No to house arrest/ Gov’t of national salvation

The Republic should be spared of the inane and asinine proposal that former president Joseph Estrada should be granted house arrest because after all Christmas is in the air and aren’t we Filipinos mostly Christians? I find that carabao manure of the first chop.

Firstly, Mr. Estrada is an accused felon charged with plunder, a crime so heinous that he can be sentenced to death by lethal injection.

Secondly, any accused formally arraigned and indicted is automatically jailed in a state penitentiary and not given the privilege of luxuriating at a swanky suite of the Veterans Memorial Hospital.

Thirdly, there is no such legal or constitutional animal as house arrest. If Erap Estrada is so fortunate as to enjoy house arrest, then it proves even more that ours is a government of rotten politicians and not of laws.

Fourth, and this is still relevant, the Sandiganbayan already ruled against house arrest. If this court should reverse its position, it will be like the Angel Gabriel pulling his clothes off and revealing a huge tattoo of Mephisto laying the Queen of Sheba on his breast.

No, it just cannot be done. Grant Estrada the privilege of house arrest, and you must as well grant the same to thousands of convicts currently languishing in the nation’s many jails. Hell, they will say, we are much more deserving of house arrest than Erap Estrada. They say he must have looted the nation of billions while their only crime was petty burglary.

Mrs. President, it won’t wash.

If your intention is to stop the erosion in your approval ratings – which have taken a nosedive – by getting the sympathy of Estrada’s followers, then you don’t understand the movement of history and the grammar of Philippine politics. The tides of history over the decades have sucked the Philippines into a political, economic and social quagmire. And you as president are getting the worst of it. The recent Pulse Asia survey which rated you fourth behind Raul Roco, Fernando Poe Jr. and Noli de Castro was more the anguished wail of an impoverished citizenry feeling betrayed and abandoned than a fist of anger in your face.

Mr. Estrada is no longer the hero of the masa that he was. He is now dead political meat. The fickle Filipino electorate is now focused on Roco, FPJ, De Castro, and, yes, you as the frontliners in the race for the presidency. And it so happens you are fading fast. Your performance so far has been woebegone. And consigning Erap Estrada to house arrest is not going to change that at all. Give the people three meals a day and not one or two, and they’ll give you another look-see. Cleanse the government of criminals and cutthroats and this could convince them you’re serious. But granting Erap house arrest will earn you nothing except the contempt of civil society which booed him out of Malacañang. Even the poor will laugh at you.

You have harnessed the services of Michael Defensor, housing and urban development secretary, in the hope this former Spice Boy can swing it in Estrada’s favor. The only thing Mike Defensor can swing is the social pendulum smashing into his face. Once this so-called Boy Wonder did or pretended to do errands for good government and morality in public office. Now he does errands for causes that would have nauseated even Asiong Salonga. He’s your spear carrier and he makes no bones about being your spear carrier. Ali Baba always wins out.

I would, on the contrary, not only oppose house arrest, but push for Erap Estrada’s transfer to a penitentiary. Nothing personal here.

His apologists point to as precedents the Christmas furlough granted Ninoy Aquino by President Ferdinand Marcos in 1979 and eventually his three-year exile to America. They also cite as example the house arrest in Burma of Aung San Suu Kyi granted by the group of generals who rule that unfortunate country. Once they even mentioned former president Jose P. Laurel being granted house arrest when facing collaboration charges immediately after the Second World War.

Well, gents and mesdames, that again is the vulture’s vomit. Ninoy Aquino was beyond any doubt guiltless of the charges that he was a communist for which he was brutally jailed seven years and seven months. Ninoy was a national hero, a martyr. Estrada? I leave you and the Sandiganbayan to judge him. Ditto for Aung San Suu Kyi. She and her Democratic Alliance swept the Burmese national elections in 1991. Instead of being installed as president, she was forced into house arrest, her followers killed, tortured, jailed. She too was a heroine. She was Burma’s female Ninoy. And you, apologists for Erap Estrada, will dare compare him to Aung San Suu Kyi? Shame. As for the very brief house arrest granted the old man Jose P. Laurel, I won’t even dignify the analogy. He was cleared of all collaboration charges. Jose P. Laurel remains perched in our Hall of Fame as a great, fearless and intrepid nationalist who fought heroically for Philippine independence from America. Any comparison with Erap is insulting.

