Righteous outrage

I can sympathize with the popular and media outrage against  Janet Lim Napoles on the brazenness of the pork barrel scandal. There is anger on the part of media about her refusal to speak directly to the public and respond openly to all these allegations hogging the headlines.

There has been a lot of condemnation about her being given special treatment by having her confined inside an army camp. Let us put aside first any speculation on whether the motive for this is for her personal security or to keep her from the public.

My question is why is this outrage being directed only at Janet Lim Napoles? Are we supposed to believe that she and her cohort of maids, drivers and clerks were able to fabricate a P10 billion scam on their own? Are we supposed to believe that somehow she and her stable of fake NGOs were able to fool our esteemed senators and congressmen into forking over billions of pesos to her because they had blind trust in her integrity or that all those signatures were forged?

I am not a lawyer. I may even be too much of a conspiracy theorist. But I personally find it unbelievable that this woman, who could not even think of a decent cover story for her unexplained wealth, could have fooled so many supposedly competent lawmakers and their supposedly brilliant staff so easily.

I understand that Napoles has not been officially charged with any graft or plunder case. But there are public demands that she should already “tell everything she knows.” But then, the lawmakers whose names are implicated in the COA reports simply stated that they will make their statements after the investigations are finished. And, unlike in the case of Napoles, there was no further pressure on them to make any more statements.

I am not a lawyer. But if these lawmakers were allowed to refuse to make any statements and were even allowed to resume their normal functions like attending congressional hearings, why was Napoles not treated in the same way? Or perhaps I should ask the question in reverse. Why weren’t the lawmakers treated the same way that Napoles was treated?

If we are to believe newspaper accounts, the sharing between the legislator, Napoles and the project was 70% to the legislator and 30% to the Napoles gang and the actual project, if they received any share at all. So if all these allegations are true, then the legislators, and not the Napoles gang, were the major financial beneficiaries of the entire pork barrel scam.

We are now awaiting the explanation from these legislators about their alleged roles in this PDAF scandal. After all, the recent Senate hearings have made the public familiar with their names. And since the senators and congressmen signed the liquidation reports of the PDAF-funded projects, then they cannot say that they did not know about their projects.

Last June, before all pork barrel scandal broke out in the public, I wrote a column entitled “Outrage Against Corruption.” I wrote then that there are two main factors in the battle to eliminate corruption. The first is a highly moral leadership at the highest level, which we have. The second is the active support of an outraged public that will demand its leaders to live up to the highest level of moral standards. I hope that we now have an active public.

But let me now add a word of caution. Outrage can be a two-edged sword. On one hand it can mean a feeling of righteous anger or resentful anger aroused by an offensive act. In this case, the act is the pork barrel scam.

But outrage must be equitably distributed. In our case, it should not be limited to just one person but to a whole cabal of people who benefited from this evil corruption at the expense of the poor.

Also in our effort to clean up a corrupt system, we need to make sure that we do not throw out the baby with the bath water.  It is now being proposed that NGOs, whether honest or fake, will now be excluded from government funding.

This is like saying that because as many as one-third of all Senators may be implicated in this pork barrel scam, then we should abolish the Senate. Or because only God knows how many congressmen are implicated in the same scam, then we might as well abolish Congress.

We need to remember that the 1987 Philippine Constitution mandates the state “to encourage non-governmental, community-based or sectoral organizations that promote the welfare of the nation.” The Constitution also guarantees “the right of the people and their organizations to effective and reasonable participation at all levels of social, political, and economic decision making.”

Simply because the NGO movement has been invaded and polluted by corrupt politicians, government bureaucrats and businessmen, it does not mean that the whole movement deserves to be condemned.

Again, in this desire to eliminate corruption, we need to remember that the government can investigate and file charges, but only an honest and capable judiciary will result in conviction. In Cebu City recently, the Court of Appeals ordered the one-year suspension of the accountant in Bogo City for the alleged misuse of the pork barrel funds of then Cebu congresswoman Clavel Martinez. But the congresswoman has not yet been convicted of any crime.

Is it then possible for Janet Lim Napoles to be convicted while the senators and congressmen implicated will escape conviction? In such a scenario, then perhaps it is time for outrage in any form to be justified.

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