Politics, politics, and more politics!

Pardon the heretical thought; but I sometimes wish deposed President Estrada had taken the hint and flown off to "temporary exile" in the United States. If he had "escaped" in this manner, we could have postponed "getting" him – as we would, in due time, owing to our extradition agreement with Washington DC – and putting him expensively on trial.

Why do I say "expensive"? Clearly, the Estrada trial has discombobulated the nation, creating rifts in our society, claimed too much of the attention and emotional reserves of the new Arroyo government and distracted us from the more vital concerns of food production and the upliftment of the masses.

Even in terms of cost, maintaining an "imprisoned" ex-President – with 180 police or military guardsmen (and even a tank) guaranteeing he remains safely esconced in the Veterans Memorial Hospital – is not a cheap proposition. Worse, when the deposed President has to be moved from his "cell" to the Sandigan Bayan courthouse for hearings and trials, it requires a large phalanx of thousands of policemen to keep the streets clear, man barricades, and otherwise make sure Erap gets to and from courthouse without incident.

Think of this drain on our police resources in terms of cops taken off the beat from the neighborhoods they ought to be protecting from crime and violence. As you know, "crime never takes a holiday" – not even for Estrada’s trial.

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The irony of it all is that on January 19, when the EDSA DOS rallies were at their height – shaking Malacañang to its very foundations, "convincing" the armed forces and, later, the PNP, to withdraw their support from their tottering Commander-in-Chief, and "hail" Gloria the incoming Queen – Erap turned down an opportunity to get away by private plane to the nearest American territory, whether Guam or (but, horrors, the implications of it) to Hawaii, not Paoay.

The US Embassy here, perhaps hoping to avert bloodshed or violent disruption, was cheerfully offering the shaky President what it carefully worded as "temporary asylum" on that day. A businessman had reluctantly donated his private jet after the Americans asserted they could not "officially" send a plane in to whisk Erap away to America. The funny thing is that Estrada’s most prominent cronies – when asked to "lend" their jet aircraft for this purpose – sheepishly said, "No." Finally, two of them possibly feeling guilty after having received so many favors from Erap, agreed, but gave the condition that first "GMA" give her permission for it! That’s when it was clear that the scepter of power had passed to La Gloria – decisively.

In any event, at the last minute, the beleaguered President Estrada had scorned the idea of "running away." He vowed to remain at his post, whatever happened. I suppose there are moments, even in his air-conditioned carcel, that he privately regrets such a macho decision.

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Moreover, had Estrada fled into exile in the US, if any multimillion-dollar bank accounts were "exposed", he could just as readily have been grilled, and if the US authorities were convinced of his, indeed, being involved in money laundering and drugs, what would have been more convenient than have him face a federal trial and a federal jail? But not a peep has been coming "officially" out of the Americans about Estrada, Loi, Ping Lacson or Alice. It seems to me that all the "press releases" are emanating from Col. Victor Corpus of ISAFP (military intelligence) and his "Probe Team", plus Director Reynaldo "Wyck" Wycoco of the National Bureau of Investigation, and the kibitzing of a Republican US Congressman Dan Rohrabacher of the 45th district of California who visited the Philippines a couple of times in the past in a flurry of press notices about how his heart bleeds for Filipinos.

Does Rohrabacher really know about a top-drawer US agency investigation ongoing – such as by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), the US Customs Service, or even the US Immigration Service (IMS) – of Erap, Loi, Lacson and spouse? Or is the Roaring Congressman just like his local counterparts in our own House of Representatives – more bark than bite? Maybe he’s one of the Old Spice Boys on the Hill.

On a trip to the US last year, I asked my friends in New York and California what they thought of Rohrabacher and more of them, with a puzzled frown, asked me back: "Who he?" Don’t they know it? He’s the Hero of the Hour this month.

A couple of years ago, during the Clinton Administration, Rohrabacher started making categorical comments about China, and its "clash" with the Philippines over the Spratlys, making his remarks sound like official US policy. The US State Department, careful not to openly fight with the congressman, whispered this wasn’t "true."

