Unmasking ‘Robin Hood’

VICE PRESIDENT Jejomar Binay can present proof of his ability to solve the problem of poverty, reportedly the central pitch of his presidential campaign. From self-described abject poverty, he has brought the Binay family to fabulous wealth.

Rags-to-riches stories resonate with Filipinos and contribute to Binay’s popularity with the masa. Periodic allegations of massive corruption punctuating the Binay family’s 29-year reign in Makati have eroded, but not erased, the populist appeal.

The Senate investigation of the Makati Parking Building II was not the first time Binay had to face corruption charges. In 1988, former Makati vice mayor Roberto Brillante accused Binay, only three years in office, of payroll padding, illegal disbursement, overpricing, ghost delivery,misappropriation of public funds, and falsification of public documents.

By 1992, some members of Makati’s business elite whom Binay brought into the city government had turned against him on the issue ofcorruption. In 2001, Newsbreak reported corruption allegations against Binay, then gearing up for another mayoralty campaign. Benefiting from his populist programs, including the birthday cake and cash gift for Makati senior citizens and the protection of informal settlers against eviction, voters ignored the charges and reelected him to office.

With the political cover provided by constituency support, even critics from the A-B class, who believed he was probably guilty, tended to shrug off these earlier cases and give him the benefit of the doubt, first because these were never proven in court.

Second, even granting that Binay might be profiting from corruption, at least Makati was moving forward. Binay claimed the development of Makati as his achievement, never mind that private-sector initiatives largely accounted for the city’s transformation into the country’spremier business center.

In those days, defenders attributed elite hostility to Binay as stemming from the increased city taxes he had imposed, suggesting that he was only redistributing the wealth. They projected Binay as a Filipino version of Robin Hood, the 14th-century English folk hero who took from the rich to give to the poor.

In the romanticized ballads and books and in Hollywood films, Robin Hood figured as the rebel fighting feudal religious and secular authorities, including the corrupt Sheriff of Nottingham, the King’s deputy, who were privatizing the communal lands and the forest resources on which the livelihood of Nottinghamshire peasants depended. But Binay was not an outsider; Newsbreak identified him as the “Lord of Makati,” making him, not Robin Hood, but the Sheriff of Nottingham.

The Senate hearings showed no evidence of Binay battling Big Business abuses in Makati, but also no complaints that he tried to put the squeeze on them in any obvious ways; it’s hard to imagine their executives being trapped in an elevator to prevent their participation in a bidding process.

Three possible explanations for the silence of the Big Business guns: 1) They had no need to do business with Makati; 2) they were big enough to take “fast-track facilitation fees” as a business cost that could be passed on to consumers or to bargain for other benefits; and 3) they were simply too big for Binay to bully.

What has provoked damaging comments in social media against Binay is the list of social sectors apparently victimized by graft. As the senators diligently pulled on the threads of the alleged overprice of the parking building, the whole governance fabric began unraveling to reveal a pattern of Makati misgovernment.

We now have the cases of: overpriced garbage disposal services; overpriced hospital beds; overpriced school-building construction; and overpriced, because privatized, tuition for nursing students. And possible fraud committed against the Boy Scouts of the Philippines. It was Binay’s duty to protect these funds that he is, instead, accused of pilfering.

Even wealthy Makati will not have all of the resources required to provide the sanitation, health, education, and social services that the city needs. Diversion of public funds into private pockets that curtails the coverage or the quality of essential public services disproportionately burdens the poor. The rich can always engageprivate providers.

The Senate investigations thus badly tarnished the Robin Hood image, revealing the crime as, not robbing the rich, but stealing from the poor. Binay’s trust ratings plunged during the period of Senate hearings, only rebounding when the Senate shifted public attention from Makati to Mamasapano.

In resigning from the Aquino Cabinet, in resisting Junjun Binay’s preventive suspension, Binay continued to play the persecuted, underdog card, hoping to divert attention from the corruption cases that made the resignation and his son’s suspension necessary. But the Ombudsman’s decision to pursue these cases makes it difficult for Binay to dismiss them as mere election-inspired mud-slinging.

To recover the Robin Hood aura and give credibility to his presidential candidacy, Binay has to deal directly and decisively with the charges lodged against him. This is what voters are waiting for him to do.

Edilberto C. de Jesus (edejesu@yahoo.com) is professor emeritus at the Asian Institute of Management.