Mysterious ways

Before Dennis Cunanan came out to implicate Juan Ponce Enrile in the Napoles scam, Cristina Ponce Enrile came out to defend him. He might be a womanizer, she said, but he is not a thief. Her proof of the latter was just spousal loyalty: She couldn’t believe he could possibly be involved in misusing his pork to add to his trough or turning the Cagayan economic zone into a smuggler’s paradise.

Her proof of his womanizing however came from more than spousal distrust. In the course of their 56-year marriage, she said, he has had 38 affairs—at least among those she knew. She did not elaborate on her accounting procedure. Of these, however, it was his affair with Gigi Reyes she minded the most. That was so because it was more than an affair, it was a relationship. His usual affairs lasted briefly, this one lasted long. Reyes was the one that caused her to storm out of the house, fly to the United States, and demand a divorce.

Cristina of course could have been wittier and said that her husband might be a thief of hearts but he is not a thief of cash, which would however fly in the face of her countrymen’s experience of him as coauthor with Marcos of the most kawatan regime in this country. I myself do not particularly care that he is a thief of hearts. And in any case, you’ve got loot, you won’t need to steal hearts at all, they, or the more buyable body parts, will be offered to you on a silver plate. What allows you to crawl out of the woodwork looking like Brad Pitt is not Belo, it is Money. All the better if it is ill-gotten as it tends to be spent freely.

But Cristina’s confession, quite apart from adding a detail or two to her husband’s character profile, is of consequence only in that it bolsters the near-universal perception that Reyes could not have done what she did about his pork without his knowledge and blessings. She was more than his chief of staff, she was the

apple of his eye.

Comes now Cunanan to drive the nail deeper. It was Reyes he dealt with for the most part, Cunanan said, being in constant touch with her from 2007 to 2009. It was his impression, he said, that she functioned as Enrile’s alter ego. Certainly it was hard to believe that she could make all the decisions without the senator’s approval. But lest that gives him the excuse to say that he had merely been administratively cuckolded, this was all Reyes’ doing. Enrile himself, said Cunanan, had a direct hand in badgering the Technology Resource Center into approving and releasing the money to his favorite Napoles NGO. “He wrote to this implementing agency and said that funds would be soon available. Later on, his staff followed up with a letter this time identifying the NGO.”

Cunanan’s revelations came from Miriam Santiago’s own badgering of him at the Senate, and doubtless she has her own ax to grind against Enrile. Not least his precious comment that though he is thankful she considers him “may asim pa,” or still hot, at his age, he unfortunately could not reciprocate the compliment, however equally left-handedly. But this is one time I applaud Miriam’s single-minded zeal in hounding someone. Enrile has finally met his match in a former comrade-in-arms in Erap’s court, impeachment court or otherwise.

At the very least, that is so because Enrile is the only real hurdle in prosecuting the three senators implicated in the Napoles scam. The other whistle-blowers—and it is a testament to their solidity that none of them, Benhur Luy, Ruby Tuason, and Cunanan, has been rattled by questioning from the senators, indeed supplying a depth detail only the knowledgeable, and truthful, would do—have pinned down Jinggoy Estrada and Bong Revilla but not so Enrile. Only Cunanan has supplied evidence of Enrile’s direct participation in the scam, the others, including Cunanan himself, have spoken only of dealing with Reyes. An escape hatch Cristina is only too eager to open wider.

Enrile in fact is the real power among the three, having shown a remarkable resilience all these years despite committing the most patent iniquities. The other two are just patsies who draw their strength from him. He falls and the other two fall like Sauron’s legions do after the Ring-To-Rule-Them-All drops into Mt. Doom.

They all fall, and for the first time in our lives—Erap doesn’t really count, Gloria punishing the corrupt only offers a lesson in farce—we will have caught big fish, we will have pushed the fight against corruption to lofty heights.

At the very most, Miriam’s zeal advances the cause of justice, even if that’s just a byproduct of her beef with Enrile. But of course Enrile’s iniquities are patent, he just happened to live in a country that believes a lifetime of sin can be expiated by flagellating oneself on Good Friday. Or in his case by being found out by Marcos to be plotting a mutiny and after fleeing to the camps accidentally triggering a revolt that had been brewing in spite of, and not because of, him.

How can anyone possibly forget his role in trampling democracy in this country? How can anyone possibly forget he stood by Marcos’ side when the thieving rioted, the theft of wealth, the theft of freedom, the theft of lives? Which he bid everyone forget on the 40th anniversary of martial law by rewriting history to make himself out as the Oskar Schindler of martial law. For a moment there, it seemed as if he would go out in a blaze of glory.

Until, ironically, he got felled by the government of the son of the one person he kept trying to overthrow, reminding the world that the last thing he stole was the hearts of women. Until, ironically, he got pursued like the Furies by the one person whose voice at least, if not whose heart, he stole until they parted ways.

Ah, justice, like heaven, moves in mysterious ways.