SEN. Bong Revilla’s privilege speech on January 20 seems to have generated more hatred for the actor-senator, instead of alleviating the public’s ire over his alleged involvement in the multi-million Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF or better known as the pork barrel) scam.
Inquirer.net opinion writers, Conrado De Quiros and Randy David have regarded his speech as mere fiction.
It was “one very bad movie,” according to De Quiros, “with a more elaborate story line and a more elaborate script.”
On the other hand, David compares Sen. Revilla’s speech to the actor-senator’s weekend television show, Kap’s Amazing Stories.
“These scraps of political gossip – not unlike the astonishing fragments of human experience Revilla curates for a mass audience every week – are supposed to speak for themselves. Maybe the bizarre requires no elaboration to elicit awe or shock. But what meanings are we supposed to draw from the ‘Boy Pickup’ episode in which he ridicules Secretary Mar Roxas for personally driving him to his appointment with the President in Malacañang? Are we supposed to take this as indicative of a clandestine and orchestrated effort led by PNoy to get enough votes to ensure the conviction of then Chief Justice Renato Corona?,” David wrote in his column, Public Lives.
David further elaborates how PNoy wanting Corona’s ouster was common knowledge, “given the sneaky circumstances behind his appointment as chief justice and his manifest bias” against the President, and that there was “nothing extraordinary or improper about the president seeking to influence the outcome of the Corona’s impeachment trial.”
“While it takes on the trappings of a court proceeding, the impeachment process itself is regarded as primarily a political function, which is why it is the legislature rather than the judiciary that performs it.”
However, offering a bribe in exchange is another matter, said David.
David makes a salient point when he said that the impeachment court is “autonomous,” and that the senator-judges “are expected to use their own code and criteria in arriving at decisions.”
According to David, If Sen. Revilla felt “bribed or pressured” during the course of his meeting with Pres. Aquino, he should’ve denounced the act immediately after. Not doing so “makes him an accessory to the conspiracy,” which he now accuses the president of doing.
While Sen. Revilla may have been deemed as the “first major politician to launch a direct assault on the President’s personal integrity,” his speech “fails to impress.”
“ In a vain effort to show that he is being politically persecuted, the senator-actor is barking up the wrong tree,” said David further.
After all, it wasn’t Pres. Aquino who initiated the clean up of the PDAF.
“The catalyst was investigative journalism at its finest. Public opinion supplied the unwavering moral voice that emboldened the whistle-blowers and their lawyer to play an active role in the bigger task of reforming our political system. Key government institutions like the Department of Justice, the Commission on Audit, and the Office of the Ombudsman found themselves facing a complex task they did not ask for. To be fair, they took on these cases with utmost professionalism and willfulness, unmindful of the political fallout that might be generated,” David wrote further.
For Sen. Revilla to overlook these valiant and painstaking efforts made by government institutions, the media and the whistleblowers (who compromised their safety in the process) by simply smearing on the reputation of the president , in order to save his own, reeks of desperation.
As De Quiros aptly put it: “This is not about PNoy, this is not about anybody else, this is about Revilla.”
“Alas for him, life does not always imitate art, or trash. Luy may look like a modern-day version of Antonio Sanchez, the long-haired giggly, Mama-Mary-worshipping mayor of Los Baños who was jailed for rape and murder, and Revilla the sword-wielding scourge of oppressors and aswang, but the public knows the real hero and villain in real life. As to [Revilla’s] characterization of himself and PNoy, even the most fantastic fantasies cling to some verisimilitude of the truth. This doesn’t. To buy it, you have to submit to a lobotomy,” De Quiros quipped.
These writers’ views only prove that there is no absence of intelligent and discerning opinion on political affairs these days.
Political upheavals have empowered even the average Juan to air his own opinions in social media. Filipinos have become more watchful, involved and less tolerant of non-sequiturs and ad hominems.
But whether they’d be willing to give up their disbelief and give credence to the possibility that our political system can actually change for the better is another story.
(AJPress)