According to Senator Miriam Defensor Santiago, he is nothing more than a self-confessed criminal. As such, we believe that he should be charged and prosecuted for having committed the crimes that he has confessed to.
Zuce, according to Senator Santiago, has been accused by former San Fernando, Masbate Mayor Cherry Abapo of offering to "fix" an election dispute case in the Commission on Elections for a "fee". According to Abapo the amount he paid Zuce was P1.5 million and he presented as evidence a bank deposit slip. Again we quote Sen. Santiago:
"In effect, from the mouth of Zuce himself, we have the following admission: Number one, he was working professionally as fixer, meaning to say a paid briber or a corrupt public official. Number two, we have from his own mouth, the admission that he received big sums of money to perform services which we all know is illegal – to bribe public officials. This is a self-confessed crook and a self-confessed briber and therefore a criminal."
We really cannot understand what is happening to the country. First, the opposition now seems to be led by very dubious figures. First, Michaelangelo Zuce followed by Richard Garcia, a confessed jueteng bagman, who in his testimony before the Senate linked members of the First Family to jueteng and ironically enough claimed that he did not realize that his accusation against the presidential family would harm PGMA. How dense can one get?
We are more than willing to accept the testimonies of so-called "whistle blowers". But they should be charged for the crimes that they admittedly committed.
Apparently, they are under the delusion that they have turned into state witnesses and therefore no longer liable for the crimes they committed.
The best thing that can happen from all these investigations is if all the whistle blowers are held to account for their confessions. As it is now, the impression is that to get away with a crime one commits only require denouncing people who committed the same crimes at a much larger scale.
We have long noticed that in this country, a politician can move from one party to another without changing his political stand. That is because parties today do not have a program of government. Now this is being extended to even crimes. You can be a self-confessed jueteng bagman and expose your colleagues without being prosecuted yourself.
We would really like to see justice done in the case of Michaelangelo Zuce and Richard Garcia. When we say justice, we mean the proper implementation of our laws. The way we see it, nowadays, you can violate the law so long as you denounce others who are doing the same. In short, don’t do as I do, do as I say.