More than just pathological liars  

“Experience is the best teacher” is a phrase we ordinarily use in our daily conversation. It is so commonplace that we, most often, fail to honor its author.  I was trying to trace its origin and the internet provided me with the information that the quote is attributed to Julius Caesar in his commentaries on Civil War. 

In all modesty, I claim that I have the happy experience of teaching in the Gullas Law School of the University of the Visayas for about forty years. The Gullas brothers. Sir Eddie and Sir Dodong (may his soul rest in peace) asked me to join the faculty just a month after I took my oath as a lawyer in 1978 and I am forever grateful to them for the privilege of retiring as the Associate Dean. My happiness in that teaching experience was in the opportunity to help mold the minds of students. I adopted the practice of trying to measure the depth of the students’ understanding of legal concepts from oral recitations and the results of written examinations. After the first two tests, I would speculate the forward days of the students.

The dictionary says that to speculate is to engage in the activity of guessing possible answers to a question without having enough information to be certain. The first two tests in my Constitutional Law classes would normally take place in the middle of the semester. While the results of the exams and the way students performed in class recitations would not be enough information to be certain about the future of my students, most of my speculations on who among them would become litigation lawyers or corporate bound attorneys or succeed as politicians or fail in the bar examinations, proved right. True enough, teaching has provided me the avenue to understand people and conversely, experience has been my best teacher to discern personalities.

I spent time to observe intently the hearings conducted “in aid of legislation” by both the Senate and the House of Representatives mainly on Guo Hua Ping and Cassandra Ong as if I was the teacher listening to students explaining the concept of legislative investigations in class. While I could not see much body language of those two ladies because they were snugged on their chairs, their facial expressions revealed what was in their macchiavellian mind. Time and again, there were smirks written all over their faces which i took to be indicative of hidden contempt against the interpellating congressmen. And yes, the smiles of Guo Hua Ping, revealed now and then, trivialized the otherwise serious proceedings.

I noticed the seeming identity of the language used by the two “resource persons.” They did not fail to amuse our honorable lawmakers by opening each of their answers with “your honor” but my experience in the classroom recitations and court litigations taught me that the cadence of the spoken words of Cassandra and Hua Ping could have been a product of extensive training. They were schooled in telling lies. They knew that they were lying but they were unafraid to make untruthful claims leading Congresswoman Guarin to call them pathological liars. There were apparent similarities of their chosen words both in phrasing, spacing and intentional emphasis making me believe that they graduated from a common institution with a doctorate’s program of delivering falsehood and which I dare to speculate as based in Communist China.

In those instances when they could not invent answers, Hua Ping and Cassandra conveniently hid under the incredible reply “I don’t remember” or behind the constitutional protection against self-incrimination introduced by “sorry your honor.” They also skillfully steered away from being cornered with such expression of innocent assurance as “let me double check, your honor.” Indeed, I have never seen any more glib talkers as these two women but I am most certain that the weight of their lies will eventually bring them to dark dungeons.