THE question is raised on account of the recent disclosure by Justice Secretary Fredderick Vida that former Ako Bicol party-list representative Elizaldy Co is no longer in the Czech Republic. The disclosure was a big letdown for nearly the entire country which had been expecting resolution of the flood control anomaly. Every Filipino has been hoping that Co’s revelations would bring justiciable finish to the flood control controversy.
But alas, President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. seems to emerge now as being not his own man.
Much to the regret of this columnist.
The “Zaldy Co arrest narrative” first struck this columnist as a presidential handiwork. As such, it should be infallible.
Who is the Filipino who would doubt the reported arrest of Zaldy Co in the Czech Republic when the report was spoken by the very mouth of their president? If the very president of the land is no longer credible in his pronouncements, who else would be?
That’s how this whole brouhaha stinks.
It strikes at the very root of Filipino moral values.
The Philippines is led by a man who does not speak out of his own volition but out of the cunning, evidently self-serving cajolery of subalterns.
And it really damns as it must.
I spent one whole column (in The Manila Times’ sister publication Pinoy Peryodiko) contesting former presidential spokesman Harry Roque’s calling President Marcos’ report on the Zaldy Co arrest fake news.
I had personally watched the video splashed on social media about President Marcos announcing such arrest. Conscious of all the awesome power of the presidency by which to verify the authenticity of that arrest, there was no way the president could go wrong in announcing the same.
No way for the report to be, as Roque fanned it from the very start, fake news.
That cited column in Pinoy Peryodiko was in its entirety a frenzied effort to debunk Roque’s cocksure, if presumably false, labeling the president’s announcement of Zaldy Co’s arrest.
I myself was confident that I was right. You could discern the chief executive’s own cocksureness on the matter.
Of course, as earlier pointed out, with all the vast power of the presidency, there was no way President Marcos could go wrong.
So, when despite Roque’s insistence on his “fake news” slant, the government decided to send Secretary Vida to Prague to arrange — leveraging the United Nations Convention on Corruption — the bringing of Co back to the Philippines, it had a way of turning into a personal concern for me.
At long last, Roque’s prevarication would be demolished.
See how he laps up all his vomit.
Then suddenly came this announcement by Secretary Vida that Co was no longer in the Czech Republic and that he was last known to be traveling across Europe together with his eldest son and family driver.
It turns out now that Co had never been arrested, Roque has been right all along.
And President Marcos has been wrong all along.
Who ends up now gobbling back what he threw up?
Against this sudden turn of events, I am constrained to weigh this matter on the very corruption issue that in the first place had triggered the controversy now surrounding Co.
Quite a lot of quarters are questioning President Marcos’ sincerity in his very well-covered so-called condemnation of the flood control anomaly.
“Mahiya naman kayo!” he yelled to the top of his voice in his second SONA, referring to the perpetrators of the flood control anomaly.
My view on account of this was that the president could not have been part of the corruption he himself exposed.
Remember that before that second SONA explosion by President Marcos, the massive flood control scam was unheard of.
But knowledgeable quarters familiar with propaganda tactics, are quick to cite the doctrine of “vaccine” practiced by German propagandist Joseph Goebbels in WWII.
By this method, one “vaccinates” ahead of the commission of corruption such that when it happens, one has already been detached from sin.
As it does not matter that it was the president who announced the arrest of Co which proved wrong, so must it not matter that the chief executive first announced the flood control anomaly.
It does not follow that the president is not guilty of the crime.
He only vaccinated himself from eventual tainting by the disease.
The last thing we heard from Secretary Vida is that they (he and accompanying chief legal counsel Benjie Chan) “will not come home empty-handed.”
Enough of the hyperbole!
Beating the bush won’t get us anywhere.
Stop playing tricks.
Call a spade a spade.
Former House speaker Martin Romualdez has named the “executive” as the real mastermind in the infamous “insertions” in the national budget that account for the anomalous flood control projects.
Indeed, without the presidential signature, not a single item in the national budget will be enforceable.
The Romualdez pronouncement is not self-serving such that on the flood control anomaly he absolves himself of any guilt.
Rather it is an indictment, implicit as it may be, of a president he cannot as yet condemn.
And that’s what plagues Philippine officialdom.
From the high-ranked legislators, down to the top bureaucrats, up to the topmost presidency of the land, the rule has ever been to lie, lie and lie.
What nobody seems to realize is that the Philippines during the past four years has been slipping down to crumbling foundations. Nobody but nobody has ever dared rise to strongman status such as Lee Kwan Yew of Singapore. The Marcos patriarch tried and to a certain extent succeeded. Political misfortunes did in all his efforts at nation-building.
Four years ago, the son appeared miraculously igniting the spirit of national rejuvenation. But four years into the presidency now, he continues to fail to manifest one fundamental trait of a true leader — being his own man.
