Web gets wider
TWO OF THE MOST FORMIDABLE, IF NOT intimidating, lawyers in the Senate took turns trying to beat Vidal Doble’s credibility (arguably shaky at best, to start with) to a pulp. Sen. Joker Arroyo tried to point out the contradictions between Doble’s past testimony and the version he gave the Senate. Arroyo seemed eager to spotlight Doble’s having had a civilian lawyer, which would suggest that the testimony was beyond military pressure—until Doble pointed out that his civilian lawyer was provided by the Philippine National Police.Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile focused on Doble’s habeas corpus petition filed with the Court of Appeals, a document prepared by opposition-affiliated lawyers. Doble, however, revealed that he had been reminded, before he testified, that the long and short of whatever he said was that he remained under the authority of his unit, the Intelligence Service of the AFP. So, Doble said, with that pointed reminder still ringing in his ears, he lied.
Instead of demolishing Doble’s credibility, Arroyo and Enrile simply clarified the tremendous pressure—Doble himself bluntly said it was duress—that tainted not his latest, but his previous, testimony.
Arroyo and Enrile—as unlikely a pair of comrades-in-interest we would ever hope to find, but politics indeed makes for strange bedfellows—had to retreat with obviously ruffled feathers, in the manner of Estelito Mendoza and his confrontation with Clarissa Ocampo. We are far from saying that Doble is an Ocampo. But the way he stood his ground, and made a shambles of the two senators’ virtual cross-examinations, is a comparable demonstration of how a witness, instead of being impeached, can impeach the prosecutors.
But it is, perhaps, with regard to Doble’s testimony that he had been approached by presidential aide Medy Poblador, that his most recent testimony truly became more than a rehash or revision of his previous statements.
Doble said Poblador approached him, after he was spirited back to military custody under the auspices of Bishop Socrates Villegas, and offered him money in exchange for his refusal to testify before the House of Representatives. The public might just be willing to give the military the benefit of the doubt, for successfully retrieving one of its own who had, essentially, become a rogue agent. An aide of the President offering incentives to a witness to refuse cooperation with the House, on the other hand, is another matter altogether.
Poblador acts as a liaison between Congress and the President. She was perhaps most obviously in her role as presidential fixer during the first impeachment attempt, where she lurked in the lounge behind the Speaker’s chair in the plenary hall, for reasons best left to congressmen to reveal. There is no doubt she holds a favored place in the President’s innermost circle of can-do people.
The question now becomes, whether Poblador acted in a manner resembling US President Richard Nixon’s aides, to keep E. Howard Hunt, implicated in the Watergate break-in scandal, quiet in exchange for money. In the United States, the result of Nixon’s authorizing the bribe effort resulted in one of the articles of impeachment filed against him. We cannot emphasize how serious the allegation of Poblador’s potential involvement could be, precisely because it’s so reminiscent of the Nixon case.
Doble’s allegations concerning Poblador, who seems to have used family ties with Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales, the Archbishop of Manila, to get Bishop Villegas involved, brings up questions about how the administration wields its clout with the Catholic hierarchy. Either the prelates naively acted in good faith, or were co-conspirators in crimes that range from intimidating a witness, including coercing the witness to commit perjury, to (possibly) outright kidnapping and the creation of a situation where an aide of the President could make an offer Doble couldn’t refuse.
At the heart of it is an insight into motive: If Doble were simply a liar, no government would have gone this far, possibly broken so many laws, or risked wrecking so many reputations. That it did suggests Doble really has the goods on them.
