Scandal fatigue

Sen. Gregorio Honasan has often reminded me of Colonel Kurtz, the lost soldier on a slow but sure descent into the heart of darkness in Apocalypse Now. Remember that Vietnam War movie (filmed in Pagsanjan) that opens with an American military commander saying, "I love the smell of napalm in the morning."

But no matter how close Honasan comes to becoming as unhinged as Marlon Brando’s shell-shocked Kurtz, I don’t think the senator was ever psychotic enough to seriously plan the assassination of Joseph Estrada.

With the leaders of the July 27 putsch self-destructing in their testimonies before the Senate and the Feliciano Commission, the administration should quit while it’s ahead. Call off the dogs and send them back to their kennels, lady and gentlemen; the government has enough dirt to pin on Navy Lt. Antonio Trillanes IV, his cohorts and their supporters.

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For once I actually believe the story (most of it anyway) spun by military spook Victor Corpus about the July 27 power grab. Some sleazebags who couldn’t wait for the 2004 elections were asked to help indirectly in the putsch. And like the greedy and gullible who are lured into pyramid scams, the "investors" in the putsch got royally burned.

My belief in these accusations, however, get shaken by the sight of folks like Reynaldo Berroya and Eduardo Matillano — officers who always seem to have an ax to grind and an agenda to pursue as they go about the task of law enforcement. No matter how useful they may be to the administration, these gentlemen should be told to keep themselves "inaccessible" at least to the media for the next couple of weeks, if only to preserve the credibility of the government’s case against the mutineers.

The administration should also ask Proceso Maligalig to shut up. It’s no secret that his group from the Rebolusyonaryong Alyansang Makabansa (what aging revolutionaries we have) had a falling out with Honasan years ago. Although all parties deny it, the talk is that money was the root of the breakup. So when Maligalig and his friends accuse Honasan of wanting to murder Erap at the height of EDSA Dos in 2001, they can be dismissed as a polluted source.

For all we know, Honasan mightàhave indeed talked about the possibility of taking out Erap to save the nation. Whether he was merely joking we don’t know. Perhaps Honasan is crazier than he has let on so far. But we won’t know the truth based merely on the say-so of his former friends.

Now Honasan is talking about a "healing presidency." Haven’t we heard that term from one or two other presidential aspirants? Everyone wants to heal divisions in this country — as soon as they’re done aggravating the rifts.

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With the accusations getting wilder, scandal fatigue is setting in. We’ve heard all that the mutineers have to say, atrocious grammar, venom and all. The government has filed its formal complaints against the mutineers and their alleged supporters. Copies of Oplan Greenbase are all over town, and so are copies of the vehicle registrations for Trillanes mom’s rent-a-car, documents on FYI Research, details of Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes’ assets and liabilities. In this country, everything is eventually leaked to the press or released on the Internet.

The hard part is trying to determine which documents are authentic, which accusations are true. That job is tough enough in a society awash with rumors, where pieces of evidence and witnesses can be manufactured for the price of a plate of noodles. Often we are reduced to a case of "he said, she said" – with the accused preferring to let elections decide the truth.

It’s time to confine the investigation of the putsch to the courts that are required by law to carry out the probe. Until yesterday, however, congressmen were insisting that they get their turn at questioning the mutineers and security officials.

Seeing the senators primping for TV last week, I could almost sympathize with the mutineers. Some senators were comical; others were downright contemptible.

But if the Senate inquiry has been a circus, wait till the congressmen get their hands on Trillanes and company. It will be punishment enough for the soldiers for staging a mutiny.

Don’t we all have better things to do?

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EDUCATING MUTINEERS: One congressional probe that would be welcome is a scrutiny of how the Philippine Military Academy spends its budget. A report yesterday said each PMA graduate costs taxpayers more than P2 million for a four-year education. PMA cadets draw salaries from the government amounting to about P20,000 a month. In return PMA graduates must render military service for a minimum number of years.

Some PMAyers who join the Philippine Air Force later leave the service to become commercial pilots, which pays so much higher. Those are investments wasted for Juan de la Cruz. Other losing investments are soldiers like Trillanes, who to this day think they have done nothing wrong to the nation they had sworn to protect.

I wrote earlier that some quarters are proposing the abolition of the PMA and its replacement with a special training school for the military officer corps. Proponents say applicants must have finished at least two or three years of college, which means the cadets will spend only two years at most in military school.

If this can discourage the "mistah" culture in the PMA, end military adventurism and prevent the creation of Colonel Kurtz types, we should be open to the idea.