About time

Benjamin Abalos’ sins have finally come back to haunt him. About time. He has gotten away with so much for so long. He may look pitiful now, as do Gloria and Mike Arroyo, an object lesson yet again on the fickleness or illusoriness of power—not unlike the rain-washed visage of Marcos looking out forlornly from a mountain in Agoo—but that is not an excuse to forgive and forget. About time, too, we forgot about the culture of awa and remembered the culture of justice.

He may look kawawa now, but it wasn’t long ago when he looked arrogantly at the world, daring it to bring him down. He was the one who awarded to Mega Pacific, a group that wasn’t fit to bid to computerize the Comelec, several billions to do just that. The contract was so egregious the Supreme Court had no trouble voiding it at once. Indeed, it was so egregious Merceditas Gutierrez  felt compelled to rule it a crime, except that she ruled it to be a crime without a criminal. She could not, or would not, name the one who committed it. Abalos laughed all the way to the bank. As far as I know, the money hasn’t been returned yet to the taxpayers.

About time we put a criminal to the crime.  Lilian Suan-Radam of South Cotabato and Yogie Martirizar of North Cotabato have done just that. Their accusations are clear and specific. It was Abalos himself who ordered that they produce a 12-0 result in the senatorial race of 2007 in favor of administration candidates. A thing we already know but can do with this kind of corroboration. The test of the pudding is in the eating: Those places, like Maguindanao, did produce the statistical improbability, never mind the drug-induced proposition, of Arroyo’s subalterns blanking out the candidates opposed to her. The 2010 elections showed how gargantuan the lie was. The opposite was in fact true. Nearly all (all would have been a statistical improbability, too) of Gloria’s spawns lost all over the country.

Abalos of course denies their charge, saying he in fact had ordered Suan-Radam and Martirizar arrested in 2007. “These people are fugitives from the law … they have been hiding for the past four years.” That is all very well, if we could only trust Abalos’ eyesight. Virgilio Garcillano was a bona fide fugitive, having been ordered by the Senate to be arrested on sight—we have only Abalos’ word he ordered the arrest of the Cotabato officials—and yet despite Garcillano’s word that he never hid, he was just palaboy-laboy in Cagayan de Oro, Abalos never espied him and turned him over to the authorities.

No, you won’t get away this time. Though I wouldn’t mind if you do what you do best, which is to look out for Number One and tell all you know about your former boss.

It’s a relief that we’re finally doing something to clean up the Comelec, and nothing comes better than prosecuting its former chief to put the fear of God or government in the commissioners. No office is more important, or sacred, than the Comelec. It is the bedrock of democracy, the one office that assures that the will of the people is expressed, that the will of the people is done. It is the one office that ensures that the people are ruled only by the rulers that they want, that they have given their mandate to.

Yet no office in this country has been more trashed. By the previous regime more than any other, with the sole exception of the Marcos one which held no real elections to begin with. But the way the Comelec conducted the elections of 2007 in Muslim Mindanao was not a far cry from the way the Comelec conducted the elections of 1978 in Metro Manila when no Laban candidate, including Ninoy Aquino, won, and Imelda Marcos topped the list of winners.

Over the years, the Comelec has been a much coveted office, despite the pay of its officials being a pittance. For reasons the public knows only too well. The prime qualification of its members is an inability to count, or count right, supplanted instead by a talent to simulate credibility in incredible results, or sow the seeds of doubt thereof in the public mind. Unfortunately with the tacit complicity of the public, quite apart from the open one of the bishops. A presidential candidate cheats massively and we say, “Everybody cheats anyway.” A presidential candidate steals the vote, and we say, “What else is new?” Da Queen and not the Da King occupies Malacañang and we say, “Let’s move on.”

It’s time government, like Jesus Christ, bore down on the merchants and cleansed the temple, shouting, “My house is a house of prayer, but you have made it an outlet for borjers.”

My only caveat here is this: Why are we so riveted toward the 2007 elections? Before 2007, there was 2004, and that produced an even bigger scale of cheating, that produced an even bigger catastrophe. Specifically, why is Virgilio Garcilliano still at large? The cheating in the 2007 is derivative, the cheating in 2004 is primary. Without the second, there would not be the first. Without “Hello, Garci,” there would not be “Goodbye, Koko.” Or nearly so. By all means let’s hale Abalos to court, but why should we forget Garci while at it? Why should we forget Arroyo while at it? Talk of putting a criminal to a crime, talk of putting a face to an iniquity. Garcillano is the ultimate mug of electoral iniquity, Arroyo is the ultimate mask of presidential perfidy.

We’ve had no end of people, noble and nefarious, streaming forth of late volunteering to tell all they know about the cheating in 2004 and 2007. So why haven’t we made any arrests? Why haven’t we filed cases against the cheaters? Why haven’t we dragged their sorry carcasses to jail to await their day in court? I know the wheels of justice grind slowly, but must they grind this slow?

About time we cranked them up a notch or two.