JOSE de Venecia Jr. is high on the current list of the most disreputable public servants in the Republic of the Philippines. He is topped only by his former partner in many suspected anomalies, his former benefactor and beneficiary, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. She was his running mate in his unsuccessful bid for the presidency in 1998. But she won as vice president and later succeeded President Estrada when he was ousted in 2001. Since then the roles of GMA and JDV have been reversed, with Gloria as top banana and Joe as her obedient flunky.
The political liaison between the two remained effective until lately, with Ms Arroyo maintaining him as Speaker of the House of Representatives and the loyal Joe marshaling his forces to defend her every time a complaint for impeachment was filed against her. When 10 members of her Cabinet quit in disgust over her administration and public opinion mounted against her because of the “Hello, Garci” scandal, he claims he dissuaded her from retiring. The general belief, though, is that it was President Ramos who made her stay put and so should bear the blame for his bad advice.
The break between the two happened early this year when Joe’s son and namesake exposed the ZTE contract as corrupted by multimillion-dollar bribes received by high government officials, with the bizarre revelations ultimately implicating GMA herself. De Venecia naturally sided with his son and was consequently removed as Speaker for his disloyalty to the President. Further disclosures of the anomalies in the agreement eventually led to Ms Arroyo herself going to China to cancel it. But the stench of that scandal continues even now to tarnish her tenure and further deepen the animosity between her and De Venecia.
In detailed testimony last week before the chamber he long headed, the former Speaker spoke of the active role of the President and her husband in the negotiation of the ZTE contract, with the assistance of supporting players like former Comelec chairman Benjamin Abalos and then Neda head Romulo Neri. The Supreme Court itself joined the cast by holding that the Senate questions Neri refused to answer were covered by Ms Arroyo’s executive privilege.
As serious as Joe’s accusations are against the Arroyo couple, many people are not disposed to accept them because they come from what they call a polluted source. They believe that as a former ally and co-worker of President Arroyo in many questionable activities, De Venecia is as guilty as she is and does not deserve to be believed any more than the official he is now denouncing. To them, assuming Ms Arroyo is as guilty as he says she is, De Venecia shares her deceptions in equal degree and so should also be disbelieved as a co-principal offender.
Those are valid views held by reasonable persons based on human experience and intelligent cogitation. They are not the inventions of spiteful minds but the naive conviction that men (and women as well) are motivated by the best of intentions and not the schemes of rascals preying on easy victims. Although such an ideal feeling is still possible in this skeptical age, the cautious attitude of most people these days is to doubt the conduct of public men (and women) as dictated by personal interest rather than the common weal. That is why I cannot blame them for distrusting the angry tirade of Jose de Venecia against Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo as nothing more than his vengeful reaction to his removal as Speaker of the lower House.
While respecting this probably correct conclusion, I have a different view of the situation. I feel that although Jose de Venecia is not the most truthful of men, he is not lying when he speaks these days of Ms Arroyo. He does not have to lie about his former leader’s activities, ambitions, plans, secrets she has shared with him like the Garci tapes and Bolante’s escapade, flatterers, opportunists, and her suspected enemies in the chamber he used to head. These are things he learned from and about her during their long harmonious association and now remembers vividly like a witness for the prosecution.
My most compelling reason, of course, is the belief that it is best to encourage him to speak about the misconduct of the President of the Philippines instead of dismissing all his charges against her as pure prevarications. Jose de Venecia is not an oppositionist merely concocting the abuses of the government but an official who has actually led in its operations, good and bad. Allowing him to speak now about them will serve the people’s right to transparency and information that, hopefully, will lead to the correction of the many ills of officialdom and the punishment of its wrongdoers.
So I say, let Jose de Venecia Jr. continue to speak against Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo instead of silencing him with our summary rejection. Let us hear what he has to say, that we may judge it not with a prejudiced mind but as broad-minded and perceptive citizens of this confused Republic. Let us be guided by the age-old wisdom of the great principle of due process that says: “Strike, but hear me first!” Even the guilty have that right.
