Only remedy

After being quiet and lying low for a long time, Senator Juan Ponce Enrile has reappeared on the scene and started to make noise once again. This time around, he looks more confident and so sure that he will succeed in clearing himself of the current charges he faces involving the raid on the public coffers, particularly the Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) and the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) devised by the Aquino government.

Indeed, Enrile seemed to be already a “veteran” when it comes to being involved in questionable deals and eventually getting out of them. He had also been suspected of involvement in some anomalous money-making ventures during the Marcos martial law regime when he was the Defense Secretary and main administrator of the one man rule. History shows however that while billions of assets of his former boss Marcos and his family have been sequestered and eventually seized by the government, he was able to steer clear of attempts to connect him to any of the anomalies committed during that corrupt regime. In fact he even emerged as one of the “heroes’ of the Edsa revolution which somehow diverted the peoples’ attention and buried into oblivion the corrupt acts he had allegedly committed while in power.

Being a “veteran” and one of the smart lawyers in the country, Enrile has indeed more reasons to be confident that he will manage to remain intact and out of reach of the long arm of the law on plunder which is thrown at him in connection with the P10-billion pork barrel scam. And this not so much because of his well reputed acumen in squeezing himself of such predicament. It is more because of the clumsy handling by the Aquino administration of the case against him and his two colleagues in the Senate, Jinggoy Estrada and Ramon Revilla.

First of all, the present regime is obviously playing politics in this case. It has singled out and filed charges only against its political opponents, but continue to turn a blind eye on its allies in Congress and other officials in government who are close to the powers that be. This selective prosecution has really afforded the defense enough reason to claim that the plunder charges are basically groundless as they are politically motivated only.

Secondly, the prosecution of the cases is greatly mishandled. The government is obviously relying more on the mere say so of the suspected mastermind of the scam instead of the “truckload” of evidence it has supposedly gathered particularly the records in the Commission on Audit. In fact the witnesses being lined up are mostly composed of individuals who have apparently been the main culprits in the plunder of the taxpayers’ money who have become multi- millionaires overnight. Indeed it can even be said that some of the “whistle blowers” have made money out of their participation in the irregular transactions. Hence the credibility of all   these witnesses is highly doubtful as to seriously affect the successful prosecution of the cases.

Thirdly, there is too much publicity in the conduct of the investigation. Every piece of evidence and statements of possible witnesses are immediately announced to the press even before weighing its strength and verifying its truthfulness. This is very evident in the “Tell All” sworn statement of Janet Lim Napoles supposedly taken by Secretary of Justice De Lima which was publicly divulged right away without first verifying the truth of its contents. As a result several other “lists” of the members of Congress and other government officials named by Napoles have subsequently surfaced, thereby casting doubt on the authenticity of all of them. The worst part here is that public opinion has already been formed as to the guilt of those in the lists even before they are charged and tried in court. Hence, those who will be eventually charged may even claim that they have been denied “due process of law” which is a valid defense.

Fourthly, the case is not only being mishandled but illegally handled by the wrong government agency. As repeatedly pointed out, it is the Office of the Ombudsman which should conduct the investigation of this case to determine whether probable cause based on the evidence at hand, more specifically, the latest “tell all” statement of Napoles. Indeed the Supreme Court has repeatedly pointed out that “No less than the Constitution maps out the wide grant of investigatory powers to the Ombudsman. Hand in hand with this bestowal, the Ombudsman is mandated to investigate and prosecute, for and in behalf of the people, criminal and administrative offenses committed by government officers and employees, as well as private persons in conspiracy with the former. There can be no equivocation about this power-and-duty function of the Ombudsman” (Ampil  vs. Office of the Ombudsman, G.R. 192685, July 31, 2013).

It is really perplexing why the Ombudsman has not made a move to require the DOJ to turn over all those lists so as to find out whether there is probable cause to charge those included therein. Such inaction somehow gives rise to the public perception that the list is being sanitized first by the DOJ so that no official in this government or ally of Aquino in Congress will be included.

 With all these developments, Enrile and company may really get off the hook on ground of reasonable doubt. Pursuant to this rule, when the evidence is capable of being interpreted either in favor of the accused or against them, the doubt must be resolved in favor of the accused. In all probability therefore, these cases will end up in the waste basket like most of the other graft cases against the big fishes.

Despite all these dire consequences, it is still so clear and undeniable that the people have been robbed of their money paid to the government. And Congress is the most badly institution here because most of its members are involved. If redress cannot be given by the courts, then the people should not simply vote any of the members of this Congress who will run again in 2016.

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