Viewpoint
Lethal silences
By Juan Mercado
Philippine Daily InquirerFirst Posted 01:44:00 04/28/
“A man’s life begins to end the day he becomes silent about things that matter,” Martin Luther King once warned.
King’s caution anchors former President Corazon Aquino’s call over the weekend. “Speak up,” she urged citizens, against orchestrated attempts to clobber Rodolfo Lozada who blew the lid off the ZTE broadband fraud.
Aquino’s summons came after the President’s former chief of staff, Michael Defensor, got a judge to reverse the dismissal of perjury charges against Lozada. Manila Mayor Alfredo Lim has offered to take Lozada under his wing. But the court spurned that.
Defensor is a 24/7 Malacañang eunuch. President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo gave him all-stops-pulled support in the 2007 senatorial elections. He was soundly thrashed. To safeguard his Palace patrons, Defensor tried, but failed, to get Lozada to skip Senate hearings on the ZTE stink.
Agents shanghaied Lozada on a 27-hour tour to Cavite and Laguna. They dumped him in Greenhills where De La Salle brothers gave him and his family refuge. He went on to testify that cost overruns (“bukol”) padded a $132-million broadband project into a $329-million scam.
That came after the President and First Gentleman teed off with ZTE officials in a hush-hush golf game, former Speaker Jose de Venecia claimed. JDV has credibility problems, but the uproar forced Ms Arroyo to scrub the project.
The First Gentleman denied skimming the deal. He was not like Pakistan’s former first gentleman, the sleaze-tainted Asif Ali Zardari, husband of assassinated Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto. “I’m just an ordinary lawyer,” he insisted.
Since then Lozada has been fired. Administration figures have lodged 16 charges against him—from dishonesty to theft and perjury. Now, he has been sued by Defensor who earlier slobbered on TV that he bled for Lozada and family.
“Face the music,” chortled Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita. He turns a blind eye to the impunity that insulates those who cooked up this scam.
“This arrest order is a brazen abuse of power by this administration,” countered the Association of Major Religious Superiors of the Philippines.
Lozada’s fault was that he had “courage to tell people the truth about state-sponsored corrupt practices,” AMRSP said. “We deplore the use of courts and law agencies in continuing harassment.” The arrest warns other potential whistle-blowers to shut up or else.
“Of course, it’s a threat,” observed the Bohol Chronicle. “But who is threatening? The voice is that of Jacob,” the blind Isaac said. “But the hands are those of Esau.”
The track record can be instructive. Land Bank’s Acsa Ramirez exposed a P203-million tax diversion scam. National Bureau of Investigation agents shoved her instead into a police lineup as photo op for President Arroyo. The President never apologized.
Udong Mahusay recanted allegations on corruption in the First Gentleman’s office. “There were summary execution threats,” notes the study by Dr. Gabriela Quimson.
Bodyguards were pulled out from the jobless double-agent Mary “Rosebud” Ong. She had linked Sen. Panfilo Lacson to Hong Kong drug triads, PNP generals with jueteng, money laundering, etc. Her live-in partner John Campos was shot in the back. She is “totally isolated,” notes the Quimson study.
Public Estates Authority’s Sulficio Tagud denounced “unsanctioned P600-million price escalations” in the construction of the Diosdado Macapagal Boulevard. He got death threats. As in the collusion of rigged bids for World Bank road projects, nobody has been jailed.
Yet, the good that denouncers do is patent. By derailing the ZTE deal, Lozada saved Filipino taxpayers no less than $97 million from scrubbed “bukol.” Banker Clarissa Ocampo testified that President Joseph Estrada signed as the notorious “Jose Velarde.” The court sheriff, this week, recovered P101 million in cash from the “Jose Velarde” account. Antonio Calipjo Go documented flawed textbooks. This compelled the education department to take corrective measures.
“In this country, those who horsewhip money changers out of the temple often end up excoriated,” Sun Star noted. “The ultimate perversion is to beatify the crooks and crucify the whistle-blowers.”
Lack of safeguards makes the personal cost of whistle-blowing very high, an Asian Institute of Management study points out. “It can sometimes be a matter of life and death.” Thus, whistle-blowers are in “short supply.”
“Those who can adopt reforms are often the very people who need denouncing,” Visayan Daily Star points out. “That’s the glitch … A culture of impunity buttresses their inaction. Thieves are not ostracized in this country. Their cash, in fact, buys them first places at table.”
Don’t blame the President or the First Gentleman for a system that “beatifies crooks and crucifies whistle-blowers.” They did not invent it. But this administration’s corruption is massive. It embedded a perverted system in depths that even the Marcos kleptocracy never plumbed.
“Every failure to recover proceeds of corruption feeds its growth,” warned the 9th International Anti-Corruption Conference in Durham, South Africa. “Governments must create an environment that encourages, instead of penalizes, citizens who denounce venality.”
The choreographed stomping on Lozada shows the Durham statement falls on deaf ears here. Hence, former President Aquino has asked citizens to shred this omerta-like silence.
Her timely plea should be heeded. Otherwise, another of Martin Luther King’s caution will haunt us: “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
Her timely plea should be heeded. Otherwise, another of Martin Luther King’s caution will haunt us: “In the end, we will remember not the words of our enemies, but the silence of our friends.”
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