“Argument is meant to reveal the truth, not to create it. “

Edward de Bono, British physician and inventor

“What next?” was the question thrown high up in the air in the explosion and fall-out of the broadband network scandal in the first two weeks of February. This week and in the coming weeks, it is joined to a second question: “Who do we believe?”

A battle for credibility is aflame in the media, on campuses, in executive penthouses, government offices, on the streets. Everyday this struggle for truth begins for me in my own e-mail Inbox. Here, for instance, is a letter from the e-mail address of a “Dave Yuzon,” but signed by a “Dindo Soriano”:

Dear Ms. Mayuga,

Dindo G. Soriano

Wiretapping is not “beside the point,” but there was enough in this letter to sound like a quest for truth. So I wrote back (addressing not “Mr. Soriano” but “Mr. Yuzon” as the “From” box said), saying that Lozada’s and young de Venecia’s voices could have been edited to suit a storyline, the way the raw wiretapped Garci tapes were edited into different versions. (That was a first version waved in media faces by Presidential spokesman Ignacio Bunye in June, 2005.) I also asked the letter-writer, “Are you sure you came to the right conclusion?”

Two successive replies developed the thesis of a lying whistleblower further, in the bargain reminding me of my media obligation to fairness. That sounded less earnest than pushy. This time “Dindo Soriano” had also switched to the name “Dave Yuzon.” Hmm…who was I really corresponding with? Here are the two succeeding e-mails. Judge their authenticity with me and be warned. (BTW, isn’t “Yuzon” also a cabalen surname?)

Next wrote one Noel Verzosa, who gives his location as Las Vegas, Nevada. His point: “The only reason Lozada is singing like a canary is because his take in the aborted broadband deal was a paltry P50,000. This guy was up to his eyeballs in graft like the rest of them. If he is as self-righteous as he claims he is he should have exposed all the other shady deals he was privy to a long time ago.”

Here’s the whole letter. This one made me wonder how a reader could be so sure “the only reason Lozada is singing like a canary” is greed. Like Yuzon/Soriano, Verzosa totally missed the minute care I took to say that I believed Lozada had been “kidnapped” to a heroism made all the more striking by admission of his sins.

I could only wonder: Is this reader some kind of seer who can read the hearts of men? If not, is he speaking for himself? If not, who is he speaking for? And could he apply his moral yardstick for Lozada and de Venecia to himself?

By now, memories of “Hello, Garci?” whispered two words: “Rembrandt Hotel.” In the first heat of that scandal in 2005, a Palace source told me that Rembrandt Hotel was where Gloria Arroyo’s cabalen, KAMPI party leader and soon-to-be DILG secretary Ronaldo Puno (past master of dirty tricks operations in four presidencies, a fellow Atenean volunteered back then) was directing government “media management” operations. In 2008 Rembrandt Hotel was where the police team that picked up Jun Lozada at the airport suggested they bring him from Outback Restaurant.

Columnists are not omniscient, but they do develop a nose for motive and a feel for interrelated truth, cunning half-truth and hidden lie between the lines. As the pendulum swung back, it next brought an earnest e-mail from Jenifer Xavier in direct contrast to the ringing certitude of the two earlier letter-writers:

“I feel sad that the majority of people who do not have cable TV, or cannot access the Internet (where I read the PDI online) are not given the opportunity to see for themselves the live coverage of the Senate hearing on local channels since most of the networks carry inane day-time soap operas instead of more relevant events. No one even did a coverage of the EDSA 1 celebration or the Mass in Baclaran that day, and yet the Oscars were on live.

“As hurtful as it sounds, maybe JDV was right when he said in his last speech as Speaker of the House - the entire country is for sale. That everything and everyone can be bought. I pray JDV was wrong.”

Jenifer’s worried scan of the Philippine airwaves and how they keep the Filipino majority in a complaisant fools’ paradise throws us all right back to the Marcos years. Is it because the same warped mind is back as Grand Puppeteer, making deeper inroads in the public mind with greater cunning and ruthlessness?

In the present raging war between inconvenient truth and profitable lie, even the Catholic bishops have been reduced to just another sector divided – between those willing to let the present Palace occupant extend her self-serving trajectory as she throws benefits their way, and those now staking out their conviction that our nation can ill afford her and her ilk much longer.

As one revelation trips on the heels of the next, two of the brightest minds in the Philippine media, Ricky Carandang of ANC and Manolo Quezon of the Inquirer, have just offered another reason why the Arroyo regime is a clear and present danger to the country. Their related stories have yet to explode on the streets à la Lozada, but its implications to the Filipino future are dizzying.

Here, in print, is Carandang, a thorough professional who chooses his words with great care. And here is Quezon on strategic corruption of the Catholic hierarchy also sweeping the South China Sea, creeping back to our shores like an oil spill dwarfing Exxon Valdez.

Those two links at the end of Quezon’s column are vital to the national interest so let me post them here again. One leads to an even-handed foreign journalist’s article on Arroyo, China, Asean and the Spratlys.. The other leads to the media investigation whose findings made even the well-tempered Carandang cry “treason.”. Together they shed light on how more taxpayers’ money is being spent to distort and/or hide the truth from a nation that will be paying for a string of lies into the next generations, outdoing even the damage of the Marcos years.

But pull back from righteous anger for a moment. Let the outlines of poetic truth no earthly power can deliver rise over the fray. Yes, it’s right that a project to usher the whole archipelago into the Information Age should begin in a season of dark secrets exploding into the light. And yes, it’s right that the spark against corruption siphoning China’s Official Development Assistance into already fat private pockets has been lit by an accidental hero of a probinsyanong Intsik paying back Inang Bayan in the name of a grateful immigrant father.

Sometimes justice begins with a stunning symmetry. With Jun Lozada and Dante Madriaga, however, our nation clearly needs to sweat it out a while longer.

Respond to: slmayuga@yahoo.com