Can you handle the truth?

LEGALLY OF course, as Commission on Audit Chair Grace Tan points out, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo had the plenary powers to transfer funds. That was in reference to the filing of graft charges against the former non-president by Frank Chavez, specifically diverting Overseas Workers Welfare Administration (OWWA) money for the medical benefits of overseas workers to Philippine Health Insurance Corp. (PhilHealth).

“The act of transferring funds per se, in itself, is not an offense.” Which is the basis of Chavez’s case, that the OWWA money was a trust fund. The “attendant circumstances” however are another matter entirely.

The “attendant circumstances” was Arroyo’s use of that money, some P530.38 million, for electoral purposes. As put not very felicitously by then president and CEO of PhilHealth Insurance Corp. Francisco Duque, “The proposed transfer will have a significant bearing on the 2004 elections.” Duque went on to produce PhilHealth cards bearing Arroyo’s picture as campaign paraphernalia. For which he was rewarded with the position of health secretary after Arroyo was declared president in the middle of the night, with only the cicadas to chirp their assent.

Well, maybe Chavez should have harped on the uses of the fund instead of its mere diversion, but I don’t know that that isn’t without legal remedy. More to the point, that Arroyo had plenary powers to transfer funds in fact only raises more questions than puts them to rest. Chief of them is how she managed to run as president in 2004 in the circumstances that she did.

It wasn’t just that she had vowed not to, it was also this: Arroyo hadn’t served the time necessary to complete one presidential term and so was constitutionally allowed to run for the position. But to run as president while being president was to violate the constitutional ban on the president having only one term. The ban was meant precisely to prevent a situation where the incumbent would ransack the treasury to secure a second term. The solution proffered by the other candidates (Boots Anson Roa filed a case on it before the Supreme Court on behalf of FPJ [Fernando Poe Jr.]) was for Arroyo to take a leave of absence and turn the reins of government over to the vice president while she ran for president. It solved the dilemma, satisfying the Constitution on both counts.

The Supreme Court struck that down. The result was the most scandalous election ever to take place in the Philippines. Arroyo did not content herself with using OWWA funds to buy electoral paraphernalia or diverting fertilizer money to buy the congressmen, she resorted when all that failed to “helloing’’ Garci to make her win by a million votes over FPJ.

All of which goes to show that you can’t be legalistic when dealing with this problem. True enough, the president has plenary powers to transfer funds, but the question is, should Arroyo have been the president while she ran for president? The Supreme Court itself has much to answer for here.

Danilo Suarez and the usual suspects in the Arroyo camp of course now say it’s Malacañang that’s behind Chavez. It’s the product of “not so subtle hints” by P-Noy to go after Arroyo. Well, if so—and my own complaint is that P-Noy hasn’t hinted enough, subtle or otherwise, there—what of it? About time someone brought the fight where it belongs. Merceditas Gutierrez is just the finger pointing at the moon, to use a Zen metaphor again, she is not the moon. Or, for those who do not like metaphors, she merely committed the sin of omission, which was to turn a blind eye and deaf ear to Arroyo’s atrocities. Arroyo committed the sin of commission, she wreaked the atrocities.

At the very least, it’s time someone showed up the Arroyo camp which has been vociferous in attacking the new government for not doing enough for the OFWs in the war-torn Middle East countries. Or for not pouring money liberally to them to aid them in their plight. It’s time government or its proxies said: “At least we’re trying. What did you do? You stole their money, you a–holes.”

But more than this, all this merely shows again how government is doing itself and the public a disservice by limiting its concept of corruption to graft or plunder. Or by trying to pin down Arroyo to being a mere crook. Her crimes go beyond that. Far, far beyond that.

The thorny issues involved in her use of the OWWA fund, a trust fund, for electoral purposes already suggests that. You have to go past graft to bring out the full dimensions of the crime, which was to win at all costs, which was to steal the vote, which was to screw the voters.

I myself will continue to push for the revival of the Truth Commission. The reason it was vulnerable to being struck down by the Supreme Court was that government itself could not appreciate its true nature or essence. It saw it merely as another anti-graft body, a substitute for the Office of the Ombudsman headed by Gutierrez who could not be removed other than by impeachment. Joker Arroyo and others were right then to criticize it as a duplication and a redundancy. It was. If that was all the Truth Commission was, then it deserved to be scrapped.

But that is not what it is. That is not what it is supposed to do. It is not there to investigate the fertilizer scam, the Mega Pacific scam, the NBN-ZTE scam. It is there to investigate the theft of the vote, which includes all the “attendant circumstances” of the 2004 elections. It is there to investigate the theft of lives, which is the wholesale massacre of political activists who lifted a hand to protest Arroyo’s illegitimacy. It is there to investigate the theft of the soul, which is the way Arroyo poisoned all the institutions of this society bar none.

Its need has become more patent now than ever. The point is not to ask Arroyo, “Can you escape graft?” The point is to tell her:

“Can you handle the truth?”