Who will protect the people?

By Lito Banayo

Malaya/March 27, 2008

ONCE upon a not-so-distant time, a cabal of excessively greedy people hit the jackpot. Their patroness found herself on top of a government whose power they had long coveted. As soon as they were ensconced in the seat of power, a stinking palace beside a stinking river, they began transforming a government of, by and for the people into a syndicate of, by and for themselves.

A criminal syndicate of legendary reach and excessive greed was thus born. Soon democracy turned into a whorehouse. Read this and weep:

Days after they entered the palace, a juicy proposition engineered by someone the former leader foolishly called his "corporate genius", lay for instant taking. It was a contract to rehabilitate a power plant negotiated by a previous president in one of his peregrinations into the pampas. The contract just lay there, unmoving, because the men of the president they deposed refused grant of sovereign guarantee to bind the Republic and its people to pay a B-O-T scheme of the Argentinian company. In short shrift, aided by the quick brains of her justice secretary, sovereign guarantee was extended for a hefty consideration in dollars. Two for you and four for me, and one "for the boys" to divide into morsels. But corporate genius hid for himself seven million. All these in Week One.

Later, the snitch was discovered. Already a congressman by the power of his millions, he was soon delivered into the waiting habitat of a Pennsylvania, later Florida jail, for sins committed under a previous incarnation in foreign land.

The stink reached the noses of the gnomes of Zurich who later provided cut and clear evidence of a money trail that originated in Paraguay and traveled round the world, through the Caymans to New York, to Hong Kong and Singapore, and finally into the fastnesses of the Alps. But justice, or what we call justice in the benighted republic, simply closed its eyes to clear evidence of corruption. Crime pays in the land where impunity reigns.

And then there came more. An almost finished boulevard to the airport that the previous government contracted for 650 million pesos, was landscaped and lighted in time for the birthday of the patroness, who in shameless fashion named it after her once famous father, with two tiny bridges named after her unknown maternal grandparents. But by then, it had become the most expensive boulevard in the universe, all 2.2 kilometers of it billed at public expense for 1.1 billion pesos.

The syndicate collected from the same jueteng lords who once paid homage to previous rulers. But instead of foolishly hiring a single collector and an accountant to boot, ledgers and all, the syndicate simply assigned their choice of police generals to the juicy posts where jueteng was a way of life. Police generals became peons of the syndicate.

The syndicate likewise conscripted the same Chinaman who used to provide Chateau Petrus to the previous ruler, and after handsome tribute of earnest money, made him lord of container contraband that passed the ports. When the inamorata of one most powerful cried that her family of Chinamen had to have their "just" share, they were given break-bulk contraband to toy with. Later, another greedy Chinaman got into the act. He enticed the syndicate to buy China-made container X-ray machines at a humongous overprice, perhaps so the syndicate could check if the original Chinaman was paying the right amount of shwe-khang (baksheesh to the Egyptians, tara to the examiner, kotong to the lowly traffic aide), of billions to the syndicate.

Soon, everyone got into the gravy train. A spoonful here and a spoonful there, with lardoons of gravy for the smarter. Such as a vociferous old legislator who has control of a seaport, and imports of carabeef and vehicles likewise. Another high-flying former legislator imports beef and other comestibles even if his name suggests he should be strictly vegan. Others are content with cuts above their regular pork barrel.

A military general's wife and her sons were caught purloining hundreds of thousands of dollars into the erstwhile land of milk and honey they had hoped to luxuriate in after the husband's retirement. "Why only us?" she complained to Homeland Security and US customs officials, and forthwith pointed to other generals and their wives who did the money laundering, and spending. One of the military ladies, aside from buying precious real estate, was so enamored with hand-me-downs from the rich and famous, and bid fifty thousand dollars at a Christie's auction, for a purse that once belonged to Princess Grace of Monaco. She was so ecstatic over her ultra-expensive bag that she even posed for a picture with it. The picture is now in the files of the foreign government. But is the general close to being investigated? Not on your life. Fact is, he has become a cabinet member. I told you – crime pays provided you cozy up to the syndicate.

