Missing senator

A handful of lawmakers finally came to their senses yesterday and moved to suspend the Senate’s investigation of the mutiny in Makati. Only politicians whose joy in life is watching themselves on TV can miss the continuing troop movements across the country, or ignore the hysterical text messages that fanned coup rumors yesterday, which pulled the peso further down. Between politicians carping about their missed photo opportunity with those telegenic mutineers, and the mutineers crying betrayal over the criminal charges filed against them, it will be a miracle if security officials can contain the threats besetting the nation.

Those lawmakers at least are making a show of conducting a congressional inquiry - not a complete waste of taxpayers’ money. What do you make of Sen. Gregorio Honasan, who has been missing in action for an entire week? He’s not on sick leave. Neither is he out of town on official business. Since the mutiny by young officers who apparently idolize him, Honasan has made himself scarce, but his aides keep saying he’s not in hiding. He insists he’s a peacemaker, but he clearly made no move to dissuade those junior officers from staging a power grab that is bringing down the economy, just as previous coup attempts he led a decade ago ruined the nation.

Obviously Honasan is simply avoiding arrest – a prospect that emerged after Interior Secretary Jose Lina Jr. announced that the senator was considered part of the mutiny. Lina would have made life easier for investigators if he had kept his mouth shut and simply sent his cops to arrest Honasan while the nation is under a state of rebellion. Now Lina has been reduced to promising, five days after the mutiny, that the evidence and formal charges against Honasan are coming up, just you wait.

If the government can keep this up for a couple more weeks, Honasan has a good chance of improving his ratings in surveys on presidential aspirants for 2004. The last time he went underground during another state of rebellion, he was re-elected to the Senate. This time, as he aims for higher office, he is getting a similar boost from the administration. And he will milk it for all it’s worth.