Wednesday, October 03, 2007 Carvajal: The big difference, 2 By Orlando P. Carvajal Break Point
ONLY former Comelec Chairman Benjamin Abalos knows his reasons for resigning. Sen. Nene Pimentel thinks he is being made a fall guy. Precisely, this prejudgment by the senator makes for a good reason for the resignation.
By resigning, he can fight his accusers in court with hard evidence. Guilty or not, he made the right move because the Senate does not really investigate but browbeat the accused and the witnesses and treat the public to an arrogant display of power.
Abalos’ resignation hopefully transfers the venue of the investigation into the courts and away from the power play in the Senate investigating committee and the game of numbers in the impeachment proceedings readied against him in the House.
These two venues will never get us to the truth about the issue. These two venues will just bury the truth in the dirt of power politics.
It still remains to be seen, however, if Abalos will tell the truth now that he has resigned. I would like to think he will because he is supposed to be safest staying in the circle of power. Once resigned, he is left to his own resources.
I would expect, therefore, that his main resource is the truth and the hard evidence to prove it. With Abalos’ resignation, the truth has a slightly better chance of coming through.
Meanwhile, Lapu-Lapu City Mayor Arturo Radaza continues to avoid facing the issue squarely with facts and figures of his own to refute the accusations of business groups and NGOs. Last I heard, he was readying a massive rally in support of his administration. Like the senators who want to browbeat the accused with arrogant power play, Radaza insists on using the power (and wealth?) of his position to keep his accusers at bay.
The Senate has lost its power to browbeat Abalos into admitting the crimes he is accused of. Radaza should know by now that he can no longer use wealth and power to prevent people from getting to the truth. The groups massed against him have filed or will be filing, their plunder case in court.
And once filed, no show of force by his supporters can keep the court from asking him to answer the charges and defend himself, not with his political and financial power, but with the force of evidence.
The Lapu-Lapu case always had a chance at being resolved with the truth coming out in a court of law. The ZTE case now also has that chance with Abalos’ resignation, which hopefully means he wants to argue his case in court and not in the Senate where he does not stand---nobody for that matter does---a chance with arrogant grandstanding senators. The truth in both these cases will be good for the nation, nothing else. The truth will have to be the ultimate big difference.
