Women's global forum / Scream from a cave

Irene Santiago, convener of the two-day Global Forum on Women Political Leaders which starts in Manila today, asks us to "look at the world through women's eyes." Bring up the subject of women, and you have a tidal wave on your hands. Perhaps it was Aristophanes who said it best: "These impossible women! How they get around us. The poet was right. You can't live with them or without them." This old romantic notion of women was also reinforced by Cervantes who said: "That's the nature of women, not to love when we love them and to love when we love them not."

Ms. Santiago, vice presidential teammate of Sen. Raul Roco when he ran for the presidency in 1998, hardly fills the bill. She is a political dynamo, tough, perpetually in quest of political equality for women. And what Charles Dudley Warner said about women fits her and certainly those participating in the Global Forum: "Woman is a perpetual revolution, and it is that element which continually destroys and recreates." Simone de Beauvoir said, "The women of today are in a fair way to dethrone the myth of femininity. They are beginning to affirm their independence in concrete ways."

Well, all right. We are all ears. C'mon, ladies, give it all you got.

Hillary Rodham Clinton was supposed to come but couldn't because of her burgeoning bid for the US Senate in representation of New York. Daw Ang San Suu Kyi, perhaps the bravest woman alive today continuing to defy the hoodlum generals of Burma, will deliver a videotaped speech on Visions of the Future. Loida Nicolas Lewis, chair and CEO of TLC Beatrice Foods, will deliver a speech on Spirituality in Business and Public Affairs. Loida is the Filipina who took over her deceased Afro-American husband's affairs and now is the most successful businesswoman in the US. On the speaker's deck is Dr. Wan Azizah Wan Ismail, a politician in her own right and wife of imprisoned Anwar Ibrahim, former deputy prime minister of Malaysia. And we add: Dr. Pippa Norris, lecturer, Harvard University Kennedy School of Government, who had written at least 18 books. And lest we forget, our own vice president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who will speak on Practicing Democracy.

Keynote speaker is former president Corazon Aquino, chosen by Time magazine as one of the 20 most influential Asians of the 20th century. Ms. Aquino will also talk about Spirituality in Business and Public Affairs. Wonder what she will say, directly or indirectly, about the "spirituality" of the Joseph Estrada presidency.

Have no doubts about it. These women are out to blaze new pathways to power. They have fire in the belly, a lot of grey matter in that medulla oblongata, they themselves are models of how far women can go in the macho world of politics. I'd hate to pick a verbal fight with any one of them. When I was a political science student in Paris, I did get into verbal jousts with some of my girl classmates and, oh brother, they gave as good as they got. And I got some good bruises.

And so the world's most political women will -- through a grid of subjects unimaginable ten years ago -- light bonfires for political equality with men. They have gotten far but not very far in Philippine politics. We just have three women senators out of 24, and just a handful of congresswomen in a 240-member Lower House. What we have a flowering of -- in fact, a huge, formidable and almost overpowering mushroom cloud -- is women in media. In time, the males will become a minority in media. The same holds true in the Foreign Office, where Filipina ambassadors, ministers and consuls are about to overpower and outnumber the men, if they have not already.

Not so in business. The males are predominant. But in Malacañang, golly, gosh and Gotterdamerung, a woman is always in sight beside the president. If proximity is power, then Lenny de Jesus is the second most powerful person in the Philippines. She is here, there, everywhere, omnipresent, ubiquitous and her followers say omniscient. Where does Lenny de Jesus get her power? Nobody knows. But she certainly is our version of Madame de Pompadour, private secretary of Louis XV. At a later date, she let the king understand she no longer wanted to have any sexual relations with him.

Favors, promotions and privileges, according to palace records, "could be obtained only through her good graces." Madame de Pompadour was "the artistic and political counselor to the king." Her 20 years in power "marked the very apogee of taste in France." Many in court hated and reviled her, but just as many admired her, among them Voltaire who said when she died: "She loved the king for herself, she had righteousness in her soul and justice in her heart." She was one of five mistresses of King Louis XV, but Madame de Pompadour was primus inter pares.

Did I say mistress? I make no such allusion to Lenny de Jesus.

Justice Secretary Serafin Cuevas must be in a blue funk. After this column drew a bead on him for speaking prematurely, for stating Hubert Webb would be convicted two days before Judge Amelita Tolentino rendered her verdict, and that the evidence against the accused was "insurmountable", well, I got a hysterical letter from one of his minions. The name, gents and mesdames, is Ferrer S. Co, president of the National Prosecutors League of the Philippines, Inc.

His prose is no different, even worse than the tortuous language used by Judge Tolentino in her 186-page verdict. The verdict had no legal grace at all, no pontoons upon which justice could walk with dignity and elegant sobriety. All throughout, the judge used clubs and crowbars, similar to the gavel she used like an elephant's tusk to intimidate the defense during the trial. Let's listen to a portion (his reaction to my column Beyond reasonable doubt? Let the Supreme Court decide):

"Benigno's opinion is flawed, irrelevant, misguided, biased and intolerant.... The fact is nobody listens to Benigno's suggestions in his column... The only truth is as what Benigno sees it to be or wants to see it to be." He said I believed the Americans (the State Department) "hook, line and sinker" as against the Webb maid's testimony that Hubert Webb was here June 29, the night of the massacre." Look, Buster, I could also fault your English which for the president of the National Prosecutors League of the Philippines gets to be bowlegged and knockneed at times. But never mind.

What I cannot understand is this. You in the prosecution have already won your case. As far as I have read and understood the evidence, a lot of "reasonable doubt" exists that the young Hubert indeed raped and killed Carmela Vizconde, mother Estrellita and younger sister Jennifer. I have even said Hubert and the five others are innocent of the crime.

As an investigative journalist, a columnist who gives opinions, who takes sides, that is my right under the constitutional canon of the freedom of the press. A huge handful of other journalists were also skeptical, others very cynical of Judge Tolentino's verdict. But that, too, is their right. In my view, you have already crucified Hubert Webb. Having triumphed, you are not satisfied, you would emit the caveman's cry and also crucify me. You say nobody listens to me and my columns, anyway.

So why behave like a Neanderthal? Or a dog of Pavlov simply because I criticized Secretary Cuevas' pre-verdict statement. Who really cares if, as you say, nobody listens to me? I could be the man in the moon, a spout of primitive life on the planet Mars as far as you are concerned. So I am nobody and I would thus counsel you to behave like a responsible barrister. Prove my motivation first. Prove I was a mercenary, in the pay of the Webbs. Prove I owe the Webbs a lot of favors and so I had to reciprocate. Prove that I had an unhinged mind, that I was mentally unbalanced.

Buster, do you think it's easy going against and challenging mass hysteria? Challenging my colleagues in media (particularly a newspaper that claims to be the best but front-paged a continuing slew of dirty and ugly falsehoods about the Webbs)? Do you think I enjoyed it when all throughout the four-year trial, I received a lot of hate and dirt mail, calling me every name in the book, insulting my bloodlines? Others, of course, eventually defended me. Don't you think that Voltaire was right when he said: "I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"? Wouldn't it have been easier for me to join the lynch mob and gather laurels and plaudits?

But, I always remember what the Indian poet Rabindranath Tagore said to young writers who sought his counsel. I do not know if I have the words down pat: "If you want to crusade and serve the truth, walk alone. Walk alone." And that is the path I chose. I have not wavered a bit. You, Mr. Prosecutor, can call me the scum of the earth even if my only fault is sticking by my guns, by my convictions and principles. My conscience is clear.

The truth is, I pity you and your kind.