Arraignment of Estrada / Fund campaign for justice - HERE'S THE SCORE by Teodoro C. Benigno

It’s amazing. All the defenders of fallen president Joseph Estrada have repeatedly chorused he is innocent, a victim of the plottings of the rich in Makati and Ayala Alabang, a man maligned beyond measure, hooted at, insulted, scorned and abused, nailed to the media rack, toppled, arrested, detained, now brought to court and arraigned. And why? Only because as president, he has taken up the cause of the poor, and is an outsider to the scented, English-speaking, haughty, highly-educated, hoity-toity purlieus of the wealthy and powerful of the land.

Estrada and his lawyers reportedly feel there is a conspiracy against him, that he is outside civil society’s kulambo and they would get rid of him because he is a social mulatto, who never really belonged in the first place. And so they would preserve and magnify the fiction that the courts of the Republic ruled by the elite – now the Sandiganbayan – are out to get him. And so the strategy building up is they do not recognize the jurisdiction of the Sandiganbayan. And this explains why Estrada did not enter any plea when he was arraigned on charges of perjury last Wednesday.

As the late and lamented Pugo would say: Datsalotsanonsense!

The truth is that Estrada, his lawyers and his followers are now getting plumb scared. The moving finger writes. The arraignment for perjury last Wednesday came despite every effort to thwart it, postpone it, delay it, dismember it by lawyers whose only gift for the profession of law is look for every means to derail justice, delay, delay, postpone, postpone till hell freezes over. This is now the Rene Saguisag syndrome, if syndrome it is, use his ample mandible to freeze proceedings, the way that old sly fox Herr Silva utilized the freeze in basketball to sock the game into the museum of still life masterpieces. Those were the days when freeze was still kosher.

As we said before, if their intention is to silence the last echoes of People Power II, they are sadly mistaken.

In this context, I might as well quote another defense lawyer – Raymon Fortun, apprentis sorcier of Rene Saguisag, who told the media: "Actually, he (Estrada) is a step closer to freedom. It will be a day in history where a president who is being charged for the first time is also going to be acquitted." Hello. This little fellow is hallucinating. He does not call Estrada former president but still president, another fiction Estrada indulges by continuing to sport his wrist band with the seal of the presidency on it.

They are all dreaming. What did William Dement say about dreams? This: "Dreaming permits each and everyone of us to be quietly and safely insane every night of our lives." And listen to George Santayana: "There is a prodigious selfishness in dreams: they live perfectly dumb and invulnerable amid the cries of the real world."

So listen, Rene Saguisag, Raymond Fortun, Andres Narvasa, Jose Flaminiano and company, the real world is beginning to stir again. You really think People Power II has gone to sleep, and henceforth will no longer bother you for many years like Rip Van Winkle? Spit some more on our legal system. Delay the trial some more, make do as if Joseph Estrada will in due time be scot-free. I can assure you the streets will roar again, the dark clouds will gather again, the upheaval will smash through again, and this time you better run for cover.

You cannot cheat history. You cannot stay its hand.

You would be as the foolish boy in the dike plugging the holes with his fingers, hearing the mad rumbling of the waters, the whistling of a wild wind, and eventually the dikes crumbling and devastating everything in its path. Your Estrada is in detention. I say the word detention because he should be in jail where all accused felons undergoing trial are confined. So okay, that’s why you have all the leisure to dance the waltz and not the paso doble, because you are dancing with the devils whose legs are broke. But devils just the same. Erap continues to live in leisure and some luxury.

If Estrada were confined behind prison bars, say in the Quezon City Jail, or in Camp Crame, suffering the fate of the ordinary jailbird, you would be asking for a speedy trial, blitz if need be, letting the billions Estrada still possesses work their magic, meaning work the mobs, suborning as many justices of the Sandiganbayan as will allow themselves to be bought, and maybe desperately seeking a reprise of the May 1 assault by the poor on Malacañang. Destabilization. Divide the military, divide the police. Stoke social unrest even more so the economy starts coughing blood and thick sputum, goad the military to strangle Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in her crib, get Senators Panfilo Lacson and Gregorio Honasan to up the turbulent ante. And – voila! – you’ve got it made.

