History lessons

My column on Imelda and Ferdinand Marcos yesterday and P-Noy’s declaration “I am not a thief” last week drove home a point for me. Which is good news and bad news for P-Noy.

The good news is that among all the presidents since 1965, P-Noy and Cory were the only ones not personally accused of corruption.

It was in 1965 that Marcos became president. What began on a high note would end on an abysmally low one. What began as the Philippine Camelot would end as the Philippine Black Hole of Calcutta. What began with the bang of “This nation will be great again” would end with the whimper, “When will we ever be free of this thug?”

The latter especially after Marcos declared martial law, a regime marked by rape and pillage of Attila the Hun proportions. To say that Marcos was accused of corruption is to say that the Ampatuans are being accused of manslaughter. The dimensions he added to it remain breathtaking to this day. Not least because we continue to pay for it in debt payments.

Fidel Ramos did not escape the charge either, though like Juan Ponce Enrile, he was always exceedingly lucky. The only difference being that Enrile’s luck was the product of constant reinvention while Ramos’ was just the product of dumb luck.

Ramos was lucky in that Cory endorsed him and not Ramon Mitra at a time when Cory’s endorsement meant the world, or at least the Palace. And he was lucky in that he became president at a lucky time, which was shortly after the Berlin Wall fell and the Soviet Union dissolved, which boosted a capitalist renaissance. This was the time of the dragon economies in Asia, which fiery company Ramos sought to join. Until he got blindsided by the crippling financial crisis of 1997, which ended any dreams he might have harbored of extending his term.

All of which dissimulated or obscured the fact that he, too, had met with corruption charges during his term. Chief of them the Centennial Expo, meant to highlight the Philippines’ 100th independence but which liberated only billions of pesos from the national coffers. The “mother of all scams,” critics called it, the loot going in part to funding Lakas, possibly until the Asian crisis came along with a view to a Ramos reelection, and in part to the pockets of officials of the administration.

Nobody much remembers that today, most everyone remembers only that the 1990s were salad days.

The succeeding presidents, the first completely legitimate but was ousted halfway through his term and the second completely illegitimate but went on to rule for a decade, were hounded by corruption every step of the way. In their—Erap’s and Gloria Arroyo’s—cases, their sins are perfectly remembered today.

Neither Cory nor P-Noy brought themselves down by corruption charges. Unfortunately, their friends and relatives did.

It is no small irony that Cory, toasted by the world for restoring democracy and comporting herself in a way that would make Caesar’s wife blush, presided over an administration that was also heavily tainted by corruption. “Kamaganak Inc.” was Luis Beltran’s stinging phrase, and it has lived to this day. It was a reference to relatives, though not her immediate ones, and friends—critics called them cronies—who took over where the Marcoses left off, particularly the government-owned and -controlled corporations, which some of them bought for a song. It was a reminder that the buena familias Marcos oppressed and dispossessed had not been very buena in their time and would not be very buena after Marcos. They got back, and got back with a vengeance.

None of the stigma attached to Cory herself, though the charges debilitated her administration. After she left office, all the whiff of corruption that had dogged her administration disappeared from her person, and she went on to be known as the best president this country ever had. When she died, the country went into lamentation, went with her to her final resting place, and made her son president.

It is no small irony either that P-Noy, who has enjoyed three years of acclaim for leading the fight against corruption, and who has personally been so abstemious he could make bishops cry in shame, should suddenly have to confront the specter of corruption. Technically, of course, his sin has only been one of omission rather than commission: He has failed, or refused, to stop pork, now almost universally seen, no small thanks to Janet Napoles, as corruption incarnated.

Technically, as well, the DAP has not as yet been assailed by definite charges of corruption, though that will probably not be long in coming, it has only been assailed for being a potential source  of humongous corruption. That is so because of the “fiscal dictatorship” it wields. That is because in this country any potential for humongous corruption never remains unexploited. And that is so because while the public trusts P-Noy implicitly, they do not trust his people explicitly.

One thing I am sure of, which is that at the end of P-Noy’s term, he will be regarded as the second best, if not the best, president this country ever had. The thing I am not sure of is how far he will sink before he rises. I myself believe that unless he gives up pork and DAP, he will sink even further as his presidency wears on, or wears out. Indeed, I myself believe that unless some of his people sacrifice themselves and resign to save the king, or, since they do not have the capacity to do that, unless he fires them to regain some moral steam for his fight against corruption, all of them will disappear with him.

He to a blaze of glory from a nation’s judgment that for all his missteps he was the best thing to have happened to it in a long while. They to the pit of obscurity from a people’s scorn they were just pasaway.

History has lessons, for those who would heed it.