THE Senate and House committee hearings, separately conducted, on the Jan. 25 Mamasapano massacre provide high drama that TV audiences can’t see in the regular sitcoms.
Where else could they watch:
-- Generals in tears or near tears;
-- Tales of blood and gore, police troops hit in the leg or arm but finished off by the rebels;
-- Story of suspicion and distrust between the police and military, the PNP not sharing a secret with AFP and the AFP in turn foot-dragging in its response to the call for succor;
-- Hush-hush meetings on the plan to capture two terrorists, involving the president and his favorite police official, with the official admonishing the mission head to zipper his lips.
The hearings also featured the grilling of witnesses by lawmakers who wanted to show love of country, sympathy for the slain cops, and their skill in analyzing the causes of the incident.
In both the Senate and the House, there was a long queue of speakers who snatched the chance of exposure to a big audience, often extending allocated time or intruding into the time of others under the pretext of shedding light.
A few legislators who knew they couldn’t navigate the inquiry’s tough waters forfeited their time in favor of colleagues with better skill in asking and probing.
Audiences in turn scored interrogators, citing who did well and who flunked, and rating resource persons on candidness or evasion, sincerity or fakery.
In sum, the marathon hearings supplied great entertainment.
About the Qur’an and Marwan’s finger
BET YOU DIDN’T KNOW, if you hadn’t been monitoring the news...
-- QUR’AN: BIFF and MILF rebels could end up swearing by the Qur’an as to which group
coddled the two terrorists hunted by the PNP troops;
BIFF hurled the challenge as it denied it harbored the two fugitives or spirited away the body of Marwan who was believed to have been killed during the firefight.
-- TOT. TOT means time on target. Some people were told about the operation only when the troops were at the targeted location.
-- FINGER. Why Marwan’s finger that SAF troops had cut was turned over to the FBI, apparently without observing rules on chain of custody.
Sacked SAF chief Getulio Naspeñas told the House committee he couldn’t say unless in an executive session “because it involved national security.”
The mystery thickens when a finger would become an object of national security.
Binay teased on jerking Purisima
Vice President Jejomar Binay should’ve kept quiet and be grateful over the shift of media and public attention from him to the Mamasapano incident.
He didn’t and instead teased former PNP chief Alan Purisima to explain his role in the botched operation.
In turn, he got flak from his critics: why Binay continued to dodge the questions about his alleged unexplained wealth.
And he’s not home free yet. The Binay hearings will resume next week, vowed his Senate “tormentors.”
[bzzzzz@sunstar.com.ph or paseares@gmail.com]