The ugly truth - Why And Why Not

The more things change, the more they remain the same.

You can say this again and again of Philippine politics that is, after, all, the poisoned well whence the smoldering crisis in the stock market is coming from. Never mind if investor confidence has evaporated into thin air and the long-dreary economic picture has become murkier than ever, with that ugly war in Mindanao and more mayhem in the cities lurking in the wings.

The long and short of the brouhaha, now on its fifth mudslinging month, is that Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Perfecto Yasay always stood in the way of the Estrada regime's bright ideas about how investments and securities are to be handled or not handled at all.

Bluntly put, Yasay's original sin is that he got his job from former President Fidel Ramos, who's not exactly in the best of terms with Estrada.

Loyal or not to Ramos, Yasay happens to hold a Damocles sword over Dante Tan, a close presidential friend, for complicity in the multibillion-peso BW insider-trading scandal, the biggest and dirtiest ever to hit the nation.

All the bizarrre twists and turns of this case, from Estrada's alleged efforts to stop the SEC probe to the Philippine Stock Exchange's messy investigation that led to last Tuesday's walk-out of the key Compliance and Surveillance unit, therefore come down to two basic points: Yasay is not Estrada's man and Estrada frankly wants him out, the sooner the better.

But getting rid of Yasay, while he's looking into a most damaging scandal that has rocked the regime to its very foundations, is hardly a wise move and one that can only lend itself to the wildest political intrigues and games imaginable in this hyper-political country.

The latest word, for instance, is that Yasay has thrown a huge monkey wrench, a nuclear weapon of sorts, by vowing to serve out his second term as chairman all the way to 2004 as provided in his appointment.

Earlier, Yasay seemed to have bowed to the inevitable by saying he would resign by March 25. But the bitter skirmishes of Tuesday and Wednesday have apparently compelled him to play hard ball instead.

In other words, we may be back to the Dick Gordon scenario of late 1998 whereby the former wonder boy of Subic was yanked out of the freeport chairmanship that he had assumed was his for a second term extending deep into the Estrada years.

Some oldtimers say the unfolding scenario appears to also be reminiscent of "Ranger Justice" in the first days of the Macapagal regime in 1962 when Dominador Aytona, a "midnight appointee" of the outgoing Garcia regim as Central Bank Governor, refused to budge from his post. The scout rangers were sent in to bodily drag away Aytona, hence the coinage of yet another colorful term in the Filipino political dictionary.

If Yasay makes good his threat, there could be another play of the dramatic "last stands" of Gordon and Aytona amidst turmoil on such major fronts as the courts, Congress and the media. Some say the mess could trigger a coup against Estrada himself. Who knows? What's certain is that all those running in 2001 or 2004 will be jumping into the fray. Jovy Salonga, Yasay's aging lawyer and one of the country's sharpest legal minds, could yet have his finest moment before the court of public opinion.

The one crucial difference between the Aytona and Yasay cases, however, is that the latter wasn't appointed at the very last hour of the Ramos regime, unlike the former whose appointment was literally signed the night before President Carlos Garcia left Malacañang forever. Unlike Aytona who eventually lost his case because of this legal frailty, Yasay may be standing on more solid ground. Or so he believes.

For all the partisan arguments, the cooler heads point out, the debate really hinges on the nature and validity of presidential appointments, especially those pertaining to independent and quasi-judicial bodies that are meant to be insulated from political dictation and interference.

The whole idea behind creating such offices is to precisely make them independent from Malacañang and other political professionalism who are able and ready to protect institutional as well as personal integrity and to stand up even against the highest official of the land on questions of principle.

Poetic justice or injustice is implicit in the BW case because it happens to involve a close friend of an incumbent president who got himself and countless others in a fine mess (and the country in deeper doo-doo) and the main investigating body happens to be chaired by an official identified with the previous dispensation perceived to be hostile to the powers-that-be.

This is one case where everything from law to principles to morality will be bended forwards and backwards and subjected to unrelenting gauntlets of partisan politics. Nothing will ever be settled to anybody's satisfaction. And the country be damned. Call it the early curtainraiser for 2001 and 2004.