Post-Valentine, of sorts

This country is home to sublime ironies, and none comes more sublime than the fall of Juan Ponce Enrile.

Only a year and a half ago, he was at the height of his powers and popularity. He had just presided over the impeachment trial of Renato Corona and had done so masterfully, unfurling his lawyerly skills for all the world to see. Armed with that triumph, he unfurled as well his recollection of his life and times for all the world to cringe. Insisting among others that his waylaying at Wack-Wack, which triggered martial law, was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help him God.

God did not. His unraveling was as swift as his raveling. A year and a half later, he had lost his commanding heights and was looking at the world from the bottom of the abyss. He was one of three senators charged with conspiring with Janet Napoles to defraud the public big-time, and the senators he had pissed off during his heyday were determined to see him bite the dust. They had their knives unsheathed last Thursday, and two of them in particular, Antonio Trillanes and Miriam Defensor-Santiago, brandished newly sharpened ones.

They were unhappy with the way Ruby Tuason had dealt with him. “She was rather clear in the part about Sen. Jinggoy Estrada,” lamented Trillanes. “But when it came to the part about Senator Enrile, she suddenly became forgetful. It was as if she wasn’t interested.” Santiago echoed the sentiment suggesting that Tuason knew more than what she told about Enrile. Their complaint drew from the fact that Tuason had testified only about dealing with the keeper of Enrile’s house and heart, Gigi Reyes, and not with Enrile himself. When they asked whether she knew if Enrile gave her his blessings and profited from the transactions, Tuason said no. She left it to the senators to draw their own conclusions.

That left Trillanes and Santiago instead unsatisfied and demanding she say more. But why on earth should she, Justice Secretary Leila de Lima asked? In fact, De Lima went on, that was what made Tuason’s testimony rock-solid, she spoke only about things she knew. The natural assumption that Reyes was merely Enrile’s alter ego, to say the least, might be acceptable in the court of public opinion, but it was not in a court of law. In a court of law, that will not be taken as proof, that will be taken as perjury.

But—and here’s the part that makes this a sublime irony, and a post-Valentine story of sorts—I don’t know that Tuason has really done Enrile a world of favor by pinning down only Reyes with her testimony. I don’t know that she hasn’t in fact twisted the knife after plunging it into his, well, heart.

Look at the wonder of it: Here is a man who, now about to embark on his 10th decade on earth, has managed to survive pretty much every adversity, springing back from them with the ease of a jack-in-the-box. Among them his (junior) partnership with Marcos, a partnership he cemented with his aforesaid ambush at Wack Wack, whose authenticity he has always been of two minds about. Among them as well his thwarted attempts to oust Cory by various coups, seeing his comrades jailed for their pains and for his ambitions (he himself escaped the fate), but rising back again to recover fame and fortune.

The guy looked invincible. He had no known vulnerabilities, not conscience, not scruples, not compunction. Even when he went on a downhill slide soon after launching his book—he was accused of giving his favorite senators millions in taxpayer money in the form of Christmas bonuses, he was accused of turning the Cagayan Special Economic Zone and Freeport into a smuggler’s paradise, his son lost in the elections after WikiLeaks reminded the world of his murder case—he seemed battered but

unbowed. Indeed, even after being tagged as one of the senators in cahoots with Napoles, he looked headed to shrug it off all over again.

Except, this time, for one thing. Ruby Tuason has given direct evidence not about him but about Gigi Reyes. Ruby Tuason has unfurled the specter of jail not on him but on Gigi Reyes.

I remember again that scene in “Casablanca” where Humphrey Bogart tells Claude Rains, “This gun is pointed right at your heart,” to which Rains replies: “That is my least vulnerable spot.” As it turns out with Enrile, in his twilight years that is his most.

Contrary to Trillanes’ and Santiago’s interpretation that Tuason has spared Enrile, she has in fact put him in a bind. True enough, Tuason has given him a loophole. She hasn’t named him directly as a party to the transactions. Of course she knows how to add two and two together, as Trillanes and Santiago bid her do in front of them, but the law forbids her from doing so. She does not know it for a fact, she knows it only for an assumption. Legally—and Enrile, like Marcos, has always found in the legal the most formidable protection, apart from the most lethal weapon—Enrile can always say he had nothing to do with Reyes’ doings. Legally, he can always say what Reyes did is her own lookout. Legally, he can always hang her out to dry.

Or he can bail her out and, at risk of his own wellbeing, and freedom, admit freely that all Reyes has done she has done for him. It won’t do to just try to discredit Tuason by calling her a liar to her face, his capacity to call anyone a liar, like Jinggoy’s, particularly after his autobiography, not being there, never mind Tuason’s own credibility.

So, what’s it going to be? Will he be playing a role in the movie, “Hanggang Dito Na Lamang at Maraming Salamat,” or “Sa Dulo ng Walang Hanggan”? Will he be singing the line from Frank Sinatra’s song, “It’s Over,” “The loving was easy, it’s the living that’s hard”?

Or the song from “Chorus Line,” “What I Did For Love”?