Conrad’s nerve

Conrad de Quiros wrote that “it’s Joker’s comments about what happened during Erap’s impeachment that take[s) the cake… [His] ingratitude to the thing that swept [him] to power. x x x, Why can’t we afford another demonstration of People Power, full or partial, if it came to that…” And so on and so forth. (Inquirer, 1/2/12)

I do not owe my ascension to the Senate to People Power in the streets, but to the circumspect choice of the electorate under the Constitution and by the elections. I did not join Edsa II. I was never swept into the Senate, as I always prefer to attain my positions legally.

In the struggle against martial law, against human rights abuses, and the restoration of democracy, De Quiros was no mere passive observer but a zealous advocate of the Marcos dictatorship even after it fell, and long after People Power had installed the mother of the boy he now flatters. Throughout martial law, he was comfortably ensconced and cradled in the Marcos think tank in UP’s then Philippine Center for Advanced Studies, which prepared position papers and drafted President Marcos’ speeches.

I responded to an Inquirer interview that “I could sense the determination of my (Senate) colleagues to stay objective,” and added that “what we should guard against is not the trial per se but the commentaries (because) . . . the media would be the annotators of what is happening.” (Inquirer, 12/30/11)

What is wrong with cautioning colleagues who are to sit as judges from being unduly influenced by outside commentary? The Senate may so choose to eschew newspapers and broadcast media during the trial to keep its mind free from everything but the law and the evidence.

The media whose suppression during martial law De Quiros, as a collaborator, abetted is free to do what they want and the Senate is free and well-advised to ignore them during this solemn proceedings that De Quiros has done everything to belittle, though without any effect, for who can forget whence he came and what he did before he fell in a trance on the road to Palace favors?

Indeed it is easy—not to say cheap—to be brave in a multitude, impertinent from behind the powerful, and insulting to those whose answers cannot be heard, will not be published or broadcast. It is easy to be eloquent before the dumb, for the oppressors to clamor for justice against those to whom they deny it.

Scan De Quiros’ track record vis-à-vis the Aquino family, from Ninoy up to Noynoy. He was not for Ninoy, he was for Marcos. He called Cory “Queen of Darkness,” and pummeled her during the Hacienda Luisita massacre in 2004 and, thereafter, alluding to P-Noy as the head of the security agency that he claims took many farmers’ lives.

But when everyone he hated had died (Ninoy, then Cory), De Quiros saw an opening through which he might obscurely pass into the favor of their son who had launched his unstoppable candidacy. He has since stuck to Noynoy like a mollusk to a rock and never more tenaciously than when P-Noy is wrong. This may finally be a lifetime commitment, for mollusks live up to 150 years.

—SEN. JOKER P. ARROYO