Can they do it?
However long the procession takes, a local saying goes, it still winds up in church. However long the Janet Napoles saga takes, it still ends up in her and her three favorite senators’ prosecution. Last Tuesday, the Ombudsman ordered her, Juan Ponce Enrile, Jinggoy Estrada, and Bong Revilla to file counteraffidavits answering the corruption charges filed against them by the NBI/justice department. Which brings us back where we started before a lot of things came along to divert our attention from it.
The first question is: Will Enrile be able to dodge the bullet yet again?
Well, he has a track record for resilience, having survived adversity numerous times. Indeed, having gotten into the good graces of all the presidents, except Cory. He has managed to reinvent himself in ways that have added whole new meanings to reinvention.
But there are several things going against him this time. Not least, he is old and he is tired. He looks it. His age he may be able to stem with stem cell. But not so his tiredness, stemming as it does from deep and bitter personal disappointments. His son lost in the senatorial elections and his favorite chief of staff currently figures prominently in the Napoles scam. Nothing fells as cruelly as the cruel fate visited upon one’s favorite persons.
But more than that, his plunge has been steep and continuous this past year, a stunning reversal of fortunes that’s not so easy to climb out of. Coming off presiding gloriously over Renato Corona’s impeachment, he unraveled swiftly. He got into a row with Miriam Santiago and Alan Peter Cayetano over Christmas bonuses and with Antonio Trillanes over treason. Jackie lost in the elections after WikiLeaks reminded the world he was a murderer. And he got blindsided by Napoles.
Indeed, as it has turned out now, he might not just have been blindsided by Napoles, he might very well have masterminded her scam. That is our claim based on a report by an investigating team of the Ombudsman. Enrile has cried foul over the leak of the “inexistent” memorandum, based on Conchita Carpio Morales saying she never got it. In fact, she did, not in memo form but in the more than 200 pages
given to her.
Page 242 of it said: “Clearly, no matter how layered the scheme may have been perpetrated or unrelated the players may appear, all facts point to Senator Enrile as the unseen hand directing the compass and the tempo of the whole orchestra.” That is pretty damning and bolsters widespread doubts, not least among the senators, as shown by their questioning of Benhur Luy a couple of months ago, about Napoles having the talent, means and connections to mount such an elaborate scheme by her lonesome. Things do not look very bright for Enrile.
They look even less bright with supertyphoon Miriam howling in the horizon. Miriam looks hell-bent on wreaking vengeance and has just changed her tune about Napoles being converted into a state’s witness. She wants her now to become so, with all the tradeoffs it entails, so that she can spill the beans on him. Talk about being hounded by the Furies!
The other question is: Will P-Noy bounce back with this?
Potentially, it holds the key if not to restoring government’s credibility—can it have been only that long since the Sona?—at least to arresting its slide. The new dimension of the extent of Enrile’s role in the scam and Miriam’s war of attrition has enough explosiveness in it to wrench the world’s attention away from other things toward it. Additionally, it has enough power to restore some perspective into the very skewed one wrought by reckless, if not mindless, comments in social media in the wake of Supertyphoon “Yolanda”—such as P-Noy being the worst president this country has had, worse than Gloria, worse even than Marcos—by pulling the limelight back on the country’s real nemeses. Or on those about to be tried before our attention was waylaid by other things.
It is however a double-edged thing, both an opportunity and a pitfall, a chance to shine once more or an occasion to dim even more. Government’s current situation is critical, if not precarious, which began when P-Noy came out to defend the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP). Before that, the attacks against him were oblique and exhorting. His sin was seen to be one of omission, condoning or tolerating corruption by not doing something about pork. After that, the attacks turned direct and savage. Whether right or wrong, his sin was now seen as one of commission: He didn’t just condone pork, he participated in it. He didn’t just tolerate pork, he sold it.
Before P-Noy was hit by Yolanda, he was hit by firestorm DAP. When Yolanda came, P-Noy was already being battered in the social media, a good deal of it spontaneous. Government paralysis during the first few days of Yolanda’s aftermath merely gave it momentum. All this puts enormous pressure on government to deal forcefully, indeed dramatically, with Napoles and company.
Like Manny Pacquiao who needs nothing less than to wipe out Brandon Rios to resurrect his dying career (I’m writing this before their fight), P-Noy needs nothing less than a conviction to revive his flagging credibility. Which won’t be the easiest thing in the world. Though government will probably be more prepared this time around to counter another PR blitz that would try to turn public opinion around—ironically, it suffered its debacle three months ago at its very moment of triumph—it, or its justice department, will need epic effort and epic ability to accomplish the epic task. This is the first time we are poised to bag big fish in the campaign against corruption—the Erap conviction doesn’t count, Gloria didn’t have the credibility for it. Nothing less than a conviction will do.
But can they do it?
