Different Tan this time; Art and the judiciary

The shadows never seem to recede, they keep chasing and catching up with President Joseph Estrada. But this latest shadow is unique. We all know the President's intimate involvement with quite a number of Tans -- Lucio Tan and Dante Tan -- to name only two. This other Tan is unusual, a rare bird. She is Sr. Christine Tan, a name that not even the berdugos of the Marcos dictatorship could touch, tame, threaten or terrify. Sister Christine has come into the open to openly accuse the leadership of milking the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office in the amount of P430.3 million.

For 20 months a member of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office, Sister Christine claims she was bumped off by Malacañang without any kind of prior notice. And now she is in a blue funk. Hell hath no fury.

She had joined the PCSO because charity is its middle name and the good sister expected the organization to be generous in allocating funds for charity, and her favorite projects for the poor. She says compared to the P430 million reportedly handed out to the President's office, the offices of First Lady Loi Estrada and their son Jinggoy, the PCSO allocated only something like P60 million for charity and other allied projects.

President Estrada, expectedly, is good and mad. He spews fire whenever any member of his extended family gets negative marks in media. And when the First Lady and favorite son Jinggoy are singled out, you hear the trumpets of the corrida before the spangle-attired matador sets out to slay the bull. Said the president; "Sobra naman sila, pati si First Lady na awang-awa na nga ako dahil pagod na pagod na sa kanyang medical missions mula Appari hanggang Jolo ay idadawit pa nila."

I hope the president doesn't take back these words.

We who have journeyed into all the tides of Philippine politics for decades know Sr. Christine Tan. When hardly anybody else would criticize -- much less denounce -- the martial law regime of Ferdinand Marcos, the voice of Sister Christine raged far into the night. If I remember right, she sought the hand of whatever almighty there was to descend on the head of the dictator and chop it off. The dictator heard her voice but desisted.

She had courage. And besides courage, she had integrity. She worked in the slums, among the poorest of the poor, and the squatter neighborhoods of Leveriza were among her favorite haunts. She lived with everything you could imagine -- the smell of rotting garbage, the sewer scent of squalid barong-barongs, the vomit and leavings of sick children, the bony stare of the aged in their sick beds, the putrid sniffle in the air of approaching death, bodies wasting and eventually dying because they had nothing much to eat.

As far as I know, Sister Christine was never investigated, grilled or probed by the military, particularly the ruthless agents of Col. Rolando Abadilla who were adept in salvaging. They probably feared Sister Christine, her searing, accusing eyes, her nobility, her scorching language for the good sister could mobilize spoken prose like a flame thrower.

Sister Christine has been silent these many years, and it came as a surprise to me that she was a member of the board of the PCSO. She labored in these vineyards because money was to be had for her poor. And it was a plus for the government that she was there, as earlier it was a plus for the government that Justice Cecilia Muñoz Palma took over the helm of the PCSO from the raw and ribald Manoling Morato. Justice Palma, so we understand, was also bumped off without as much as a by-your-leave.

No, it will not do the president any good to vent his ire on Sr. Christine Tan. Her integrity is above-board. Not even the dictatorship, at the height of its powers, dared to sully her name. The good sister never sought any publicity either for all her good works. And so we must surmise that this time Sister Cristine was so awfully outraged that the dikes broke and she had to write her letter and send it to all the newspapers.

Surprise, surprise.

One of those who came to the defense of Sister Christine was vice president Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, our Lady of the Silent Countenance. GMA called for an investigation into the reported diversion of PCSO funds as alleged by Sister Christine. "Charges have been raised by a very credible person and charges like that certainly cannot be ignored." Hello. Looks like Gloria is beginning to get out of her shell she has occupied for many months like Mehmet the Mouthless.

She is dipping her feet gently, gingerly and daintily into the political waters. Wonder why. We have long urged her to speak out on the raging issues of the day because after all she is and remains, ritually, the leader of the opposition Lakas-NUCD. But no, she preferred to wait, cling to the coat-tails of President Estrada, and speak only when the time was ripe. Is the time getting to be ripe, Ms. Vice President? Will you move soon?

Watch out, Sen. Raul Roco is walking down the pike and the surveys show him going up. If GMA continues to think politics is the silent, voiceless art of shining up to power, seizing the tail of the horse at the right time, she might just miss the horse . . . In the next three months or so, the nation will enter a period of turbulence as it hasn't seen since President Estrada acceded to power July 1998. There will be strikes galore and demonstrations galore. Fits of fear and fits of panic. All because of increasing poverty.

GMA will have to speak commandingly -- soon. Sen. Raul Roco is there in the wings. And timing is of the essence.

We have here a speech titled Microchips, Modems and Media Invade Mount Olympus. Author is Supreme Court Associate Justice Artemio Panganiban, an old friend about whom we should have long ago written in praise, but somehow we didn't. Ah, sometimes columnists can be forgetful. Briefly, Justice Panganiban seeks media understanding for a Supreme Court and judiciary beleaguered by high tech, where once it sat majestically alone and virtually undisturbed on top of Mount Olympus.

Justice Panganiban contends rightly that the judicial process has now opened up like a goldfish bowl in an Information Age where old, high walls of secrecy and confidentiality have tumbled. In sum, he asks media not to be too hard on judges and justices because firstly, we could be wrong or misinformed and secondly, the men of the robe cannot answer back. As far as that is concerned, we agree. But I disagree when he says media's motives in criticizing could be "vengeance or cheap entertainment at the prodding of defeated litigants in a terminated judicial combat."

Vengeance? Cheap entertainment?

Mr. Justice, the reputation of the High Court, the judiciary, has never been so low as it is now and media cannot be blamed for that. I grant that Chief Justice Hilarion Davide, you yourself, and quite a number of others do our judiciary honor. And vengeance aside and cheap entertainment aside, media had all the right to tear the Supreme Court apart when first, it convicted Imelda Marcos for embezzlement, then in a switch that could have been pulled only by Mandrake the Magician, met en banc to exonerate her.

Many multinational firms have left the Philippines, at last counting nine. One of their major plaints is that we have a "capricious" (read corrupt) judiciary which rendered their operations here untenable. And if I took high, angry and splenetic aim at Judge Amelita Tolentino's guilty verdict on all those accused of killing the Vizcondes, particularly Hubert Webb, it was because of my conviction she erred abusively. She ruled all were "guilty beyond reasonable doubt." C'mon. Reasonable doubt was littered all over the place. Her only saint was Jessica Alfaro.

And how about the judge who acquitted suspected narcotics lord Alfredo Tiongco, whose boat was nabbed brimming with drugs? I'm not saying the judge in this instant was in the loop. But hell, hypothetically a judge who is about to retire with only about a million pesos or so in retirement pay can be suckered by an accused criminal who forks over 50 million pesos. Of course, we salute the many other judges who have done their jobs wisely and well, who sent wrongoes like Antonio Sanzhez and Claudio Teehankee Jr. and Rolito Go into the calaboose.

Ah, but that worm turns in my head. Justice Panganiban, how do you go about justifying the conduct of the Court of Appeals which, despite the passage of the years, has yet to affirm the guilty verdict on over 20 convicted Aguila Legis cutthroats who killed Ateneo law neophyte Lenny Villa way back in 1990? None has spent a day in prison. Two work in the Malacañang office of Jimmy Policarpio. I don't know where the others are. But I know they have what looks like a permanent passport to roam the world freely because the Court of Appeals is their coat of arms.

But still and all, Art Panganiban is an asset to the Supreme Court, not to mention the judiciary.