Poisoned trees

Frankly, I don’t understand the guy. “It is as simple as saying that when she was president, we could not have filed any case against her because she was immune from suits. So for me, prescription should start on June 30, 2010 when her term expired.”

That is Sixto Brillantes, the Comelec chief, on the subject of prosecuting Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo for cheating in the 2004 elections. Is it possible the job of Comelec chief addles the brain? Why on earth would you wait for the period of immunity of the president to lapse when your case precisely has to do with questioning whether she is really the president or not? You wait for the immunity of the president to lapse, you grant she is the president, you assume she is the president, you accept that she is the president.

Of course a suit against Arroyo would not have prospered during her time, when she had the congressmen and bishops in her pocket. But whether so or not, it should have been pressed as a matter of principle. As a matter of setting a precedent.

There is no excuse for not doing so now. It’s not just time Arroyo was prosecuted for stealing the presidency in 2004, it’s long past due. Or indeed conversely, it’s not just time the real winner of the 2004 elections, who is Arroyo’s chief rival, Fernando Poe Jr. was proclaimed, however belatedly, however posthumously, it’s long past due.

The key to all this is Virgilio Garcillano.

I won’t say forget Lintang Bedol, forget Zaldy Ampatuan. If they want to confess their sins, by all means let them. So long as the truth sets them free only in spirit, not in body. Government may not make any compromises with them, government may not give any concessions to them. To Ampatuan particularly, that is unthinkable.

But that is only to add a detail or two to what we already know about the cheating in the 2004 elections, courtesy of Brig. Gen. Francisco Gudani and Col. Alexander Balutan. That is only to corroborate what we already know about the cheating in the 2004 elections, courtesy of the “Hello Garci” tape, which is breathtakingly damning as anyone who has listened to it in its entirety will know. That is only to help us identify the ones who helped Arroyo wreak the biggest political crime of the 21st century in the Philippines, and the ones who profited from it.

It should also help shed light on the elections that followed three years later, in 2007. Which should be of life-and-death consequence to Koko Pimentel who has been protesting the presence of the wrong senator in the Senate.

But we may not make Ampatuan and Bedol the linchpin of the case against Arroyo, of the case for voiding the presidency of Arroyo, of the case for declaring FPJ winner of the 2004 elections. At the very least that is so because Ampatuan and Bedol are not the most trustworthy people in the world. If they lied before, they can lie again. If they screwed us before, they can screw us again. If they were willing to go to any lengths to survive before, they will be willing to go to any lengths to survive again.

Even to the length of telling the truth? Maybe. But you’d be a fool to trust them.

At the very most, it’s completely unnecessary. All you need is “Hello Garci.”

Virgilio Garcillano has already sent feelers about his willingness to talk, apparently out of fear for his life. If so, then reel him in. If so, then trot him out. Garcillano will serve one eminently useful purpose when he does appear to say his piece. That is to remove all legal obstacles to using the “Hello Garci” tape as basis for prosecuting Arroyo.

Lest we forget, the one argument Arroyo’s Justice Department used, and the one argument the congressmen picked up, which they harped on in speech after speech to trash the impeachment bid, was that the tape was illegally obtained and therefore nothing in there could be used. Everything in there was tainted, everything in there was the “fruit of the poisoned tree.”

Those objections should never have been an obstacle because it was government itself that made the tape public, because Arroyo herself had confessed to the crime, though herself adjudicating that it wasn’t a crime but a “lapse of judgment,” and because the presidency is a sacred post that may be occupied only by someone who can prove herself worthy and not by someone who cannot be proven to be guilty. But that is water under the bridge. Garcillano comes out now, and we won’t have any fruit of the poisoned tree, we will have only words straight from the horse’s mouth.

That is all we need to prosecute Arroyo. That is all we need to convict Arroyo. That is all we need to correct history. That is all we need to bring closure to a sordid chapter of our life. And give justice to the aggrieved, who are not just FPJ and his kin but the entire Filipino people who have had to endure the vicious and illegitimate rule that ensued from it.

To repeat, “Hello Garci” by itself, of itself, and in itself voids the presidency of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo from 2004 to 2010. The point is not to look at “Hello Garci” and see if it affected materially, substantially, ineluctably, the results of the 2004 elections. The point is to look at “Hello Garci” and see it for the crime that it is. “Hello Garci” is the poisoned tree, but so in ways that have nothing to do with the way Arroyo’s lawyers and congressmen have interpreted it. It is the poisoned tree in that the results of the presidential race that flowed from it are inadmissible, unacceptable, unbelievable. It is the poisoned tree in that it poisons all the fruits that spring from it. It poisons the validity of the results. It poisons the validity of Arroyo’s proclamation. It poisons the validity of Arroyo’s rule.

About time we sucked the poison out of the body politic.