Erap likes to tell people about a joke he likes to tell Jojo Binay. That joke goes: “You know, Jojo, we have a lot of things in common. I became mayor of San Juan, you became mayor of Makati. I became vice president, you became vice president. I became president, you could become president too.
“I got jailed for corruption. You’ll probably get jailed for corruption too.”
Life being ironic, or perverse, in this magic-realist country, his joke has unfolded with a cruel twist not upon Binay—though that could still happen—but upon his son, Jinggoy. With variations of course. Erap was in show business, Jinggoy was in show business. Erap became mayor of San Juan, Jinggoy became mayor of San Juan. Erap became a senator, Jinggoy became a senator.
Erap got jailed for corruption. Jinggoy could get jailed for corruption too.
Sadly for the junior Estrada, his is the more shortcut version, going from rise to fall without having reached crest, or being faced with jail without having become vice president or president along the way. The way things are, his biggest problem is not finding a way to higher office, it is finding a way to remain free. For all practical purposes, his political career is done.
Though of course you never know, in this country mahirap magsalita nang tapos, it ain’t over till it’s over.
But right now, it seems very much so. His much-touted bombshell in the Senate turned out to be supot (dud). If not indeed an “eraption” that obliterated him. Of course the public pounced on what he said—or did not say. Immediately after he spoke, the social media rioted with snide remarks about how nowhere in his speech did he refute the charges against him. Nowhere in his speech did he say that the charge that he frittered away his Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) in Janet Lim-Napoles’ NGOs was a lie, and he would sue anyone who kept repeating it. Nowhere in his speech did he say he was innocent.
Everywhere in his speech, he merely said others were just as guilty as him. If not more so.
That’s as close to an admission of guilt as you can get. In fact, he was far better off before he dropped his dud. Reminding us again of Mark Twain’s remark that it is better to keep your mouth shut and be thought a fool than to open it and confirm the fact. What he did not say, rather than what he did, was the loudest noise he produced. His silence on his innocence was the most damning thing there was.
You wonder who advised him to take that tack. It’s suicidal in every respect. Of course he may have taken his cue from his father’s experience. His father was also accused by his successor, Gloria Arroyo, of being corrupt to the bone, and even convicted by the courts for being so. But he managed to escape public opprobrium, if not jail—though the commodious conditions he found himself in challenged conventional definitions of the “jail”—by accusing his tormentor of being far more corrupt than him. If he was corrupt to the bone, he proposed, she was corrupt to the marrow of the bone.
It was a tack that so removed the stigma from him he nearly became president again—he might well have if Aquino had not resurrected like the phoenix from the ashes of his mother. He’s the mayor of Manila as we speak.
Unfortunately for Jinggoy, the gap between him and his father is vaster than the Grand Canyon. His father at least has the crooked smile of a rogue, he merely has the smirk of a hood.
Far more importantly, Arroyo’s corruption was epically patent, shown not just in the theft of money but in the theft of the vote, and undercut completely her moral authority to punish anyone for it. Jinggoy’s problem is proving not just the “others” are more corrupt than him—he doesn’t name them—but even just that they are as corrupt as him. I grant it can be done, there are scams right enough in the executive and judiciary, quite apart from legislative, to bolster the claim. But he does not.
After accusing the senators who voted against Renato Corona of taking money in the form of P50 million additional PDAF from Malacañang, he wrecked his own case by saying it wasn’t a bribe at all, merely an “incentive.” Senate President Franklin Drilon and Budget Secretary Butch Abad would subsequently say it wasn’t additional at all, it was the senators’ much delayed PDAF, which had been delayed during the course of the impeachment precisely to prevent suspicion it was a bribe. How much worse off would Jinggoy have been if he had called it a bribe, if he had said Drilon and Abad had bribed him, if he had said he, like the other senators, had voted the way Malacañang wanted because he had been bribed?
Might as well hang for a sheep as for a lamb. Might as well go down with guns blazing. But charging that the other senators were guilty of accepting an “incentive” that had no effect on their votes? That’s pathetic.
Even more unfortunately for Jinggoy, Erap’s prosecution and conviction took place in more cynical times. When a public, grown numb from the resolute display of bad manners and wrong conduct from their last two presidents (the other a fake one), and from an even more resolute display of worse manners and “wronger” conduct from their Pharisees who bid them close their eyes and ears and blissfully “move on,” merely shrugged off the atrocity. These are different times, these are awakened times, these are furious times. When the public will no longer abide being treated like mushrooms, kept in the dark and dumped on. When the public will no longer agree that when the pot calls the kettle black they are magically transformed into white, but will see them both as blacker than ever. When the public, given a line that others are just as guilty will no longer say, “Ok, you both go free,” but will now say, “Ok, we’ll get them too, we’ll jail them too.”
“But we’ll start with you.”