Rehabilitating history

BACKBENCHER
Rod Kapunan
7/30-31/2011



Actions to vindicate the Constitution should begin by punishing those who premeditatedly violated its sanctity. Along with it, all violations arising from the illegal exercise of power should be treated as residual offenses as when that particular power grabber is later accused of graft and corruption, plunder or human rights violation.

We are compelled to state this because that political postulate does not seem to have any relevance if the accused is the former President who came to power by the legitimate process of being elected, but by bad fortune was ousted. Often we tend to be much more vindictive all for that emotional fact that he was ousted.

Paradoxically, we adulate those who criminally engineered his removal such that we consider it most glorious to punish our former presidents for whatever crime we could heap on them, forgetting that those who assumed the presidency against our will commit a far more serious offense.

We even tend to deny the ousted presidents the privilege of immunity from suit extended to them under the Constitution and of their right as accused to be presumed innocent. For that we forget we are the ones in fact eroding the foundations of our democracy. Instead of punishing those who vandalized our democratic system of government, we reward them for that.

Such misplaced political value is now reflected in our inability to comprehend that the illegality of the acts of an illegal president is merely residual to her act of grabbing political power. The violations she and her coterie, who styled themselves as officials, could not happen had she not conspired to oust the sitting President. As one criminal lawyer would give his satirical analogy, the crimes of looting the funds of the government merely constitute an aggravating circumstance to the crimes of political vandalism and political swindling.

Besides, not much proof to convict them is necessary because history stands as our best evidence of what happened in January 2001 where Mrs. Arroyo in conspiracy with the elite, the clerics, the politicians, and supported by some ambitious military officers ousted the duly elected President. As some kind of recidivist, she did it again in 2004 in a desperate bid to extend her stay, and in 2007 to assure her that Congress would remain tightly under her thumb.

Now that the system is back on track, President Benigno Aquino III’s duty is to make sure it is never derailed again. His best assurance to that is to punish those responsible in derailing our political system. It may sound vindictive, but it is the only way he could rehabilitate the system from the severe shock caused by political vandalism. Failure to bring them to the bar of justice could create a much serious repercussion for then it would constitute a far greater injustice against the Filipino people.

Collaterally, forgiving them is to acquiesce to that deception now being added as chapter in our history. Nonetheless, history, having its own redeeming factor, continues to unravel the truth; that Mrs. Arroyo through her operatives cheated her rival candidate Fernando Poe, Jr. in 2004. Maybe the revelations made by former Autonomous Region in Muslim Mindanao governor Zaldy Ampatuan and Comelec Inspector Lintang Bedol could be brushed aside as mere political fireworks carried out by an administration in need of recognition. But that nonchalant reaction has in no time turned into a much distressing revelation by the unexpected surfacing of a vital witness, police Sr. Supt. Rafael Santiago.

It is not just a confession of identifying the mastermind, but a confession identifying his confederates who carried out that bold and brazen substitution of original election returns at the Batasang Pambansa with tampered and fake ones. Santiago specifically named former Comelec supervisor Roque Bello and his son, El Bello. In fact, his confession is now being corroborated by PO2 Rudy Gahar. Named were Senior Inspectors Raffy Lero, Samson Kimmayong, Warly Bitog; Inspector Ramon Garcia, SPO2 Rommel Pahang, and Paterno Gamba; PO2 Alan Laguyan, Rodel Tabangin and Trifon Laxamana; and PO1 Norman Duco.

No amount of disclaimer by now Zambales Gov. Hermogenes Ebdane could overturn the confession pointing to him as the one who ordered the operations coursed through then Special Action Force Director, Chief Supt. Marcelino Franco. Such is a self-serving denial because Santiago, Gahar, and possibly the rest have no reason to do that had it not for Mrs. Arroyo, she being the principal beneficiary of that criminal act with Governor Ebdane identified as one of her closest confidants.

Maybe the injustice committed by the past regime could have been forgiven had it not been repeated in 2004 and in 2007. Rather, the usurper became much addicted to her vice. The danger however is that the crimes she committed are fast developing into a crime against our own history as a people and as a nation. Such is the eventuality that could happen because chroniclers who were not privy to that infamy would ultimately be writing that Mrs. Arroyo was indeed elected president of this God-forsaken Republic.

From that false premise the next generation of Filipinos would be digesting that abominable lie. We accept political vandalism and political swindling as a rewarding enterprise. Worse, time will come when our people will see nothing wrong or anachronistic in overthrowing an elected government more so if the clappers of the political vandal would start reciting her so-called “achievements” as though they are synonymous to legalizing a criminal act.

To assert that Mrs. Arroyo’s submission to the process of stepping down in 2010 as her final act of contrition is pure rubbish. That misplaced atonement could not cure the damage caused by her trifling of our sacred right to elect our leader. So, unless and until President Aqiuno does something to erase these prevarications in our history, the gratuitous reward of calling the principal political vandal former President would persist.

President Aquino’s ability to rectify the criminal distortions presented as “glorious saga” in our history could become his greatest achievement. He would not only be restoring political stability and maturity, but that his brand of democracy would no longer revolve around the confines of vague idealistic rhetoric. Democracy under his era will be having a concrete mechanism to defend itself.

(rodkap@yahoo.com.ph)