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“You
can fool some of the people all of the time, and those
are the ones you want to concentrate on.”—George W.
Bush, Washington, D.C., March 31, 2001
Which
one of the following three newspaper headlines about a
controversy involving Hanjin Heavy Industries and two
Misamis Oriental mayors do you think made Palace
factotums smile?
“Bribery
or extortion on $2-B Misamis Oriental project?”
(Malaya).
“Puno
forms task force to probe Hanjin project pullout”
(Philippine Star).
“‘Furious’ Arroyo orders Hanjin extort probed”
(Philippine Daily
Inquirer).
The
third? I think so, too.
The
Inquirer headline followed the line laid out by Interior
Secretary Ronaldo Puno:
“The
President was furious over these charges of extortion,
galit na galit [she’s livid] . . . . The
conflicting statements of the mayors and Hanjin
officials on the charges of bribery and extortion are
puzzling, to say the least. . . . It does not make sense
for a group that claims to have been bribed to respond
by ordering the attack on a company driver of the
alleged briber.”
Why is
it important for the Palace to sell the story as
extortion rather than bribery?
Because
Tagaloan Mayor Paulino Emano said he told Mrs. Arroyo
about a bribe offer from Hanjin and, instead of ordering
an investigation, she scolded him. That has an eerie
resemblance to her reaction to Romy Neri telling her
about a bribe offer from Ben Abalos.
Imagine
if Mrs. Arroyo had taken Puno’s
“the-best-defense-is-offense” approach when Neri
testified that he told her about a P200-million bribe
offered by Abalos instead of going on wild cover-up
spree. If she had said, “I didn’t pay attention to Romy
because I was informed much earlier by Commissioner
Abalos that Romy tried to extort money from him during a
round of golf in Wack-Wack.”
And if
she had added, “I should have fired Neri and ordered
Raul Gonzalez to investigate him right away, but I
didn’t because I thought it might damage our economic
and diplomatic relations with China. It was a lapse in
judgment by a human being, a wife whose husband was
critically ill at the time. I am sorry.”
She
could have avoided embarking on a futile campaign to
convince the public that Neri, Joey de Venecia, Jun
Lozada and Dante Madriaga created and coordinated lies.
She
wouldn’t have had to go on a crusade to destroy Lozada,
that he engineered an auto kidnapping and liquidation
attempt, and his wife gave a stellar performance worthy
of an Oscar just to destabilize the country, or because
Lozada wanted to run for Congress.
Well, at
least, she’s learning from her mistakes.
Going
back to the Misamis Oriental-Hanjin controversy, I’m not
sure if it’s about bribery or extortion or a little bit
of both. I’m sure I’ll never know. And neither will
you.
But I do
know one thing. Malacañang is following, religiously,
Dubya’s advice on audience targeting.
Press
Secretary Ignacio Bunye, addressing suspicions about
Mrs. Arroyo’s behavior in the Hanjin case, said,
“President Arroyo will never violate any existing law
just to accommodate persons, individuals or companies
who want to invest in the country.” That will work on
some people all the time.
Buencamino is a fellow of Action for Economic Reforms (www.aer.ph). |
