A flip-flopping majority?

For eight hours straight, a full work day for any normal person, the stalwarts of the administration majority party argued heatedly that the source of the Garci tapes proffered by former Ateneo law professor Allan Paguia was polluted. On the table was a motion by Minority Leader Francis Escudero to play the tapes in open session.

For eight hours straight, out of the torturously grinding (for the viewers and listeners, that is, not for the ardently argumentative congressmen enamored of the sound of their own voices) 10 hours or so this august body inflicted upon the populace, the majority bellowed and hectored about how the tapes might have been doctored by Paguia and, in endlessly recurring rhetorical flourishes, asked no one in particular whether the solons could ever be certain these Paguia tapes were genuine.

Their exasperation barely disguised, some honorable representatives conceded that the tapes could be "fictitious," but, what the hell, let’s listen to them already and just consider them as Paguia submissions and not necessarily as genuine, much less the complete or only tapes in existence. Anyway, these tapes were being listened to in aid of epoch-making legislation and under the "speech and debate" clause of the Constitution, buttressed by the unanimous opinions of five legal luminaries, blah, blah, blah.

Finally, mercifully, there was nothing else to quibble about and it was time to vote. But did we see a Hitchcockian cliffhanger? Did we see the majority banding together in courageous affirmation of their commitment to ensure that the pristine ears of our latter-day Solons were kept unsullied by sound gratuitously emitted by polluted tapes? Ranged against them, was that an outnumbered but valiant minority quixotically voting to ensure the survival of truth, justice and, er, the Filipino way?

Nope. Nothing of the sort. Instead, we saw majority congressmen delivering longish speeches which seemed to list all the reasons why the Escudero motion should be rejected. Then they voted FOR the motion. Huh? In fact, practically all of them voted yes. Pretty quickly, it was evident that, by a more than comfortable margin, the motion would be carried and the Paguia tapes would be played.

What the hell happened? Did the majority cave in? Did Roy Golez gain adherents? Was treachery afoot? Were the turncoats about to come out of the closet? Did this spell doom for the GMA presidency?

Whoa, there! Hold your horses. Not quite. It turns out that it was not treachery and turncoatism we were witnessing, but the unfolding of a strategy to not only buy time but, more importantly, to turn the hearings towards a different, and rather unexpected direction. Far from throwing in the towel, the majority party thinks it has put itself on a new and smarter track which will enable it to control the trajectory of events.

How so? Well, first, a couple of sources, who request anonymity, say the majority party’s decision to go along with the playing of the Paguia tapes was intended to deny the minority a "Second Envelope" scenario.

There was real concern that if the majority used its superior numbers to derail the playing of the tapes, the minority was prepared to turn the proceedings into a media circus and precipitate a crisis for GMA. In full view of television cameras which were relentlessly providing gavel-to-gavel coverage, one minority congressman after another would have grabbed the mike to condemn the majority for frustrating the discovery of truth and obtaining justice.

Then, with the majority thoroughly trashed, the minority would have dramatically walked out en masse a la the Senators in the wake of the refusal to open the Second Envelope during Erap’s impeachment trial.

Whether such antics would have called down on GMA the same consequences was, of course debatable. But the majority was not about to guess, or to take the risk of an erroneous prognostication.

The other reason for the majority’s apparently ignominious volte-face was considerably more calculating. In explaining their votes, some of the majority congressmen began singing the same tune: They would vote to hear the Paguia tapes now, despite their reservations. But they fully expected their colleagues in the minority to similarly vote in the affirmative when the majority would ask for airing of all existing versions of the wiretapped Garci conversations, including the complete, unexpurgated, and unedited Paguia tapes which reportedly run for at least three hours.

Not only that, the majority expected no opposition to the airing of the Sammy Ong "mother of all tapes" which run even longer. All this, of course, was in the interest of full public disclosure.

After the airing of the Paguia tapes, and before the congressmen called it a long day and adjourned, those motions were in fact tabled. The majority moved to subpoena both the full Paguia package of tapes of CDs, the Sammy Ong "mother of all tapes," and the tapes forwarded by Press Secretary Toting Bunye to the National Bureau of Investigation. There was no objection.

Later, lead committee chairman and presiding officer Rep. Gilbert Remulla confirmed that all those tapes would be subpoenaed and that all would be heard in open session.

What’s the significance of all this? Elementary, my dear Watson. The process of hearing all the tapes will take time, even an inordinate length of time. The CDs or tapes will all have to be transcribed, which will also take time.

The joint report of the five committees will have to be drafted, drafts reproduced and distributed to all members, discussed and voted on prior to release. That, too, will take time considering that full and fair consideration will have to be given to all the tapes that were heard by the joint committee in open session.

But the real kicker is in the contents of the tapes and CDs. We understand that in the tapes featuring the wiretapped Garci, there are other people, very special and outstanding people, people in office, people not in office, whose voices are heard in quite revealing conversations with Garci. The hearings, in other words, could take some rather interesting detours, all leading away from GMA’s doorstep.

Are the majority congressmen smart, or what? You tell me.