VANTAGE POINT
UNKNOWN QUANTITY

By Luis V. Teodoro

Will the Arroyo regime survive the NBN-ZTE scandal? Or to put it
another way, will the Filipino people allow Gloria Macapagal Arroyo
to realize her fondest wish of completing her term until 2010 and/or
or running before or after that date for either president or prime
minister in a parliamentary system of her and her allies’ devising?

Thanks to television, the NBN scandal has been a long-running
and instructive look into how the faction of the political class now
in power has been gouging the citizenry it claims to be serving.

From Jose de Venecia III’s testimony before the Senate last
year and Rodolfo “Jun” Lozada’s ongoing one, practically the entire
country has learned that the “acceptable” cost of corruption per
project now runs into the millions of dollars. The country has also
been told that Lozada had balked at the alleged focus by former
Commission on Elections Chair Benjamin Abalos on “protecting” a
“commission” of $130 million. (Lozada said $60 million or so would
have been “possible”– “baka puwede.”)

The testimonies of such regime honchos as Philippine National
Police Director General Avelino Razon Jr. have been, if not hilarious
at the same time, as interesting and instructive as those of de
Venecia and Lozada.

From the statements of one General Atutubo who kept mumbling
about “airport procedures,” Filipinos also confirmed something they
had long suspected: that the law, not to mention processes like going
through immigration, can be suspended at the will of those in power.
Under questioning by Senator Rodolfo Biazon, Atutubo said Lozada was
“escorted” by the men who met him at the airport through a route
reserved for presidents, and did not go through immigration.

On the other hand, from Deputy Chief of the Police Special
Protection Office Paul Mascarinas, we learned that anyone in the
Arroyo enchanted kingdom can be whisked off against his wishes for
his own “protection” as Lozada was-even if the “protector” had
absolutely no idea what he was protecting the protectee from.

But Filipinos should have noted as well why the regime has
been so focused on attacking the media. Media attention was the lead
factor in Lozada’s being returned alive to Manila from the wilds of
Dasmarinas, Cavite where a lot of bodies are literally buried. “I owe
my life to you, the media,” Lozada said, thus emphasizing the
crucial, even life- and- death role the media can play in a country
where an undeclared dictatorship disguised as a democracy and
supported solely by military bayonets and police guns rules.

The other side of that tribute to the media was, alas, as
interesting. Both Lito Atienza of the Department of Environment and
the now unofficial presidential gofer Michael Defensor had occasion
to repeatedly flaunt their supposed concern for Lozada’s safety. To
prove it they proudly declared before the Senate and the entire
nation that they could have called Mike Enriquez of GMA- 7 TV and
Maritess Vitug of Newsbreak for a press conference in which Lozada
would deny having been kidnapped as well as any insider knowledge of
the NBN project. That suggested at least how cynically the regime
viewed the media– but at the most implied something less flattering.

As intriguing and even as grimly amusing as the unfolding of
the NBN scandal is and has been, the question of the hour
nevertheless remains. Having been thus armed, thanks to de Venecia,
Lozada and the media, especially television, with the base, sordid,
despicable details of how the country is being ruined by quite
possibly the most corrupt and most mendacious regime in Philippine
post-World War II history, what will Filipinos do about it?

Some are already moving, again calling for the
resignation/ removal of Gloria Macapagal Arroyo from office. In a
calibrated, step-by- step call for resignations that could culminate
in a resign-Arroyo call, the Makati Business Club is asking for the
resignation of the DENR’s Atienza and of Romulo Neri, who have been
involved in one form or another in the Lozada chapter of the NBN
scandal. Anti-corruption protest rallies have meanwhile been called
for today, February 15, to demand Mrs. Arroyo’s resignation.

These initiatives, however, will lead nowhere without the
involvement of vast numbers of ordinary Filipinos, whether worker or
student, professional, religious, vendor, clerk, housewife or
farmer. They are the X factor-the unknown quantity– in the current
crisis.

The hope of those still concerned with the future of this
country is that Filipinos in their millions will find the courage and
the faith in their own power to put aside their concerns for
themselves and their families’ survival in favor of the country’s
own. Filipinos did do that in 1986 and again in 2001, and they can
do it again.

But the regime expects Filipinos to remain cynical enough and
focused solely on their own interests, as they seemed to have been in
2005 and 2006, to do anything even in the face of the regime’s
contempt for the Constitution and the most basic decencies its
corruption has generated since it came to power.

That assumption could yet be validated by citizen
indifference and fear, as the regime escalates its threats and its
actual use of violence against the media, its critics, and
protesters. But it could prove mistaken if, as in 1986 and 2001, the
true sovereigns of this country finally say, Enough!. –###

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