Revilla’s bandwagon: A destructive campaign
President Aquino’s greatest success during his term has been his declared fight against corruption. This campaign has won him points, as people considered the record of personal integrity that he brought to his office and the shine from his mother’s legacy who held up the highest standards of moral conduct while in office. So far, no charge of corruption has yet been proven against PNoy.
This simple projection of his character had gained for the country a level of trust and confidence in his efforts to institutionalize government reform. The response of the international community has been resounding, expressive of the shared belief that during his term of office, there would be ample opportunity to do good business here. Improved investment ratings and economic growth reflect how well he has done.
I think Filipinos have gained much from PNoy’s projected personal integrity. The same positive experience has accompanied the term of Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono. Criticized for many things, including not doing much of anything really, Yudhoyono’s administration has ushered an unprecedented rise in economic growth that has restored the prospects of democracy in Asia.
But no one can expect corruption to be cleaned up overnight. In the Philippines, the virus has been given too much time to fester. It has weakened the political system and damaged the national culture. Entrenched bureaucracies cannot be reformed without the kind of “bloodletting” that begets more resistance to reform. So there are areas that remain seriously infected, as petty corruption continues to thrive, with so many ordinary people willing enough to cooperate.
But just having a man like PNoy at the helm has significantly cleared the path toward good governance.
And yet this asset of the President’s personal integrity has now become the target of vicious attack. There are those who would want the President to lose this rather unique luster of his political persona. Charges come without granting some benefit of the doubt, without the offer of time for clarification on his side. And in the media, the press’ so-called adversarial mandate translates into false and misleading media spin.
The latest chorus of charges has come from a most incredible source. An actor elected senator gave a privileged speech, designed to deflect the damning impact of his inclusion in the list of beneficiaries who benefitted from the Napoles PDAF scam. Bong Revilla said that the President had him brought for talks to Malacañang, suggesting that the president had tried to influence his vote on the impeachment trial of then Chief Justice Renato Corona.
To recall, Corona’s impeachment was something that President Aquino had set into motion openly, seeing the removal of Corona as necessary if he was to succeed in pursuing reform. Arroyo’s midnight appointee to this high office, Corona could use the power of the Supreme Court to work against cases filed against Arroyo or in other ways weaken or to render inutile the executive’s drive against corruption. Public acclaim cheered the removal of Corona from office; such as to almost redeem Juan Ponce Enrile from his dubious past.
I have found the coverage of this issue as so much bandwagon reporting, verging on the presumption of presidential guilt and culpability and readily forgetting what had pushed Revilla to speak in the Senate, a rare event that this is—the investigation for the mis-use and abuse of the PDAF assigned to him.
Some columnists and pundits have been quick to describe the president’s act as judicial interference, a view that fails to appreciate the difference between an impeachment trial and a court case. The impeachment is a political exercise conducted as a trial. As such it is open to public pressure, and political persuasion. The President as Chief Executive does his job by convincing those who oppose him to support his policy efforts. His effort to persuade is part of political practice.
Columns have implied the commitment of bribery. The president must be investigated for having used PDAF in exchange for the some senators’ vote to impeach. Those who have complained about presidential efforts to influence their decision on the Corona impeachment deny having been bribed, claiming that that they had voted on principle and on the basis of the evidence shown. So why even bring up bribery? With the dismissal coming from these same parties, how can anyone call for an investigation of whether there was bribery?
I am not saying that the President cannot make mistakes. I am not dismissing the sad possibility of presidential wrongdoing. But there should be strong proof of misdeed before such serious charges are given credence. And the media should be wary of becoming instruments of baseless propaganda that destroys a genuine asset that so far this Aquino has still sustained.
That’s the problem with media trying to create sensational headlines at the expense of the actual truth.