Road not taken

Miriam Defensor-Santiago actually offers a good perspective on it. The accusation that government bribed the senators to vote against Renato Corona stinks, she says, and should be investigated by the Commission on Audit. “This is so far from the daang matuwid!”

Specifically, she says, the Commission on Audit should look into: the dates the budget department made the disbursements to the senators; the explanation for giving Juan Ponce Enrile, Frank Drilon and Chiz Escudero more than the others; the projects the senators spent their additional Priority Development Assistance Funds on; the actual cost of the projects; and the COA ruling, if any, that governs application for funds from the Disbursement Acceleration Program.

It’s a reasonable request, and one the COA should take on with earnestness and dispatch. But—and here’s the part that makes the perspective salutary—Santiago also warns against the bribery charge diluting, if not indeed eclipsing, the case against Janet Lim-Napoles and the wayward senators and congressmen. “Both scams are repulsive. But the alleged bribery scam is also intended by the political opposition to cover up the Napoles pork scam.”

True enough, we should guard against being diverted from the Napoles scam and all its ramifications, which have been the source of the phenomenal public outrage in recent months. That outrage may not be allowed to evaporate like mist at dawn by the dawning of this artificial sun. The Napoles scam remains the true object of our attention. The Napoles scam remains the one thing that needs to be pursued to the very end, that end not just being the punishment of the erring legislators but the recovery of the ill-gotten wealth.

Having said this, however, I must also say that we should guard against the bribery charge being swept under the rug. It must continue to hover in the back of our minds like a dark foreboding, or above them like an albatross. The two cases are actually closely linked. The success of the prosecution of the senators and congressmen, never mind Napoles herself, depends a great deal on the moral authority, or supremacy, of the P-Noy administration. It was the utter lack of it that undercut Gloria Arroyo’s own prosecution and conviction of Erap. The opprobrium that naturally attaches to a convicted crook just wasn’t there.

Arguably, P-Noy is nowhere near Gloria, and his administration continues to enjoy the moral ascendancy he has personally stamped on it. Arguably, the P50 million additional PDAF given to the senators who voted to convict Corona can be defended in ways that make it look legal, if not entirely ethical. Thus far, barring a COA finding to the contrary, there’s nothing to show it was frittered away Napoles-style. Although the fact that it was a lump-sum allocation, the very thing the P-Noy administration now derides, must raise serious doubts about it.

And arguably, Malacañang’s use of pork to keep the senators tractable is nothing like Arroyo’s use of it in her time. Which obliterated completely the divisions between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of government—a thing Santiago and Joker Arroyo were blind to then, or at least silent about—turning the three branches into a virtual single entity. Look at Jose de Venecia’s and Prospero Nograles’ House in particular and see if that wasn’t so.

But unfortunately for the P-Noy administration, it may not be judged by the scale of the previous regime’s wretchedness; it may only be judged by the scale of its own ambitions. Or indeed by the scale of expectation invested upon it by a people that brought it to power from out of the depths to scuttle evil and build a better world.

That is what makes the effort to secure the conviction of Corona by this route, or ruse, so uninspired, if not benighted. It’s certainly supremely ironic. At the very least, it has to be asked if the senators would have voted differently without it. Of course Enrile is a fickle ally, one whose loyalties, shifting from president to president, legitimate or otherwise, with the exception of Cory, are for sale. And he was the Senate president turned presiding officer of the impeachment trial, which explains his special treatment in the DAP afterward. But if appeasing him and the other senators was what it took to rid the world of Corona, then it leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

At the very most, it’s supremely ironic in that it was done in the name of good, in the name of fighting corruption, in the name of the daang matuwid. Truly, the end does not justify the means, not just in the lofty moral sense but in the nitty-gritty practical sense of things. The price of doing the wrong thing for the right reasons is too high to pay.

Look what P-Noy had to pay for it. He was compelled to attend the book launch of the second chief architect of martial law, a book that sought to rewrite history, a book that sought to make right wrong and wrong right. It’s enough to make you believe in karma, everything going downhill for Enrile after that. Today the logic of daang matuwid compels P-Noy to prosecute former allies in the uneasy alliance to oust Corona, some of whom don’t mind dragging down everyone along with them. Even if they, like Jinggoy Estrada, have to expose the “incentive” that held up that alliance.

There’s not just the daang matuwid as opposed to the daang baluktot, there’s also the high road as opposed to the low road. The road of principle as opposed to the road of expedience, the road of idealism as opposed to the road of pragmatism, the road where the means justifies the end as opposed to the road where the end justifies the means. The way things are, the former remains a road not taken. We still have promises to keep. And miles to go before we sleep.

And miles to go before we sleep.