Vigilance with anger

Last May, nearly a year and six months after the first cases that led to the detention of senators Juan Ponce Enrile, Jinggoy Estrada and Bong Revilla Jr., Justice Secretary Leila de Lima was asked when indictments against other personalities entangled in the scam were forthcoming. The public had reason to be disappointed with the tone of her response: “I don’t know if kasama iyan sa magiging concentration and focus ko because there are really very important matters on my table,” she was quoted as saying. “Hindi ko na rin kasi natutukan because may iba na rin na mas urgent cases na I had to personally attend to.”

The remark—which seemed to suggest that her department, and by extension the Aquino administration, was no longer as determined and interested in filing cases against the so-called third batch of suspects in the sprawling P10-billion pork barrel scam—ignited a firestorm.

The pork barrel controversy by then had become a temblor that had literally reordered the political landscape: with the Supreme Court eventually outlawing the Priority Development Assistance Fund; three senators of the realm ending in jail and scores of other present and former government officials haled to court on plunder and related charges; and Malacañang left reeling as a counter-punch from the indicted Estrada led to revelations about the hitherto unknown Disbursement Acceleration Program, which the high court would likewise declare unconstitutional.

The pork barrel controversy would turn out to be the biggest and most consequential game-changer in the history of contemporary Philippine politics, with as yet no end in sight to its ramifications as the full extent of the criminal syndicate, said to have been run by now-convicted businesswoman Janet Lim-Napoles, continues to spew out fresh damning details.

And yet there was De Lima saying that she had “more urgent” cases on her table, leading observers to make the persuasive claim that her department was willfully taking it slow because the third batch of suspects would include allies and prominent members of President Aquino’s political party. It took a full two weeks for De Lima to try to clarify her remarks, saying that the all-important prosecution of new cases “still remains to be a priority” that she was trying her best to “squeeze in.” Still not the most ringing of declarations, but it was, at the very least, an acknowledgment by De Lima and Malacañang that they could not pussyfoot on the cases for far too long, at the risk of incurring further public ire.

The complaints filed by the National Bureau of Investigation last week against 40 individuals, including Sen. Gregorio Honasan and former Cibac (Citizens’ Battle Against Corruption) party-list representative and now Technical Education and Skills Development Authority Director General Emmanuel Joel J. Villanueva—a known ally of President Aquino who has been talked about as a possible candidate in the Liberal Party’s senatorial slate for 2016—appear to fulfill De Lima’s promise not to slacken on the matter. Malacañang has released the rote statement that the indictment of a new batch of suspects that now includes Aquino allies only confirms its adherence to “principles of good governance and impartial justice.”

The Ombudsman will still have to sift through the evidence submitted by the NBI, and the results of that scrutiny should tell the public whether De Lima’s department did a thorough enough job that would let the charges stand in court, or whether the mounds of paperwork it photogenically wheeled into the Ombudsman’s office amounted to hollow cases that were good only for show.

That means trials for any of the new suspects are still far off in the horizon. As it is, the cases already on the dock, that of Enrile et al., have proceeded at a typically glacial pace, with the Sandiganbayan recently castigating government prosecutors, and not even the defense counsels, for delays in the proceedings. The sheer complexity and breadth of the cases related to the pork barrel scam, and the still-growing number of personages that have to be made to answer for it in court, suggest that the Sandiganbayan will be preoccupied with these cases for many years, perhaps for more than a decade, on top of its already gargantuan backlog.

A scenario like that would be beneficial only to the criminals and thieves who plundered the country’s treasury, as they hope to exploit and outlast the infirmities of the justice system and wait for a possibly more friendly dispensation after the elections next year.

More of the public ire is needed in the days ahead.