Tuesday, February 06, 2007 Editorials: Lie tests and platforms
CERTIFICATES candidacy for congressman in Cebu City’s south district have not been filed yet but the exchange between businessman Jonathan Guardo and Rep. Antonio Cuenco has already taken one interesting turn after another.
The latest is Guardo’s polygraph test dare on the issue of narcopolitics that Cuenco may yet accept.
The dare was actually but Guardo’s initial response to Cuenco’s claim that drug lords are bankrolling his (Guardo’s) campaign; later interviews already had him flinging a wild accusation of his own — that Cuenco-led congressional probes were meant to extort money from targeted drug lords.
Put up or shut up
But while a polygraph test is popularly known as a lie detector test, everybody also knows that there is no absolute guarantee that what a person declares during the examination is the truth; the reason why the court frowns on the result of such tests as evidence in a case.
Politicians can come up with various ways to disparage polygraph test results in much the same way that they can manufacture reasons not to take the test.
The better option then is for Cuenco and Guardo to present instead convincing proofs to support their allegations and counter-allegations, especially because narcopolitics is a serious public concern. If they cannot do that, then they better proceed to the next believable issue.
Winning, program
While we are still at it, one interesting argument advanced by Guardo in parrying lawyer Aristotle Batuhan’s challenge for him to present a clear legislative program hews closely to the line of a popular ad: “Winning is not everything; it’s the only thing.”
But while there is sense in Guardo’s insistence that finding ways to win should precede the formulation of a program (“Bisag unsa kagwapo ang legislative agenda, useless gihapon kun dili ta kalingkod”), it also shows the kind of candidacy he is pushing.
To some, it smacks of lack of coherence or a twisted notion of public service.
Not an exception
To be fair to Guardo, however, he must have been simply too frank to admit what almost all politicians hide under the blanket of altruism: ambition and lust for power.
Only very few candidates run with the honest intention of implementing a platform of government; rather, most of them use platforms of government to win votes.
What Guardo is saying, therefore, is that he is no exception to the rule.
