeal to stay in jail rather than face the music at home. But the legal weevils in the executive department have been busy, busy, busy figuring out how to keep everyone’s favorite Rotarian from submitting to a senatorial four-way test.

Bolante’s lawyers transmitted an appeal to the Supreme Court, written on Office of the Solicitor-General stationery, either a case of fraudulently usurping public authority for the purpose of influence-peddling, or yet another demonstration of how brazen our officialdom is. In either case, in the pro-forma culture bred by the present dispensation, what matters is not the appearance of impropriety here but the reality that an increasingly pliable judiciary has been given an opening to intervene on Bolante’s behalf.

Do I sound skeptical about our glorious justices in the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court? You bet; the CA (of glorious “Lozada is alive and so he was never kidnapped” memory) most recently intervened on Bolante’s behalf after the Anti Money-Laundering Council, working on the information provided by former Senator Magsaysay’s committee, got the court to freeze 70 accounts associated with Bolante and friends.

This in turn was based on the Philippine National Bank saying 12 suspicious transactions involving accounts Bolante had been associated with had transpired. But then the CA backpedaled and instructed the Anti Money-Laundering Council to submit more evidence. This means the legal weevils can argue things are now sub judice.

So once again, the razzle-dazzle of officialdom is being harnessed to help a fugitive from justice. The press secretary smoothly declares Bolante’s merely a private citizen and on his own, while the Solicitor-General stationery’s used to argue against a Senate warrant of arrest before a Palace-packed Supreme Court, with the Court of Appeals laying down the predicate for the judicial equivalent of executive privilege: “I am sorry, it is sub judice, your honor,” which we can expect to hear if Bolante ends up before the Senate after all.

The CA has also laid down the basis for the PNP, PSG and who knows, even the Department of Energy police, whisking away Bolante to the safety of Ayala Alabang as the Senate sergeant-at-arms, presuming he’s given authority by the Senate president to do so, waits at the Naia to enforce the upper house’s warrant of arrest.

But isn’t this old news? Why the fuss?

What Bolante did was to create the modus operandi for the laundering of public funds into private pockets, under the cover of helping agriculture. The fertilizer model inspired, among other things, the more recent Swine Scam so ably documented by good old “Hairy” Roque.

Jun Magsaysay, a conscientious, tidy and methodical man, did his job by issuing a report on what had already been discovered, the culpability that could already be assigned, while indicating the things that still needed to be discovered and how Bolante still had many questions to answer.

To argue that the Senate has concluded its business as far as the fertilizer scam is concerned, because of this report, is like saying you can dispense with an annual report because reports were issued for the first two quarters of the year. Or that the many—and multiplying—charges against the President have been resolved because the House voted to throw them out without bothering to really investigate each one.

So we shall see what we shall see: whether it will turn out, as veteran newsman Ding Gagelonia reported on his blog, that Bolante is actually here, having been smuggled in via Clark; or Bolante will come home only to refuse to face the music. But what is obvious even to Jose de Venecia Jr.—much as it must discombobulate my dear colleague Bel Cunanan—is that really, enough is enough and the whole kit and caboodle of those in cahoots with the President have got to be held to account, now. There won’t be any later.