LuisTeodoro.com

“Political prostitute” doesn’t quite cut it as a metaphor for politicians, particularly the Filipino variety.

A prostitute dispenses sexual favors for cash, and in that enterprise ends up with multiple partners. In certain societies like ours where the self-righteous reign, prostitutes are derided as destroyers of morality and as enemies of the family because they supposedly lead otherwise honest and faithful husbands into sin.

Prostitutes are more victim than victimizer, however. They’re exploited not only by the pimps and madams who live off their labors, but also by their clients. Many are from the vast Philippine countryside, and have been forced into the world’s oldest profession by poverty, or lured into it by promises of employment in the cities.

In their work they have to endure abuse not only by pimps and madams, but also by the police. They are also in constant risk of contracting sexually transmitted diseases, including AIDS.

There’s no way of putting it delicately. It’s the prostitute who gets screwed, not her pimp or madam, not the police, and certainly not the client. As in most other callings, there’s also a class structure of sorts in prostitution, in which expensive call girls outrank the streetwalker. Although that’s another story altogether, whether cheap or expensive, all prostitutes are exploited. Thus the more apt term “prostituted women,” which feminist groups use to describe women trapped in the oldest profession.

The point is that unlike prostitutes, far too many politicians (admittedly not all) do the screwing, and they do it in a big way. They do dispense favors like occasional handouts, or getting constituents jobs. But they get them back multiplied several times in the form of kickbacks, bribes and other benefits not listed in their job descriptions, tax declarations, or statements of assets and liabilities.

True, being with multiple partners has become nearly synonymous with being a politician in these parts, but that’s about as far as the analogy goes. Some of the least exploited Filipinos in this country of exploitees are politicians, many of whom, in their other capacities as landlords and big businessmen do the exploiting—of other people’s labors, and whatever else they can offer. No, “political prostitute” doesn’t quite cut it. “Predator” might.

Apparently untrained in the devices of literature, however, the Armed Forces’ Brig. Gen. Victor Corpus has called Senator Loren Legarda a political prostitute. That description is as confused as it’s confusing. It’s also especially selective, if based solely on Legarda’s having recently changed parties (and thus political partners). After all, who among our politicians and the current crop running for office, from president to senator to congressman/woman, hasn’t ended up politically in bed with strangers or even former enemies?

Consider the curious assortment of creatures running for senator, for example. It’s gotten so that few can tell who’s with whom and with what, so furiously over the last two months have they changed partners, with at least one of them (Rodolfo Biazon) changing partners thrice.

And then there’s Gen. Corpus’ patron, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who tops them all in the changing partners category. Right now, after kicking Heherson Alvarez out, she’s in the same political bed as Miriam Defensor Santiago, John Osmeña and Orlando Mercado, all candidates for senator in her K-4 coalition, and all of Estrada administration fame. In addition, she’s also running with Noli de Castro, whom she’s enticed from into her camp, as her vice president.

Far stranger than fiction would Philippine politics be if it were a soap opera, with a plot far more convoluted than any the Mexican and Taiwanese writers of telenovelas could possibly concoct. And what makes it all convoluted is the promiscuity—politically, of course—of practically all its major players, which makes Legarda’s ending up in the same camp as Jinggoy Estrada three years after she helped oust his father no more unusual than Defensor-Santiago’s defending the government whose seat of power, Malacanang, she once urged the Estrada crowds to charge. About her, Corpus has so far said nothing.

But it’s not the inaptness (and ineptness) of his metaphors that General Corpus has to answer for, but his obvious partisanship. Corpus has a right to his opinions, but the law does limit their expression in aid of partisan politics when it comes to government officials and employees. It’s easy to see why. Government officials can easily use their power—over resources and over subordinates, for example—to advance partisan ends, thus giving incumbents a distinct advantage over their rivals.

Although Gen. Corpus’ preference for president seems more obvious this political season, his loyalties were evident almost from Day One of the Arroyo administration. A protégé of then Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes, Corpus was in fact among those officers instrumental in the AFP’s withdrawal of support from Estrada. As Chief of the Intelligence Service of the Armed Forces, Corpus was testifying before the Senate by late 2001 and early 2002 on the alleged drug-dealing and money-laundering crimes of Senator Panfilo Lacson.

It was Corpus who made fear of “narco-politics”—of drug interests taking control of the government—synonymous with Lacson. Corpus’ efforts—which included the testimony of the now discredited Ador Mawanay—incidentally bore other fruit in the form of his star witness’ allegation that Loren Legarda was involved in the smuggling of cell-phones.

Corpus’ focus on Lacson was widely interpreted during that period as driven only by real concern for the country. Men and women of goodwill thought the hit on Legarda incidental and as Mawanay’s initiative, rather than as an attempt to demolish her public standing as well as Lacson’s in aid of Mrs. Arroyo’s running for president in 2004.

Even then, however, the more skeptical, among them the members of Lacson’s camp in the opposition, were suggesting that something more than patriotism was driving the then Colonel Corpus. Lacson had won the senatorial elections of May 2001 by a credible margin, and it was widely known that the next item in his agenda was a crack at the presidency. The widely popular and no less ambitious Legarda, on the other hand, was that early being mentioned as a likely presidential candidate in 2004. Both could derail Mrs. Arroyo’s 2004 plans, and it’s never too early in this country to take sides.

The cynical will certainly say that government officials and employees do engage in partisan politics despite what the law says, and who can stop even the members of constitutional and supposedly neutral bodies from doing so anyway?

That’s true enough, but politicking can be subtle as well as blatant, and while its subtle forms could be more dangerous, the more blatant ones are more immediately damaging to the very system the military is sworn to protect.

Protecting that system among others requires a military institution that, despite the right of its officers to their opinions, is nevertheless neutral in both word and deed. When that institution is burdened by politicization and adventurism, the merest hint of partisanship by its leaders can be devastating. That’s because, as equal as the military may be with other government institutions, it is, by virtue of its guns, actually more equal than others.

Precisely because they belong to an institution that chief among others must not only be neutral, but must equally be perceived to be so, whatever Gen. Corpus and other senior AFP officers say about the candidates this May acquires a power not shared by, say, a bureau chief in the Department of Finance. Their statements carry with them one implication: they have the power to back their opinions with that ultimate political arbiter, force.

In the context of this country’s troubled experience with the military—Gen. Corpus made his Legarda statement even as Mrs. Arroyo’s government was claiming that another coup attempt was in the offing—Corpus was guilty of an offense worse than bad taste and inept metaphors. That is why Gen. Corpus deserves more than the rap on the knuckles the AFP Chief of Staff has given him. Telling him to shut up should only be the beginning.

(Today/abs-cbnNEWS.com, February 7, 2004)

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