Magnificent
The motion of defense counsel to dispense with a full reading of the Sandiganbayan decisions in the perjury and plunder cases against Joseph Estrada has allowed the ex-president, his family and his allies to fudge the truth--and confuse the public.This is unfortunate, because the rulings, especially the 262-page decision in the plunder case, are a clear example of solid, straightforward legal reasoning. There are certain errors, to be sure, such as an innocent confusion between the two Estrada vs. Sandiganbayan decisions upholding the constitutionality of the plunder law, but in the main the three Sandiganbayan justices outdid themselves: They sift confidently through the mass of evidence, organize the most salient, set forth their findings of fact--and then apply the law.
Every single assertion made by Estrada and his supporters since Wednesday's promulgation can be answered directly from the decision.
Sen. Jinggoy Estrada, for instance, assailed the court (the same court which acquitted him) for convicting his father on the illegal gambling charge. Since when did jueteng money, he asked for argument's sake, become public funds?
His question is irrelevant, because the plunder law penalizes any public official who systematically amasses ill-gotten wealth. The "public treasury" is only one of six possible sources of illegal wealth specified by the law. The sixth, in fact, can be understood as a catch-all condition: "By taking undue advantage of official position, authority, relationship, connection or influence to unjustly enrich himself or themselves at the expense and to the damage and prejudice of the Filipino people and the Republic of the Philippines." (The decision quotes this ringing line toward its conclusion.)
We have to remember that the plunder law--Republic Act 7080, as amended--came into being as a legislative reaction to the excesses of the Marcos regime. (Now that was plunder, on a grand, one-for-the-Guinness-book-of-world-records scale.) As Justice Josue Bellosillo of the Supreme Court wrote, over a decade after RA 7080 became law: "Drastic and radical measures are imperative to fight the increasingly sophisticated, extraordinarily methodical and economically catastrophic looting of the national treasury."
In its own decision, the Sandiganbayan quotes at length from the Explanatory Note to the Senate bill that helped lead to the plunder law. One passage reads: "The acts and/or omissions sought to be penalized do not involve simple cases of malversation of public funds, bribery, extortion, theft and graft but constitute plunder of an entire nation resulting in material damage to the national economy."
In this dark light, centralizing jueteng operations in Malacañang certainly qualifies as plunder.
Estrada himself took the court to task for issuing a "political" decision, saying he could not blame the justices because the Sandiganbayan's special division was "programmed to convict" him. A close reading of the decision on the plunder case, however, will show that--despite obvious pressure from both the Arroyo administration and from Estrada's political camp--the three members of the Sandiganbayan stuck scrupulously to the law's straight and narrow.
They acquitted the younger Estrada and the lawyer Ed Serapio because, in their assessment of the evidence, the prosecution failed to prove the case against the two co-accused beyond a reasonable doubt. They found that the Velarde account contained unimaginable wealth, but said the prosecution failed to prove the money was ill-gotten--except, that is, for P189 million, which they identified, beyond any doubt, as the commissions Estrada received from the purchase of Belle Corp. shares by the Social Security System and the Government Service Insurance System. The language of the decision reflects the quality of the reasoning: measured, assured, humane, just.
The Sandiganbayan's plunder decision reminds us again that, through the turmoil of the last seven lean years, beginning with Estrada's aborted impeachment trial in the Senate, the courts have played a leading role in holding our democracy together.
