Wednesday, September 26, 2007 Carvajal: Why pardon Erap? By Orlando P. Carvajal Break Point
NOW we know the final reason why our leaders violate our nation’s laws with impunity. First, nobody dares to hail them to court. Second, if they do get prosecuted they never get convicted. Finally, if for some reason somebody like former president Joseph Estrada gets convicted, he can always be pardoned right off the bat.
Ferdinand Marcos and his Martial Law conspirators were never brought to justice. Then president Cory Aquino, and the people in silent agreement with her, implicitly pardoned Marcos and company by not prosecuting them who had blood or ill-gotten gold in their hands. Consequently, the ghosts of all who disappeared or were killed during those dark days in our history have not found rest while we suffer from the unabated abuse of power by our rulers.
We thought we saw daylight in the conviction of Erap. We thought a new day for justice had dawned. But the fervent offer by the Arroyo administration of pardon to the convicted former president has blanketed this country with the darkness of injustice once more. The pardon tells us that punishment is only for lower class criminals while convicted corrupt members of the ruling class get pardoned by their possibly equally corrupt peers.
The opposition pushes for Erap’s pardon claiming he has suffered enough. But how can they say so when the Sandigangbayan has ruled that enough suffering for his crime is nothing less than life imprisonment? If six years of a life sentence is enough suffering then we should pardon so many other criminals who have served more than half of their twenty or forty year sentences for they too would have suffered more than enough.
For President Arroyo to pardon Erap now is to make a political expediency out of his conviction. To be true to her class, PGMA should have worked for Erap’s exoneration but she has to be happy with the former’s conviction since that expediently legitimizes her first term in office. Now she has the opportunity to be true to her ilk by pardoning Erap. In so doing she serves notice to all future wielders of power that they too must protect their class by pardoning those members whose prosecution and conviction cannot be tenably avoided.
Corruption goes without let-up in this country because it goes all the way to the top that is impervious to prosecution and conviction, and if convicted is pardoned. Erap, therefore, will be pardoned so the ruling elite can continue plundering this country with impunity.
Unfortunately, it will bring us back to square one in our fight against corruption. The ZTE scam, for instance, the latest to hit the Arroyo government, will be another charade with a happy ending for all because the actors are all from the same closely-knit, self-protecting ruling class.
