Both sides guilty
IT’S BEEN THE BATTLE OF THE ICONS LEADING UP to today. Yesterday, a full-page ad, signed by society matrons who have been busy signing pro-administration manifestos since 2005, came out with another signed statement appealing to the public to respect the Sandiganbayan’s verdict. Their ad was plastered with pictures of Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales, former President Fidel V. Ramos and Sandiganbayan Presiding Justice Teresita de Castro.The camp of former President Joseph Estrada did its share. The ex-President himself growled that he was prepared to endure imprisonment in Muntinlupa. Sen. Jinggoy Estrada speculated on an unfavorable verdict. The defendant’s camp certainly did its share of trying to condition the public mind, including applying for a series of rally permits.
Fortress Malacañang has been on pins and needles for weeks now, maneuvering both publicly and behind the scenes to diminish the impact of whatever verdict the Sandiganbayan hands down. On one hand, it has pulled out all the stops to project power. That projection ranges from the Presidential Security Group not only being in full battle gear for some time now, but its commander remaining in the Palace compound even when the President went abroad.
On the other hand, its efforts to project a sense of unassailable armed strength have been belied by its dangling a proposal for an amnesty. A proposal, we’ve pointed out in the past, that has been used for its own purposes by Estrada’s partisans, even though Estrada himself has gone through the motions of saying he’d refuse any pardon or amnesty offer.
The result has been a country—including the financial markets—nervously awaiting a verdict, while the Palace and Estrada’s people work to undercut both the actual verdict and its effects on the defendants. Both sides, it bears repeating, have thus tried to undercut the court. Just as they systematically tried to undercut the trial itself, including dragging it out, which delayed the delivery of justice but gave both sides additional room for political maneuvering. Central to both administration and Estrada loyalist thinking was projecting the case as a rallying point for the faithful, instead of acknowledging that the justice system represented the best way to secure the interests of the citizenry as a whole.
Ferdinand Marcos might have escaped the long arm of the law. His disgrace, however, raised the bar with regard to the accountability of all his successors. Before Marcos, there was no crime called plunder. Since 1991, plunder as a capital crime has become a Damocles’ sword hanging over the head of every president of the republic.
The two former presidents of South Korea, Chun Doo-hwan and Roh Tae-woo, caused a sensation in Asia when they were convicted and imprisoned for acts committed during their terms. Both served only a year in jail, receiving a pardon from President Kim Dae-jung as an act of national reconciliation. The Philippines had a golden opportunity to match the symbolic impact of the conviction of two former presidents in a sister democracy. Sadly, today, our country has to confront the reality that for too many, the process has been so tainted as to deny the broader public a sense of satisfaction, whatever the verdict might be.
It will be premature to say anything concerning the verdict. We can only hope that the public will be pleasantly surprised by the Sandiganbayan decision. Just as the Supreme Court has managed to pull the nation back from the brink, despite the at times collective madness of the executive and legislative branches, so, too, may the Sandiganbayan amaze the public with a demonstration of the fearless and impartial application of the law.
If not, both prosecution and defense can still file an appeal before the Supreme Court. What the administration and opposition surely deserve censure for, even at this point, is how they both tried to turn what could have been an impartial trial into a never-ending series of opportunities to personalize, and thus politicize, the law. They will always be guilty of that.