Yes, I do insist that Mr. Estrada should be moved out of the Veterans Memorial Hospital, where he is confined like a VIP, and transferred to prison. That’s where he really belongs if our laws are to be followed. He is a felon and should be treated like a felon. That’s what’s wrong with us Filipinos. We are chicken-feathered and chicken-hearted, unable and unwilling to apply to Erap Estrada what we are able and willing to apply to anybody else who has committed crime.

Our duty, our obligation is to the rule and majesty of the law. If we make an exception of Erap Estrada, then we are signaling to our youth and our progeny that crime pays if you are rich and powerful. The Marcoses escaped our wrath because they fled to Honolulu Feb. 25, 1986. But later when they returned, without the dictator who died in Makiki, we put our guard down. Our Supreme Court, which had earlier upheld a Sandiganbayan prison sentence on Imelda Marcos, eventually – and I would say brazenly and scandalously – reversed its ruling. And Imelda got off scot free without spending a single day in jail.

And we Filipinos accepted that without a pip. Let it never happen again.

* * *

Over at the Club Filipino Wednesday noon, I ran into Speaker Jose de Venecia, dapper as usual, brimming with cowboy confidence, whose latest political brainchild is a government of unity and reconciliation. Joe de V made no effort to disguise his concern that the administration of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is swooning faster than the Lady of the Camellas. The inimitable Greta Garbo enacted that role, the pale cheeks getting paler, the languid eyes starting at close, the whispers of approaching death landing on Robert Taylor, hunched over her like a shattered knight.

As usual, Joe de V was excited. He said it was about time Freedom Force got into the act. The implication was that GMA would not last long, the floodwaters were rising, the Republic had to be saved, the world of politics and the world of civil society would have to close ranks, if necessary, forge a transition government without having to kick out GMA although she would no longer be president. I was shocked at the suddenness of Joe de V’s proposal, blurted in broad daylight at Club Filipino no less. Whether he was serious or not remains to be seen. Joe de V is the ultimate salesman who as we often said in the past can sell a refrigerator to an Eskimo, a tick-tock clock to Father Time, coal to Newcastle, palm trees to Palmville.

The Speaker said he had religiously read all my columns on Freedom Force and was tremendously impressed that virtually all Filipinos residing abroad "all over the world" (he emphasized this) had approved my concept.

The concept of Freedom Force arose from the fear that unless the Middle Forces or Civil Society grabbed the bull by the horns, the nation faced a communist revolution from the left, or a military takeover from the right. Whatever Freedom Force would do would be peaceful, non-violent. Its only scenario was engaging the middle forces in debate and dialogue on major national issues. Illumination or enlightenment would then set in on what kind of transition government civil society desired, and this we would hoist like a garland of lighted lanterns to convince the left to shed a communist revolution and the right a military takeover.

Joe de V contended it was time Freedom Force took the lead in initiating, defining and delivering this concept. "You lead and we will follow you," he said. Again, I was shocked. I felt it was a little bit too early for that. Events had to mature much more. The headwinds of massive social turbulence had not blown as yet. There was even the possibility that GMA could hack it to 2004 if she could pull off political wizardry of the kind that would dazzle us all, surprise us all. Whether she can do this with top generals of the Armed Forces of the Philippines fencing her in day after day remains everybody’s guess.

I had remained silent on Freedom Force for many months after a Palace-Church conspiracy to brand its members as "coup plotters" conniving with a brace of generals. This was of course, a monstrous fabrication, woven by a bishop close to Jaime Cardinal Sin and a third-rate practitioner of PR voodoo close to GMA. But events are now leapfrogging for the worse as I had forecast. Now I understand Joe de V’s curious behavior.