Credible closure
January 15th, 2003
Deposed president Joseph Estrada performed nearly as expected during a Senate hearing Malacaņang had earlier predicted would turn into “a circus.”
Except that the Senate hearing on the controversial contract of the Argentine firm Industrias Metalurgicas Pescarmona S. A. (IMPSA) with the Philippine government to construct the Caliraya-Botocan-Kalayaan (CBK) power plant complex did not exactly turn into a three-ring spectacle, but into an opportunity for Estrada to give vent to his frustrations and resentments.
More importantly, however, Estrada’s presence, this time before the television cameras (TV is banned from covering his trial for plunder), was a reminder that his case, now mostly out of the front pages and public awareness, is still to be resolved, part of the unfinished, crucial business not only of the events of 2001, but also of this nation.
On trial for his life still, the former president used the occasion to depict himself as entirely blameless in the making of the IMPSA contract and the PPA possible. Instead he shifted the burden of responsibility to Arroyo and former president Fidel Ramos for the terms of the contract, under which electricity consumers have had to pay purchased power adjustment fees.
Estrada also attacked the justice system for supposedly discriminating against him. He also asked the Senate Committee on Government Corporations and Public Enterprises why President Arroyo did not look into the Coutts (Hong Kong) Bank account that former justice secretary Hernando Perez supposedly used to accept an alleged $2 million bribe from extradited Congressman Mark Jimenez, and why there has been no investigation into the accounts of Arroyo’s Lualhati Foundation, which had received P8 million from Jimenez when she was still Estrada’s vice president.
Just like Estrada, on the other hand, Malacaņang reacted as expected. Energy Secretary Vince Perez denied Estrada’s claim that Hernando Perez’ Jan. 24, 2001 legal opinion guaranteed payment of IMPSA loans. Arroyo spokesman Ignacio Bunye said what Estrada has to do is to address Jimenez’ allegation that he bribed Estrada with $14 million to approve the IMPSA contract.
The exact, unofficial details of the CBK-IMPSA controversy may never be known, given the many claims and counter-claims being made by the people involved in it, and the deliberate efforts to bury them under a mass of obfuscation.
What does appear certain is that it was the Estrada administration that approved it, and that, despite Estrada’s claim, the Arroyo administration did not provide IMPSA any guarantee through the Jan. 24, 2001 opinion of then-Justice Secretary Hernando Perez. That opinion seems to have only upheld the Government Acknowledgment and Consent Agreement (GACA) the Estrada department of finance had earlier issued.
As for the allegations that Jimenez bribed Arroyo with $4 million from the $14 million that he had supposedly offered to Estrada, Jimenez himself has denied that he ever offered to bribe Estrada in the first place, and that he was never an agent of IMPSA, despite his having been presidential adviser on Latin American affairs during the Estrada administration.
While Jimenez’ credibility has been severely undermined by the contradictions in his allegations that he bribed Perez with $2 million for reasons that even he has never made clear, Jimenez’ claim that there was never any $14 million should mean something nevertheless.
Estrada himself has not been immune to contradicting himself. Several weeks ago he had categorically said that Jimenez, acting for IMPSA, had tried to bribe him with $14 million.
During the Senate hearing Tuesday he studiously avoided the word “bribe,” and instead suggested that the $14 million was to be a donation. This much was clear when Sen. Robert Barbers asked him why he did not order the arrest of Jimenez, in reply to which Estrada said that Barbers was interpreting the offer as a bribe, whereas Estrada did not, because “so many…give donations to the Office of the President.”
Estrada’s credibility, in fact, appears to have been further damaged by his Senate testimony. Although the prepared statement he read to the committee—of course, prepared by his legal and other advisers—appeared reasoned, his unrehearsed replies to questions were often in conflict with it, and sometimes hilariously so.
But the Estrada testimony, in the context of his ongoing trial for plunder, was a sideshow, and only part of the bigger act in which Estrada is the main protagonist. There is no escaping the fact that his testimony during the Senate hearings on the IMPSA contract were only incidental to Estrada’s ongoing trial.
From his frequent allusions to his difficulties while in detention and his bitter remarks about the justice system, it was obviously uppermost in Estrada’s mind. Apparently he had hoped to use the hearing as a forum from which to win public sympathy by portraying himself as a victim of both partisan politics and of “selective justice.”
Mrs. Arroyo herself was aware of the unavoidable context in which Estrada was testifying. During one media interview, in the context of a discussion on the Estrada Senate testimony, she expressed the hope that Estrada’s plunder trial would be over by 2004.
Estrada’s lawyers reacted to what they thought was a disguised presidential directive to the graft court by saying that for their client to get a fair hearing, the trial could last until 2005, since they were preparing to summon 80 witnesses once the prosecution had argued its case.
Naturally this elicited the usual observation that Estrada’s lawyers were trying their best, and apparently succeeding, in prolonging the case, in the hope that come 2004 a new, more sympathetic government would be in power, which would influence the graft court to find Estrada innocent.
The Estrada lawyers are of course entitled to their hopes, just as the prosecution is entitled to the presumption that the court will heed only the evidence presented to it during the Estrada trial—and to do all it can towards ending the trial by 2004.
Neither will do, however. Rushing the conclusion of the trial before 2004 would be as disserving of justice as deliberately extending the trial beyond that period. In both cases the assumption would be the same, in the first place: that the Sandiganbayan graft court, despite its presumed independence, is actually a political body subject to political changes. That will mean that for all the country’s hopes that the Estrada case will result in a demonstration that no one is above the law, it will only lead to another validation of the growing belief that the Philippine justice system is not only flawed, but also as biased against the poor as it favors the rich and influential. The country shall have been subjected to the trauma of the aborted impeachment trial, the April revolt of Estrada’s followers, and the vicious elections of May 2001, not to mention the succeeding months of resulting instability, fractiousness and factional conflict that followed.
If Estrada’s testimony did anything, it was to remind the nation that the Estrada case is still unresolved, and that bringing it to the Sandiganbayan had been achieved at tremendous cost to the economy, governance, and the people’ s psyche.
Beyond that, however, the nation also needs reminding—and this is as valid for the prosecution and the interested groups involved, as it is for the defense—that this case is not about deadlines, and that it’s not just closure that the country and its justice system needs in this landmark case. It’s credible closure.
(abs-cbnNEWS.com, January 14, 2002)