EDITORIAL - Not an entirely futile exercise

The new evidence that Senator Juan Ponce Enrile promised to disclose during the reopening of the Senate Mamasapano massacre investigation did not materialize. On hindsight, it is clear he merely needed a forum to bash President Aquino, who he blames for his incarceration on plunder charges. Not that Aquino does not deserve to be bashed for Mamasapano, or even for being selective on who to go after, like Enrile for example, in his grand charade against corruption.

But the investigation was reopened on the basis of Enrile's promise to drop a bombshell. When that did not happen, Enrile squandered away much of what little sympathy he can still realistically count on for being a victim of Aquino's skewed brand of justice. But the dud, as others have called it, did not necessarily improve Aquino's position either.

Aquino continues to be solely responsible for the debacle that resulted in the deaths of 44 police Special Action Force commandos and no less than the chairman of the committee that conducted the Senate investigation, Senator Grace Poe, said so after the new hearing sought by Enrile. In its final report, which Poe said will remain unchanged after the Enrile hearing, the buck clearly stopped with Aquino.

But Wednesday's hearing was not completely an exercise in futility. It reinforced the belief that Aquino would stop at nothing to pin the blame for the debacle on only one man -- sacked SAF director Getulio Napenas. Never mind that for an operation with potential constitutional, sovereign, and international repercussions, it would have been too big for a mere unit commander to handle, unless he had a go signal that came all the way from the top.

Aquino's defenders tried to lawyer the notion that Aquino was blissfully unaware of the unfolding debacle because of wrong information being fed to him -- that all Aquino knew was that Marwan, the international terrorist and target of the operation, was dead and that the SAF only suffered one or two casualties. If that had been the case, would you honestly believe Aquino would not have promptly called the press to announce such a resounding success?

But Aquino made himself scarce and kept silent for a few days. Those are not the actions of an innocent man. Those are not the actions of a true leader. A true leader is expected to face the music, however said. Clearly Aquino did not know what to do. He did not anticipate the horror of what happened. And he was not prepared to face the consequences.

As a result of Aquino's refusal to man up, the men in uniform from both the Philippine National Police and the Armed Forces of the Philippines have ended up blaming one another in public while their commander-in-chief probably doesn't even realize how dangerous this is. Aquino has not put his foot down in the brewing rift. He hasn't given them the order to stand down.