No, you don’t.

You can never gouge out the eyes of EDSA, break its limbs and shatter its heart. EDSA was meant to last and that’s why there was People Power II. And despite the brief intermission brought about by what adventurers now want to call EDSA Tres, the real EDSA will still prevail for that is the EDSA of the middle class, the decent, educated and motivated citizenry, the EDSA of the Roman Catholic Church. This is civil society. It is they who guard the heirlooms of our history from the days of Jose Rizal, Andres Bonifacio and Apolinario Mabini to the days of Ninoy Aquino, Exequiel Javier, Jose Diokno. It is they who can still rev up our culture, fire up our industries, engage in trade, and launch the reforms that will enable the nation to get into the global world of knowledge, information technology, where the masts of progress are blown by education, increased productivity and the rule of law. Not by ignoramuses.

It is here where Joseph Estrada is the outsider. And outsiders always descend to the footnotes of history. Or embody its darkest pages.

* * *

Back to our Fund Campaign for Justice. First on the line, an outstanding first is PAGCOR, chaired by Efren Genuino, who handed over to me a P500,000 cheque with the hope it would really help secure justice and retribution in the criminal charges against Joseph Estrada. Yessir, it certainly will and may there be more of your kind. I haven’t gotten around yet to contacting the grandees of Makati and Ayala Alabang, who should be doing the same thing but have holed out in their fancy igloos, indifferent, refusing to donate a single centavo. Sirs, await my call.

Next are Joe and Gina de Venecia with a P20,000 cheque, no written message, but a verbal salute by phone to go ahead and get the gizzards. Also generous with a P10,000 cheque are Angel and Beth Lahoz, no address, no message.

The first P2,000 cheque is donated by Mr. and Mrs. Jose P. Bonifacio, 80 Casa Barcelona Condo, Tower II 204 Pasadena Dr. San Juan, Metro Manila. The second P2,000 cheque comes from Ms. Mila de la Cruz, Las Piñas with the note: "I know we will succeed because the truth is on your side." Right you are, Ma’m. The third P2,000 cheque comes from Jesus Almario, 14 Dagot St., Bgy. Manresa, QC.

A $50 cheque comes from an old fan and correspondent Gloria Parilla Earl, Box 134-41 Bandette, MN, 56623 USA. Her touching message: "I remember listening to Ninoy Aquino’s speech, at Plaza Miranda on the eve of my second and last exercise of my right of suffrage in the Philippines, 8 p.m. to 4 a.m. non-stop and we were asking for MORE! MORE! Oh God, did I cry. And I am still crying . . . for the Philippines."

A P1,000 cheque is anonymous (initials AC and IC), no address. A P1,000 cheque comes from Roger Pajarillo, no address, who writes: "I’m just a simple man with little hope that our country will become respected again. Your crusade should be pursued up to the end, no matter if it hurts the ‘accused’ and his accessories." We shall pursue the crusade relentlessly, Sir. The amount of P200 in cash comes unsigned on a small slip of brown paper with the message "That we may obtain justice." We shall.

Together with this batch came two postal notices, still to be picked up.

C’mon, gents and mesdames, let’s keep it coming to prove to Mr. Estrada and his lawyer-janissaries they haven’t succeeded at all in putting a damper in our crusade to achieve justice. Over and above everything else, we have to make our youth realize that crime doesn’t pay, that however big, powerful and rich you are, you cannot make a mockery of the law, that the law applies to all. Yes, the Marcoses managed to escape and they are back flaunting their riches. They should be glad the extreme scenarios of People Power II, really dark and vengeful scenarios they, never got to see the light of day. They would have been included in the projected vendetta.

The scenarios originated, of course, from extremists whose identities we shall not mention. But if the original siege on Malacañang – to have been led by rebel active and retired generals who had an overweening hatred for Estrada and his cohorts – materialized, the then-president would have been shot dead by the extre-mists as would have been his cronies. And all the mansions burned to the ground. The Marcoses decimated. And Atong Ang torn limb from limb.