‘Deception Point’

Truth is stranger than fiction. That, I must concede, really baffles me.

While reading the fiction novel "Deception Point," I noted the uncanny semblance of the on-going real political drama in the Philippines with the plot of this No.1 New York Times best-selling book by author Dan Brown.

The novel was one of the four fiction books written by Brown who gained fame in his first novel "Da Vinci Code."

"Deception Point" was about a purported scientific discovery from outer space that the fictional US President Zachary Herney, who is up for re-election at the White House, would announce to the American media to prop up his political stock against a popular challenger, Sen. Sedgwick Sexton whose bid is supported by a very big-moneyed space corporations.

This novel, typical of Brown’s thriller conspiracies, has its usual ingredients of heroes and heroines who tangled with villainous characters engaged in illegal wiretapping and murder crimes, and spiced up by some lurid sex scandal sub-plots.

Though known for writing fiction novels, Brown is noted for using real organizations which almost got him into trouble with the Vatican in his "Da Vinci Code."

As I was reading "Deception Point," my attention was caught by the striking similarities of the bitter exchange of attacks among the main characters in the story which appeared to me as too close to home.

Take for instance the exchange during the confrontation between the two lady characters in this novel, Marjorie Tench and Gabrielle Ashe, a senior White House adviser of the US President and the chief campaign aide of Sen. Sexton, respectively.

Tench was trying to blackmail Ashe into signing an affidavit that would expose her candidate in acceptance of bribes and sex scandal through incriminating photos and documents taken surreptiously from the Senator’s office and other sources.

While citing the White House would not engage in negative campaign against the challenger in office, Tench admitted to Ashe the pieces of evidence against the Senator were taken using government resources and worse, they got them illegally and therefore inadmissable in court. However, Tench impressed upon Ashe that even if the Senator would not face any formal charges, her candidate would still suffer through a trial by publicity.

"What hearing? We’d simply leak this to a newspaper, and they’d run it as a ‘credible-source’ story. Sexton would be guilty until proven innocent," Tench threatened Ashe.

"Dishonest politicians hurt all politicians," Tench snarled. "The public has the right to know. The only question is how the public finds out," Tench said.

Brown, talking through his characters, expressed his views about American politics.

Brown wrote: "Politics is war...After all, politics is not just about winning the elections, it was about winning decisively–having the momentum to carry out one’s vision. Historically, any president who squeaked into office on a narrow margin accomplished much less; he was weakened right out of the gate, and Congress never seemed to let him forget it."

The Philippine political system is more or less patterned after the presidential form of government in the US, a known bulwark of democracy.

So while reading "Deception Point," I could not help but relate this to the current drama involving our very own political leaders as vividly portrayed by some of the characters in this fiction novel.

Although in this case, President Arroyo is on the defensive on the attacks launched by administration foes more than a year after her election into office.

At least, that was how President Arroyo is now trying to project herself in an obvious attempt to reverse, through media offensive, the damage done to her leadership by the jueteng payola charges and the wiretapping scandal of her alleged involvement in the rigging of the May, 2004 presidential elections.

After keeping a long silence on the two very serious allegations against her, it now appears to me President Arroyo’s line of defense is that she, too, was a victim of the rotten political system in Philippines that must be changed at the soonest possible time.

Without delving into the specific allegations which were now among the articles of impeachment complaint filed against her in Congress, President Arroyo has mobilized her political allies to push for Charter change (Cha-cha) that would supposedly cure the country’s political system that have gotten rotten to the core and have tainted them all without exception.

Of course, there is no question that President Arroyo was victimized by the illegal wiretapping of her telephone conversations with an election official with whom she discussed her desire to have one million votes more than her next nearest rival in the presidential race.

For that she apologized as a "lapse of judgment" on her part. But this should not detract the fact that the primary crime, to rig the election results, was committed.

Yes, she has every right to decry that she is being made to go through "trial by publicity, and not trial by due process."

By due process, Mrs.Arroyo obvioulsy meant she prefers to go through the impeachment proceedings in Congress.

But how can this proceed when her staunch defenders in the 13th Congress would not want to adopt the impeachment rules applied in the precedent case against deposed President Joseph Estrada.

Estrada’s impeachment trial, as they now admitted, was not only railroaded during the 12th Congress but the former President was, in fact, also unconstitutionally removed through the EDSA-2 people power revolution in January, 2001.

It was not surprising though when President Arroyo herself, interviewed last Friday night by the ABC-5 news program, bucking the resignation calls pressed by her most bitter enemies, declared EDSA-2 "was just tolerated" by the Filipino people and the world at large but they would "no longer accept an EDSA-3" to unseat a President.

I just pray that the political reality-drama in the country would not hew closely to the more gory plots of murders/assasinations in the "Deception Point" in the next chapters of this novel.

I was half-way reading "Deception Point" to its end when my deputy executive editor Alex Fernando, himself a bookworm, saw me reading it and cut in to say the meteorite was fake. There goes my climax.

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