Gigi’s home

The lawyer Jessica Lucila “Gigi” Reyes, once the powerful chief of staff of Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile and now a principal accused in the plunder and corruption cases stemming from the so-called pork barrel scam, is back in the country. She flew in on Black Saturday, after eight months abroad; she had fled the country a few weeks after the scam was exposed, but she told reporters upon her arrival: “I’m ready to face the charges. I’ve always faced [them].”

She may have chosen the auspicious date, right in the middle of the holiest days of the Christian calendar, as the right time to come home; the promises of Easter are like the rain we read about in the Gospel of Matthew: they fall on both the just and the unjust. Not only is Reyes free to protest her innocence of all charges; she has as much claim to the new life promised by the great feast of Easter as anyone else.

Whatever her personal and even spiritual reasons for braving the return flight home, it is good that she has found her way back. She can best make use of her proverbial day in court in person; and whether or not she believes she can get a fair judgment from the courts, her return will be understood by some Filipinos as an implicit endorsement of the legal proceedings against her.

After all, she did not have to come back. That is to say, she could have lived the life of a fugitive in relative comfort and safety in the United States, and tried to wait out the Aquino administration or the avenging furies at the Department of Justice and the Office of the Ombudsman.

Her decision to return must have been a difficult one—which led Sen. Miriam Defensor Santiago, a sworn enemy of Enrile’s, to speculate that a deal with the government was in the works. “I don’t think she reached the decision on her own,” Santiago said. She argued that Reyes’ best option was to testify against Enrile. “To be acquitted, she should turn state witness. She should tell the truth about Enrile, her boss, who received P500 million from Napoles. That way she’s able to help the government know the truth about these senators.” (Jinggoy Estrada and Ramon “Bong” Revilla Jr. are also facing plunder and corruption charges, after the Ombudsman found probable cause.)

It is all too easy to like Santiago’s advice, that Reyes turn state’s witness. “It would be a firsthand account of the culpability of Enrile,” Santiago, who has accused Enrile of masterminding the entire pork barrel scam, said. “If she applies for state witness and her application is accepted … then Enrile’s goose is cooked.”

But government prosecutors, and the public at large, must first ask hard questions. Why should Reyes be acquitted? As the Christmas bonus controversy in late 2012 proved, Reyes practically ran the Senate on Enrile’s behalf when he was still Senate president. If she did receive the kickbacks intended for Enrile, not only at public restaurants where alleged scam mastermind Janet Lim Napoles hosted her for lunch but even at her own residence, why should her legal liability for her role in the scam be erased?

And does the evidence against Enrile really need Reyes’ “firsthand account”? On earlier occasions, Santiago thought the evidence against Enrile was enough to sustain her judgment that he was in fact the real mastermind of the scam. But now we hear differently: “If she won’t testify, our evidence against Enrile is very much lacking… Enrile has been claiming that there was no direct evidence against him. The case against Enrile is circumstantial. That’s why Gigi will be a big, almost immeasurable asset. She will be testifying from her own knowledge.” We get the sense that Santiago will approve any approach, sign off on any legal maneuver, just to send her political enemy to jail.

We must be more circumspect, more deliberate. What is the paramount national interest in the resolution of the pork barrel scam? Is it to imprison sitting senators for the first time in our history? That is certainly a bracing ambition. But if the national interest also includes ending the culture of patronage that the scam is a symbol of, then those powerful persons and nonelected officials who enabled the scam must be brought to justice too.