Now, the loser ‘wins’
Lito BanayoThis is not a sequel to our article written – titled "And the Winners Lose". But it has the same setting.
That article detailed to the public for the first time what transpired through backroom deals and one-on-one talks between the man who would be Senate president, the "solid" administration bloc, some "independents" who abuse the meaning of the word to conveniently justify their straddling the political fence, and some collaborators who now find it easy to turn their backs on an electorate who voted for them because it thought of them as oppositionists through and through.
That article caused a great deal of commotion on the political front. It also caused some personal hurts. But it was a story that had to be told.
Still and all, some of the dramatis personae who are responsible for making the winning opposition lose have had the gall to state for private ears (as if they did not know that the phrase "private ears" is oxymoronic in the Philippine environment), that they "could withstand the initial reaction," and "they could play the media game anyway."
The last statement I take to mean, that with ample resources, they can "erase" the negative impressions over their deserting the opposition team with whom they were elected.
The over-abundance of personal resources is fact. Proof of it is the way some senators spent way above almost everyone else to clinch his post the second-time around. That he still did not get his consummate desire to be "Numero Uno" in the senatorial derby speaks volumes about the limits of maximum resource allocation as a function of electoral approbation. The incremental resource benefits of the high position sought, and presumably won, are likewise undeniable. If one cannot be No. 1 with the voters, one could always wheel and deal to be No. 1 among his peers.
The "victory" of wheeling and dealing is fortified by the latest addition to the 23-man chamber. The Gentleman from Maguindanao has finally been proclaimed by a Commission on Elections which has graduated from its Marcos-era image of inability to count, which could be lapsus mathematicus, into inventing numbers, which is a deliberate lapse of everything else, from mental to legal to moral.
How does one comprehend the Maguindanao vote? In 20 of its 22 municipalities, there was hardly any real voting that took place. First of all, there was no local competition. None from the opposition dared lose money, effort and life itself to face Ampatuan the father, Ampatuan the son, Ampatuan the uncle, Ampatuan the nephew, and a gaggle of Ampatuan robots. The only election was for twelve would-be senators. In two of the municipalities where there were local candidates, the municipal certificates of canvass showed that some of the opposition candidates won. But in the provincial certificate of canvass produced by the Comelec’s niño bonito, Lintang Bedol, scion of "retired" manipulator Virgilio Garcillano, the result was an incredible 12-0 for the GMA candidates. And in all of Maguindanao, nine senatorial candidates, four of them national winners, got a flat zero vote. Even the unflappable liar Benjamin Abalos flipped over and said something about "statistical improbability."
After a 45-day rigmarole, during which the public viewed on television clear footages of children post-fabricating election returns under the heavy custodianship of armed militias, and a public school supervisor, Musa Dimasidsing being mysteriously killed after declaring the truth about the elections in his Maguindanao municipality, and "new" but authentically-printed municipal certificates of canvass certified before a special board of canvassers, the Comelec gave imprimatur to farce.
Even the Supreme Court had no choice but to give a "nihil obstat" to the proclamation of the 23rd member of the Senate, the Gentleman from Maguindanao. Seven of its members, all appointees of the Lady by the River, some wishing they would yet be appointed Chief Justice when the current holder retires before the Lady’s un-elected term ends, saw nothing wrong in the Comelec rigmarole and would not halt the proclamation by a temporary restraining order that the same Court found so easy to give in "business" cases. Examine the names behind the Court’s 7-7 vote. Then juxtapose the same names who voted for or against EO 464 and other landmark cases where GMA’s stand was before the bench, and compare.
There were seven who could see beyond the procedural, who found it difficult to reconcile the "disenfranchisement" of Maguindanao with the factual evidence that showed only one family disenfranchises all the people of Maguindanao, and only one man and his cabal of cheats counts the disenfranchised voters of Maguindanao. They voted to restrain the Commission on Electoral Cheating from sealing what was stolen. Remember them well: Chief Justice Reynato Puno, Associate Justices Consuelo Ynares-Santiago, Angelina Sandoval Gutierrez, Leonardo Quisumbing, Alicia Austria-Martinez, Antonio T. Carpio, and Adolf Azcuna. Not only did they see beyond the procedures of the law, not only did they know how to dismiss gobbledygook in order to come out with the naked truth, but they were independent enough not to allow farce to become rule. An obvious crime had been committed, by Bedol and his bosses, whether in Maguindanao or Intramuros, and these seven justices were not about to tell the whole world that in this country, crime pays, and pays exceedingly well. Well enough for the Gentleman from Maguindanao to find solace among peers of supposedly "honorable" elect.
Now one admires Mike Defensor all the more. He probably could have maneuvered himself into the twelfth slot, if he moved heaven and earth enough. It would have meant cheating Trillanes of victory likewise, aside from Koko Pimentel. But he valued more whatever little was left of his personal honor after recklessly throwing all his chips in defense of the indefensible GMA. Time, after all, is yet on his side. Redemption is still within the realm of the possible.
As for the newly-proclaimed Gentleman from Maguindanao, whether he engineered the numbers himself, as how explain his dislodging the poor Chavit Singson from the highly-coveted and highly-expensive "honor" of being the provincial favorite in Bedol’s canvass, or the Lady’s Comelec did it for him, no amount of "accomplishment" as senator of the realm in the next six years would ever erase his image of being the beneficiary of cheating most clear.
He might want to run for congressman of Maguindanao next.
Simeon Datumanong’s term limits would allow it, unless Ampatuan decides to run a grandson for the post.
