I MUST admit at the outset that I voted for Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV in 2007. I now believe I made a big mistake in doing so.
I had thought then that Trillanes deserved to sit in the Senate after taking a principled stand against corruption in the Arroyo administration and leading two failed mutinies for which he spent seven years in prison.
He came across as an angry young man with high ideals then. Thus, he was elected to the Senate by millions of voters who were disenchanted with the Arroyo administration.
But Trillanes’s record as a lawmaker since then has raised questions about his integrity and competence.
For one thing, he spent the most among all senators while in prison. What’s his output in terms of laws he authored and laws that were actually passed into law that would justify the gargantuan amount spent by his office while he was detained on coup d’etat charges?
Another question pertains to how he spent his Priority Development Assistance Fund and Development Acceleration Program, both of which the Supreme Court has declared unconstitutional. Where did all the money go?
I still remember how he treated former Armed Forces of the Philippines Chief of Staff and later Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes in an overbearing manner during a Senate hearing not too long ago. Reyes later killed himself rather than have his honor further smeared by unfounded allegations.
Later, Trillanes also crossed swords with then-Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, whom he accused—unfairly, it turns out—of masterminding on behalf of the detained former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo the creation of a new province, Nueva Camarines, in the Bicol region. Enrile denied having anything to do with the plan.
And of course, everyone knows by now that Trillanes has been keeping a high-profile, along with Sen. Alan Cayetano, in the Senate investigation of alleged involvement in corruption of former Makati Mayor and now Vice President Jejomar C. Binay. The two senators belonging to the Nacionalista Party have been monopolizing the Senate Blue Ribbon subcommittee hearings—18 have been held so far, the longest probe on any issue in the history of the Senate, if I’m not mistaken—and their common denominator is that they both want to run for higher public office in 2016.
Trillanes has been hurling allegations of corruption against the Binays since the hearings started, but it appears that he’s been very reckless and shooting from the hip as he does not offer solid evidence, leading many to think that his tirades in the Senate floor are not in aid not of legislation but rather election to higher office.
All the noise that Trillanes is making in the Senate and in the media seems calculated to put his name in the headlines and thus further his political ambition. His latest reckless accusation is that the two Court of Appeals justices who issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) on the preventive suspension of Makati Mayor Junjun Binay were bribed. The two justices have described the Trillanes tirade as “harassment.”
Trillanes initially declared he wants to run for president in 2016. But when surveys showed his dismal ranking among possible presidential contenders, he indicated that he would settle for the vice presidency.
What Trillanes is doing in the Senate with his recklessness and slash-and-burn politicking is to impair the image of the institution and erode the trust and confidence of the people in a bulwark of our democratic system.
Will the SC uphold the PCOS deal?
THE Supreme Court recently issued a TRO on the extended warranty deal between the Commission on Elections (Comelec) and its private partner Smartmatic-Total Information Management (TIM). But the scuttlebutt is that the High Court could clear the way to reusing the 81,000-plus Precinct Count Optical Scan (PCOS) machines in the third computerized Philippine polls in 2016. The Comelec signed the P268.8-million
contract with Smartmatic-TIM last December for the diagnostic work and upgrade of the PCOS machines that the government first leased in 2010 and then purchased in 2013 for the country’s globally acclaimed first two automated balloting.
The Comelec started the maintenance work on these machines in February as part of its hectic timetable for next year’s computerized elections. But the job was suspended on March 24 after the SC finally granted the TRO requested by the same group of electoral reform activists who have been claiming that the Automated Election System (AES)/PCOS technology is deeply flawed and ought to be junked. This despite the praise that the 2010 and 2013 polls have reaped from the majority of Filipino voters, not to mention global leaders and international poll observers.
The SC has already rejected twice the hackneyed charges of wholesale electoral fraud in two of its rulings that affirmed the accuracy of the PCOS machines and the validity of Comelec’s contract with Smartmatic, the service provider or supplier of the AES/PCOS technology. It is likely that it will be no different this time when the High Tribunal renders its third ruling that would decide on whether the Philippines could either replicate—or even surpass—the success of its first two automated polls or go back to what one legislator has dubbed the “Jurassic” era of manual balloting that brought with it the triple scourge of dagdag-bawas, ballot switching and ballot-box snatching schemes, and Election Day violence.
E-mail: ernhil@yahoo.com.
1 comment
Since he was voted into office via attacking GMA and capitalizing on the people’s anti GMA sentiment, he thinks he can do the same strategy now. Just replace GMA with Binay, except that Binay is more popular than the then Pres GMA. Ergo, villify Binay.