To Justice Secretary Leila de Lima’s plaintive question, we wish to make a simple suggestion: Look in the mirror for the answer. The other day she asked why Maguindanao election operator Lintang Bedol had surfaced only now. This question, she said, was “very valid.” She continued: “I also want to know that. That’s part of the investigation.”
It is likely that De Lima, one of the country’s top election lawyers before she entered government service, knows Bedol only too well, and suspects he is yet involved in another elaborate political conspiracy. After all, De Lima had protested election results precisely in those areas under Bedol’s jurisdiction. It is also possible that she has become overly sensitive to the campaign of insinuation and disinformation being waged, among others, by lieutenants of former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo—a whispering campaign alleging “conspiracy” and the “coddling” of unsavory politicians or political operators, and which has now hit the headlines.
But it seems to us that the main answer to her question can in fact be found in the new political reality. Why is Bedol coming out now? Because De Lima is now justice secretary, and not an Arroyo loyalist like Alberto Agra or Raul Gonzalez. Because an obstructionist ombudsman was finally forced out of office, and the long arm of the law can now be put to use again in the battle against graft and official misconduct. Because a courageous auditor like Heidi Mendoza is no longer shunned by a lame Commission on Audit, but is now the highly respected commissioner of a revitalized COA.
The first year of the second Aquino presidency had its share of hits and misses, but the continuing high popularity of President Aquino must be due to the perception that he remains resolutely committed to the anti-corruption mandate that swept him to office. We believe this perception is based for the most part on crucial decisions the President is seen to make—including his steadfast backing of De Lima, the risking of his political capital to muster an (overwhelming) impeachment vote against Merceditas Gutierrez, his widely praised appointment of Mendoza.
Why is Bedol coming out now? Perhaps we can remind the good secretary of something that is already part of the public record. Before the Senate blue ribbon committee, military whistle-blowers George Rabusa (retired) and Antonio Lim (still in the active service) testified that they had made the decision to come out publicly because a new president had assumed office.
Perhaps it is too much to expect a rogue like Bedol, who like Luis “Chavit” Singson or Rodrigo Duterte belongs to that gallery of Filipino characters who relish their very roguishness, to be stirred by pure motives or the prospect of presidential sincerity. He has been in hiding for four years, more or less; maybe he simply wants to stop hiding. As he told TV audiences, he missed visiting his favorite red-light district.
But personal motives at best can only be of secondary importance; what is paramount is present political reality. Those who took part in the massive corruption, in the pervasive misconduct excused by the so-called presumption of regularity which marked the Arroyo years, have recognized that the new dispensation is really more open to truth-telling.
That’s why whistle-blowers are coming out now.
Arroyo spokesman Raul Lambino has alleged that there is a faction in the administration that is conspiring to coddle politicians and operators like Zaldy Ampatuan and Bedol. From our vantage point, we think this is nonsense.
If there is any conspiracy, it is in the continuing effort to block the truth about the many scandals of the Arroyo administration from coming out. Lambino’s cynical allegation is an obvious rehash of previous unsupported assertions already published or broadcast; it is all of a piece with the concerted campaign by Arroyo ally, Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman, to torpedo the Truth Commission.
If there is any coddling, it was by the Arroyo administration, who cultivated the monsters that terrorized Maguindanao precisely because the monsters guaranteed Arroyo and her favored candidates like Juan Miguel Zubiri electoral victory. From small-town politicos to the enormously wealthy perpetrators of the worst massacre in the country’s history, in less than a decade: Now that’s coddling.