Ruby: Star witness or Trojan horse?

Every person has the right to defense. Under that dictum lawyers take on even the most reviled of clients. In so doing, they too get reviled or, at best, suspected. That’s why questions abound about the motives of plunder accused-turned-witness Ruby Tuason and her counsel Dennis Manalo.

Tuason was a co-accused last Nov. in the P10-billion congressional pork barrel scam. Today the justice department bills her as “star witness” to corroborate the earlier whistleblowers. Her testimony supposedly is the “slam dunk” against Senators Juan Ponce Enrile and Jinggoy Estrada. She knows the sordid details of the crime, being the person who had introduced to the two the “pork” fixer Janet Lim Napoles. She offers to return her P40-million share of the loot in 2008-2009. With that, the Senate Blue-Ribbon committee promptly summoned her yesterday to its parallel inquiry into the plunder.

When she arrived last week from America to testify, Tuason was accompanied by counsel Manalo. Manalo is senior partner at the Siguion Reyna law firm. The firm’s founder Leonardo Siguion Reyna is Enrile’s brother-in-law, husband of Enrile’s celebrity sister Armida. Immediately doubts came to mind: will the Siguion-Reyna law firm do in the kinsman of its principal? Or is Tuason a Trojan horse?

Answers may lie in another plunder rap 14 years ago, against President Joseph Estrada, in which son Jinggoy also was implicated. Impeached for taking bribes from illegal gambling, Estrada faced many prosecution witnesses at the Senate trial. One of them was a manager of the state gaming firm Pagcor, who boldly testified how Estrada blocked its efforts to fight jueteng. Under cross-examination by Estrada’s defense panel, however, the witness contradicted herself over and over. The prosecutors deduced that she was actually protecting her friend Atong Ang, the jueteng consolidator and adviser of Estrada. That taught them a lesson in caution.

Ang, himself a plunder co-accused, was then hiding in America. The testimony of star witness, Gov. Chavit Singson, pinned him down. Extradited to Manila, Ang copped a plea with the Ombudsman. His detention was counted as prison time, and his P24-million mansion forfeited to the state. The Ombudsman considered it a victory. Wary that Ang flip-flop in court as the Pagcor manager had, it no longer presented him in court.

Can Tuason’s testimony pin down Enrile and Estrada? That has yet to be seen, when the plunder rap is elevated to the Sandiganbayan. But her statements at the Senate yesterday are a preview. She swore to have delivered “pork” kickbacks several times personally to Estrada at his office, and to Enrile through co-accused chief-of-staff Gigi Reyes. The investigating senators found her consistent, so believable. But the lawyers among them cautioned that her words gain weight only when juxtaposed with the whistleblowers.’

Meantime, doubters must bear in mind that Manalo’s duty is to defend Tuason. Whether his law firm took on Tuason’s case months ago as Enrile’s co-accused does not matter. He continues to represent her, so must get her off the hook — by plea bargain, return of loot, and whatever else.

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Relatedly, murmurs are growing louder why the NBI is taking so long to investigate the other lawmakers tied to the “pork” scam. Only three senators and five present and former congressmen have been charged since the scam was exposed in July. Why the 17 other porky senators and 182 congressmen have not been indicted is a mystery. The buzz in Congress is that Liberal Party senators and congressmen close to President Noynoy Aquino are peddling influence to be exonerated. It’s becoming a political game, as usual.

Talk of partisanship is worsened by sneaky actions against politicians not close to the President. The NBI this week recommended fraud charges against Nacionalista Party Rep. Teodoro Haresco for the “fake SARO” scam. This so stunned Haresco’s colleagues for two glaring incongruities.

First, he was a complainant in the illicit recycling by congressional clerks of a Special Allotment Release Order. As such, his chief of staff and an ex-consultant had provided the NBI testimonies and leads at least eight different times. Yet he suddenly was named respondent without once being invited for questioning.

Second, Haresco was but one of 11 lawmakers who, as listed in the questioned SARO, had requested the Dept. of Budget and Management for P77 million worth of farm-to-market roads. SAROs are serial-numbered, security-featured accountable forms of the DBM. DBM higher-ups are supposed to decommission against fraudulently reuse. Yet implicated with Haresco was a mere driver of a DBM undersecretary. And only Haresco, of the 11 requesting congressmen, was singled out for indictment. It was so unlike the NBI’s shotgun approach in filing charges in the pork barrel scam. In that rap, even an uncle in Australia of one of Napoles’s staff, whose name was used in a fraudulent document, was charged.

This week too the Office of the Special Prosecutor revived a graft case against the wife of Vice President and opposition leader Jojo Binay. The complaint was filed ten years ago, during Elenita Binay’s Makati City mayoralty. After several reviews the Ombudsman dismissed it in 2012 for insufficient evidence. Suddenly the OSP, a branch of the Ombudsman, revived it — without seeking Mrs. Binay’s side on any new evidence.

Unresolved, meanwhile, are three plunder raps against LP leader, Agriculture Sec. Proceso Alcala, and sidekick, National Food Authority chief Orlan Calayag. This, despite documentary proof that they had thrice awarded import permits to big-time rice smugglers. Other cases pertain to multibillion-peso overprices of NFA rice purchases, and un-receipted expenditures.

Overdue from the NBI too is the probe of Metro Rail Transit chief Al Vitangcol, a presidential appointee. This is despite uncontroverted testimonies by the Czech ambassador and two train executives of attempted extortion of $30 million. Vitangcol reportedly has threatened to implicate presidential kin should he be indicted.

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