EDITORIAL - JDV's photo of secret meet: What secret meet?

As expected, many right-thinking Filipinos have been scandalized by the bellyaching of Pangasinan Rep. Jose de Venecia. The former speaker obviously thinks so lowly of the people he expects them to be moved by his crocodile tears.

But while most people correctly saw the difficult position de Venecia has woven himself into concerning the alleged bribes congressmen and local executives were given by Malacañang, not too many have noticed the glaring flaw in his account of the botched NBN-ZTE deal.

According to de Venecia, President Arroyo and her husband participated in a secret meeting in China where the deal was hatched. To prove it, de Venecia flashed a photograph of the first couple with ZTE officials.

There is no doubt a photograph makes for an almost unassailable evidence. But for such photographic evidence to serve its legal purpose, the context of what is depicted in it must conform to what a legal point seeks to prove.

The photograph de Venecia showed all and sundry indeed had the first couple in it, along with himself and ZTE officials. That being so, what secret meeting is de Venecia crowing about?

A secret meeting that is supposed to involve the top official of a country in a highly anomalous deal worth millions of dollars with a top corporation in another country is something that is not supposed to be documented in any manner, much less by a photograph.

Yet the photograph de Venecia flashed of the supposed secret meeting showed the alleged participants not only in glowing color but in clearly willful and voluntary poses, toothy smiles spread across their faces.

The photograph cannot, by any stretch of the imagination, suggest the people depicted in it had something sinister to hide, something they would not want the whole world to know. It was not a stolen shot or a frame grabbed from a security camera. They posed for that picture.

This is not to say we are slamming the door on the possible guilt of the president. She could be as guilty as hell. But from what has been said and presented, we are still a very long way from lawfully holding anyone to account based on the evidence.