The Joker

The Joker is still wild.

He talks of spies and moles and handlers. He has been watching too many James Bond movies when he should really be preparing for the impeachment of Renato Corona. But then, why should he? He has already made up his mind on it.

The concept of spies and moles and handlers of course does not come from Ian Fleming, it comes from John Le Carre. But I doubt he has read Le Carre. I doubt he even reads, he seems to take his cue from komiks.

I’ve always known The Joker had a towering ego, he has always thought the world revolved around him. But he exceeds even himself on this one. What he doesn’t know, he proposes, cannot possibly have happened. I cannot possibly have done what I said I did because he never knew about it. He seems to imagine that having once been a human rights lawyer—more’s the pity that he should fall from yesterday’s heights to today’s pits you could hear the thud all the way to Basilan—he knows everything there is to know about the underground.

You know everything about it? You don’t even know the meaning of underground. Kaya nga tinawag na underground, so people like you who like to advertise themselves wouldn’t know what goes on in it.

I leave him to his delusions. But his tack is as simple as it is conceited. He feels entitled to accuse anyone of anything without proof, and if they cannot prove otherwise, or refuse to jeopardize themselves by indulging his delusions, then they must be guilty. He accuses me of being a “zealous advocate of the dictatorship.” Well, the taste of the pudding is in the eating.

I have been writing for as long as I can remember. Now surely in the course of my writing, I would have at one time or another written something that showed it? Yet I have asked him to cite one—just one single solitary teeny-weeny article, column, short story, poem, graffiti, paragraph, sentence, or joke I wrote during martial law and after, that in any shape, form or size defended or championed Marcos, and he hasn’t done so. What’s the matter, Joker, I was too shy to profess my zealous advocacy of the dictatorship you (and your team of researchers) can’t find any?

While at this, what ever happened to your other accusations about my being a Cory-hater and an opportunist who ingratiated himself with P-Noy? Ayawan na?

I don’t particularly mind this, I live for this, and can go on at this for as long as The Joker wants. But its larger implications are troubling. The Joker is one of those donning the robes of a judge and sitting in judgment over Renato Corona. He prides himself on being a lawyer, he prides himself on being objective. He has been one of those senators loudest in insisting on the rules of impeachment, in deploring the fact that it is being televised, in wanting the media reduced to a spectator while he regales the world with displays of objectivity.

Hell, he has been one of those loudest in calling for a “right of reply” in media because he says the media can’t get it right, they love to practice a policy of “accuse now, prove later.” Or indeed, “accuse now, and don’t even bother to prove.”

Yet this is one lawyer who finds hearsay as solid as a rock, who accuses without needing to supply the slightest shred of evidence, who presumes people guilty unless they can prove themselves innocent—to his satisfaction.

That is quite ironically how he has defended his namesake, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The charges against Arroyo, he says, may not be admitted because they are hearsay. When in fact they are backed by affidavits and physical proof of electoral fraud. Arroyo may not be prevented from leaving the country, he says, because she has to be presumed innocent unless proven guilty. When in fact, as Justice Secretary Leila de Lima argued, the point of preventing her from leaving has to do with presumption of flight and not with the presumption of guilt, she hasn’t been committed to Muntinlupa yet precisely because she is taken to be innocent until she is proven guilty. Arroyo may not be detained while awaiting trial, he says, because the burden of proof lies with her accusers and not with her. When in fact there’s a long precedent for putting suspects under guard, and serious suspects under serious guard.

But then there’s a tradition in the legal community that says those who can’t do legislate. Or become senator-judges. The Joker a lawyer? That’s a bigger joke.

But while at this, might as well get into the spirit of the joke and play a bit of his game:

I have it on very good authority that contrary to his public persona, he was really an ardent admirer of Marcos. He used to write under the pen name “Primitivo Mijares,” but after Marcos got pissed off with the real Mijares and had him deposited in the middle of the ocean from an airplane, he went on to write under other names such as Gregorio Cendaña and Anan Ymous. While taking on the high profile of a human rights lawyer, he was in fact passing information about his clients to Estelito Mendoza, Marcos’ favorite lawyer, and Fabian Ver, Marcos’ favorite general.

I have it on very good authority that he perfected the craft of accusing people and waiting for them to prove themselves innocent from the best of Marcos’ legal minds, such as their minds could be called that. I have it on good authority his record as a lawyer is also unblemished—unblemished by victory, including Erap’s impeachment trial, which only the people won for the prosecution—because he has always thought the law to be a joke anyway. I have it on good authority he has gone by the moniker “The Joker” only to hide the fact that he takes himself very, very seriously.

But this last I do not need any authority, good or bad, to know. This I know with absolute certainty:

Batman is still looking for him.