Wednesday, August 29, 2007 Malilong: Playing with fire in the Hello Garci issue By Frank Malilong The Other Side
WE are notorious for our short memories so the country’s opposition leaders with an eye to 2010 are making sure we don’t forget Ma’am and Garci. That is why we are witnessing the second coming of former intelligence agent Vidal Doble Jr.
The Hello Garci scandal worked wonders for the opposition in the May 14 elections. So why not keep the fire burning until the next polls? To the “pragmatic” politician no time is too early to prepare for or mount a campaign.
We are told that there is a need for a Senate investigation so that we can finally “put a closure” to the issue. That’s baloney. In fact, the only “closure” that is acceptable to them is the one that shuts the doors of Malacañang on President Arroyo.
That is next to impossible, however, since Mrs. Arroyo controls the House from which an impeachment must, under the Constitution, originate. Short of mounting a coup d’etat against her, the opposition cannot drive the President out of the Palace before her term ends.
So they go for the next best thing: prepare for the next presidential elections.
Milk Hello Garci of its remaining propaganda value. Rekindle public anger against the administration and keep it burning for three years.
The bad thing about playing with fire, however, is that it could burn your hand.
A couple of years have passed since the Garci conversations surfaced. In between, we had seen two impeachment attempts and an election. The economy has recovered, the peso is rebounding and still the opposition would not let the issue rest? What price, power?
Much is being attempted to make of Doble’s new confession. This is the same man, you will remember, who swore not very long ago that no wiretapping took place in 2004. Must we allow someone who changes his tune according to the direction of the political breeze to bring us close to a crisis again?
If anything can be made out of Doble’s resurrection, it is that he has confessed to committing a crime. He should be sent to jail. That would be real, just and poetic closure.
***
That the police are suffering from a huge credibility problem can be gleaned from the general public reaction to the news that a woman was arrested for allegedly trying to bribe a policeman in Lapu-Lapu last Sunday.
“Kay traynta mil ra man gud” (“because it was only thirty thousand pesos, that’s why”) was most common comment I heard. The suggestion that the police arrested the woman because the bribe that she offered was a paltry sum may be unfair to the man in uniform but it is not necessarily uncalled for.
Rather than take umbrage, the police should therefore look at the remark as a stronger motivation to clean their ranks of misfits. The scalawags in uniform may be an exception but it is from their shenanigans that the police are mostly remembered. Sadly, they have so soiled the badge that it would take more than just a few arrests for attempted bribery in order to make it shiny again.
(The first part of this column was written for yesterday’s issue.
Unfortunately, due in part to human error and to electronic glitch, what was sent to SunStar was the one that already appeared last Sunday. My apologies to the reader and my editors.)