This is not to say the "condemned" quatro, Estrada, Senator Loi Ejercito Estrada, Lacson and his wife, Alice, are "innocent," But they’ll still have to be proven guilty – once more with feeling – in court. Much as we’d love to show the world that we’re capable of punishing even the most powerful and that "nobody is above the law," the operative and inescapable term is "the law." We can’t uphold the law by taking short-cuts and subverting it.

In a democracy, the basic underpinning of everything must be justice and a square deal for everyone.

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Sad to say, politics, politics and more politics sap our national energy and occupy the attention of our leaders from Malacañang to the Senate and House, and on down the line – and even in the Commission on Elections where the four Estrada-appointed Comelec commissioners are stubbornly ranged against the three GMA-designated commissioners led by the upright but embattled Chairman Alfredo Benipayo.

With regard to the Senate, the people don’t give a hoot who chairs what committee, just so the Senate gets to work. All we see among our solons, however, are "vanity" games and adolescent infighting.

They’re even going to investigate Senator Renato Cayetano, of "Compañero" repute, for having made a fortune in the stock market investing in BW Resources. (I’ve many friends who lost fortunes playing the same BW stock instead.) Did Cayetano commit an "unethical" act? Did he have an inside track? Sanamagan. "Insider trading" has long been practiced, shamelessly by our topflight stockbrokers, including the notorious Ateneo-Loyola "mafia" (The Blue Eagle doesn’t fly too high in these sordid matters) but this didn’t prevent a number of them from getting burned in the BW disaster.

Investigate Cayetano? Soon, other solons in retaliation will be demanding investigations of still more Senators for this and that. It’s enough to give the poor observer a hernia. That’s because the frustrated onlooker is beginning to feel like Sisyphus who was condemned by the gods in Greek mythology to forever push a huge boulder up the mountain, only to have it slip his hands near the summit, and go crashing down to the bottom, forcing poor Sisyphus to climb down and painfully begin again. That’s what those endless investigations are doing to the public. Plus ca chance, plus c’est la même chose. (That’s an Ilocano proverb stolen by the French).

What did Sisyphus do to anger the supreme god Zeus? Sisyphus, who was the founder of Corinth, first incurred the ire of Zeus by gossiping about his many seductions and "love life." Zeus, in a rage about this chismis sent Thanatos, the god of the underworld, to drag Sisyphus down to Hades. But the audacious Sisyphus managed to "imprison" Thanatos (Death himself) in his own kingdom of Hades. When Sisyphus tried to cheat death (the god Ares had to be dispatched to the underworld to free Thanatos), he was given permission to return to the outside world – but meted out the endless punishment of pushing that immense stone up the mountain, repeatedly, through all eternity.

No wonder all of us exhausted folk have developed, watching the antics of our leadership, what psychologists call a Sisyphus complex. Election after election, somehow, we manage to elect grandstanders, jerk-offs and stumble-bums! Abe Lincoln was right: "A people only get the kind of government that they deserve."

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Now that the smoke and dust of the disappointing L’Affaire Vitaliano Nañagas has died down, with another reformer, Cora de la Paz in place at the Social Security Service (SSS), don’t you think we ought to get a report on the Nañagas inquiry into the "plunder" by ranking SSS officials (which is reputed to have caused his downfall)?

The biggest scam at the SSS remains the plunder of its coffers by behest instruments like the P744,612,450 purchase of 329,855,000 Belle Corporations shares allegedly by former SSS Chairman Carlos A. Arellano as mentioned in his own affidavit dated February 12, 2001, and sworn to before Department of Justice State Prosecutor Philip A. Aguinaldo on February 16 this year.

Did Lan Nañagas get too close to the truth, which is why some top-drawer SSS officials instigated the "strike" against him, charging him with having a wrong or abusive "management style" and trying to force-march the "privatization" of the SSS?

The new SSS President Cora de la Paz, a brilliant accountant in her own right and a former President of Cunanan-Price Waterhouse, should be able to provide the waiting public with a few answers once she finds her way through the maze in that cash-rich government agency.

The SSS insiders who collaborated with resigned SSS President Chuckie Arellano, reportedly on "instructions" from Estrada’s Malacañang, got themselves a short reprieve by maneuvering Nañagas’ ouster. They mustn’t believe that all is forgotten – or forgiven.

Stealing from the poor pensioners of the Social Security System should be considered as capital crime.