Reckoning

Detaining Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in a police facility, say Gregorio Honasan and Miriam Santiago, will suck for the country.

First off, says Honasan, it will put a chill in the hearts of foreign investors. “The world is watching, and whatever way we treat the ex-president would send a strong message of what we are to the rest of the world. If the ailing Arroyo is not given consideration, foreign investors would think, ‘If this is how they behave, why would we invest?’ I don’t see anything wrong with house arrest.”

Humiliating Arroyo, says Santiago, “will damage democracy and our institutions; it will damage the presidency.” The case of former President Joseph Estrada should serve as precedent and guideline. “First, he was in the detention cell (in Sta. Rosa, Laguna), then [at Veterans Memorial] hospital, then in his own house [in Tanay, Rizal]. The ending was that he was allowed to stay in his farm and that was the correct decision because he never intended to run away. So we should also give other ex-presidents the same kind of presumption.”

What arrant nonsense.

Whether Arroyo is ailing or not is no longer a matter for debate. Her own doctors say her condition is not lethal, it is merely karmic. Her own doctors say that she is not getting worse, she is getting better. Her own doctors say she need not be confined in a hospital, she can thrive perfectly well outside of it. To continue to refer, and defer, to her as ailing is to indulge in her favorite pastime, which is to call black white and white black.

But of course the world is watching and will judge us by what we do. Honasan (and Santiago) may not know it, but the world’s peoples are not fools and can still tell right from wrong. They did not deride America when America handcuffed Bernard Madoff and shoved him into a black-and-white en route to a local jail. They applauded it. Doing so is not called humiliation, it is called justice. The humiliation, in any case where it is felt by the arrestee, is not gratuitous, it is richly deserved. People who commit crimes deserve to feel shame. People who commit monstrous crimes deserve to be monstrously shamed.

If Arroyo is not given consideration, the foreign investors will shy away? Is this guy for real? In fact, the opposite is true. If Arroyo is given consideration, the foreign investors will flock to Haiti. If Arroyo is given consideration, the foreign investors will say, “If this is how they behave, then we leave them to wallow in their excrement, why should we want to invest in a country that cannot punish someone who made the Chinese look like crooks when she was the one jacking up the cost of the deal? If Arroyo is given consideration, then the foreign investors will say, “If this is how they behave, which is to give coup plotters 10 pushups and crooks the ill-gotten comforts of their ill-gotten surroundings in an ill-plotted arrest, why in hell should we think our freaking money is safe with them?”

As to Santiago’s lament, but of course Erap’s fate may not serve as precedent or guidepost on how Arroyo ought to be treated. How Arroyo dealt with Erap had nothing to do with principle, it had everything to do with expedience. It had nothing to do with justice, it had everything to do with calculation. It had nothing to do with crime and punishment, it had everything to do with power or how to keep it.

Though Arroyo was a legitimate president when she arrested Erap—courtesy of Edsa 2—she was not a welcome one. People Power did not happen because of her, it happened in spite of her. Her decisions on where to put Erap had nothing to do with the gravity of his crimes and a just punishment for them. It had to do with the tenuousness of her hold on power and how to consolidate it. Of course, she had to treat Erap with “consideration.” She could not afford to antagonize his camp. Not while she was a mere beneficiary of Edsa, and certainly not after she became the not-so-mere beneficiary of cheating.

What we have now is worlds different from then. Now we have someone in custody whose sins are far graver than Erap’s; now we have someone in charge whose virtues are far removed from Arroyo. Now we have someone who, like Marcos, has never more richly deserved punishment; now we have someone, who like Cory, has never more richly deserved to pass judgment. P-Noy can afford to be stern, P-Noy can afford to be resolute, P-Noy can afford to be just. In fact the people expect him to be so. The people demand that he be so.

The notion that putting Arroyo in a detention center will damage democracy, our institutions, and the presidency is plain idiotic. What damages, and has damaged, democracy is ruling without a mandate; what restores it is punishing the person who ruled so. What damages, and has damaged, our institutions is exalting the wicked and punishing and humbling the innocent; what restores it is punishing the person who did so. What damages, and has damaged, the presidency is stealing the vote; what restores it is putting the person who did so behind bars.

Indeed, what damages, and has damaged, democracy, our institutions, and the presidency is helping someone wreak all of the above. Which Honasan and Santiago did then, and which they do now. Lest we forget, they were two of the characters who, along with Juan Ponce Enrile, kept egging the great unshod in the farcical, and quite tragic, “Edsa 3” to “sugod, sugod” Malacañang. And turning around completely immediately afterward. Which was what made the thing tragic apart from farcical:  that the poor would be made pawns by people utterly without principle, utterly without loyalty, utterly without conscience. And they presume to tell us what’s fair? And Santiago wants to become an international judge?

Your day will come too.