Wednesday, February 20, 2008 Malilong: Seeking refuge in ambiguity By Frank Malilong The Other Side
DID Commission on Higher Education Chairman Romulo Neri call President Arroyo evil? Let’s start with what we lawyers call the basic premises or the facts that are admitted or undisputed:
First, that a meeting took place on Dec. 7, 2007 at a restaurant of the Asian Institute of Management in Makati. It was Rodolfo Lozada Jr. who arranged the meeting through his brother who was a friend of Sen. Panfilo Lacson’s chief of staff;
Second, that present in that meeting were Lacson, Sen. Jamby Madrigal, Neri and Lozada; and, finally, that Neri briefed the two opposition senators “on the nature of the Philippine economy.”
Lozada says that it was in the course of the briefing that Neri called their boss “evil” who was “at the heart” of the web of corruption in the country.
Neri now claims that he could not remember making the statement since the meeting took place “so long ago.” Actually, it was only a little more than two months ago. Neri must have such a bad memory.
“Can’t recall” is standard advice from lawyers to witnesses who are undergoing cross-examination. When the cross goes in the direction of uncharted or perilous territory, plead amnesia. You can’t be pinned down on something that you can’t remember.
Neri’s problem is that the Senate investigation is not a court trial, the presence in its ranks of so many frustrated trial advocates notwithstanding. Here, you worry less about the odds of a conviction than about perception.
If Neri thought he had taken himself and his patron out of harm’s way with his “safe” answer, he is grossly mistaken. In fact, he has just pushed himself and Mrs. Arroyo deeper into the quicksand.
If he had simply denied categorically having made the statement, it would have been his word against Lozada’s, Lacson’s and Madrigal’s. That he did not, Neri left open the possibility that he could have said what Lozada claimed he said although he could no longer recall.
A truthful man is as brave as a lion while a liar seeks refuge in ambiguity.
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But for a meeting that I could no longer postpone, the attendance in the “Mass for the Search for Truth” at the Redemptorist Church would have been 401. It wouldn’t have changed the fact that the turnout was disappointingly low but I would have been able to make my own little statement by my presence.
Either we’re suffering from people power fatigue or we just have simply turned callous to corruption. It does not help that a post-GMA scenario necessarily includes Noli de Castro. As my daughter has so aptly put it in her column in The Freeman, between a known and an unknown evil, what do I fear most?
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I had the rare privilege of addressing last Feb. 8 an elite group of policemen who had taken a three-and-a-half month course in Public Safety Senior Leadership at the 7th Regional Training School.
It was the short message of the chief of the Applied Training Affairs Division, Police Senior Insp. Ramon Landingin, that stole the thunder, however. Be a good leader and a good example to others, Landingin exhorted the graduates, who were led by their class president, RicRic Ortiz.
“Constantly keep the fire in your hearts burning as you strive to serve the best interests of the people.” I couldn’t have said it better.