Not to forget military hardware of all kinds. The syndicate named a front man, the bosom friend of a most powerful sibling. Front man exchanged plum promotions for plum contracts, and soon, he was chummy-chummy with most everyone with a star on his shoulder. When he was tasked to husband syndicate monies collected from jueteng lords and monetized fake fertilizers for fake farms, to be used for election "operations" to ensure the victory of the patroness in 2004, he caused the wire-tapping of a commissioner for electoral cheating. Later, this military front-man was to lead a Gang of Four that partnered with the chair of the commission and got the blessings of the syndicate to negotiate a deal with their friendly Chinamen in Shenzhen for a deal that has now become the stink of the decade. True to past habit, he tapped the cell phones of the players and would-be players in that broadband deal.

Out of the ISAFP wire-tapping did the Hello Garci scandal morph into the public's attention. In any other clime and culture, Hello Garci would have caused the collapse of a regime so callous in lying, cheating and stealing. But hey, this is the Philippines, where crime pays exceedingly well, and provided you spread the sunshine in dollops, you always get away with it, including murder.

Close to a thousand activists and journalists have been killed extra-judicially, because the syndicate and the patroness could not care any less for pobrecitos like Jonas Burgos and Sherlyn Cadapan and Kate Empeno and whoever else the verdugos in the military fancy.

But when Hello Garci threatened its survival, the syndicate just caused the budget department, then "husbanded" by a once parsimonious congressional economic planner, to pay off every congressman who would deny her impeachment. That same guy was later to be NEDA director-general, from which post he was "forced" by the patroness of largesse to endorse the controversial broadband project. Habits die hard. Ah, impunity!

Impunity has indeed become hallmark of the Republic controlled by the syndicate. A former governor convicted by a lower court for murdering two young cowboys in his benighted fiefdom gets his lady to play nanny to the patroness wherever she went, and her eyes and ears in the House of the bought. On appeal, in decision most queer, convict becomes a free man days before Christendom commemorated the death of the Christ. How indeed could a criminal syndicate not forgive one of its faithful?

Not to forget the deposed president whose picayune larceny of jueteng over-rides pales in comparison to the massive plunder after him. How could the Republic's syndicate possibly send him to jail after their hand-picked judges convicted him of plunder? And so, with bleeding heart hypocrisy, the syndicate instantaneously granted pardon.

This was the same man for whom scores of sympathizing masa were killed by sniper fire when they stormed Malacañang on May 1, 2001, after the new regime threw him behind bars. Ah, the masa, cannon fodder in the altar of the politics of impunity and the economics of greed.

Since then the orgy of plunder has become unstoppable. And egregiously insatiable after usurpation was crowned with "election" in 2004. To fortify the regime, most everyone was conscripted as barkers, runners and "commissioners." In the Congress of the bought, but for a handful whose souls were not for sale. In the local government units, IRA, the official lifeline, was used as bait for fawning loyalty, along with tolerance of "pera sa basura." And in almost every level of the bureaucracy. As well as the judiciary and constitutional commissions. And – oh God, did you know?, even bishops and pastors of the faith.

Everyone had a price, and those who had none were labeled "destabilizers," the enemies of "progress." The syndicate willingly paid out of a treasure chest filled by humongous commissions, jueteng intelihensya, lotto and gambling monies, as well as the forced contributions of oligarchs who controlled the utilities, transportation and telecommunications, ports and public infrastructure, and most everything else that government regulated in the "name of the public interest."

For the right price in shwe-khang, the syndicate would not mind selling off parts of the country. Kalayaan to China, Sabah if the Malaysians could cough up. Why, do not be surprised if the Jemaah Islamiyah or Osama bin Laden bids for Mindanao with billions of euros in baksheesh.

Only a handful in the Senate stand in the way of the syndicate, whose be-all and end-all is power and greed in perpetuity. That power has become all too lucrative to give up come 2010. That power, once lost, could send the syndicate to jail, or extradition from some foreign exile. That could never be allowed.

And so that handful has been legally "castrated" by nine justices of the highest tribunal, magistrates whose credentials to such majestic office only their patroness, the boss woman could possibly appreciate. Invoking peril to "diplomatic relations,", one founded on "chia tua tiyaw chih," nine justices of the Supreme Court would rather cover up whatever truth the Senate of the People want to let out.

Cory Aquino, even in these moments of personal illness, must be ruing what has happened to the democracy she and the people re-established, now that it has morphed into a criminal syndicate far worse than the dictatorship we threw out.

The syndicate masquerading as government will never let go of power – mark these written words well. If Marcos had a hallelujah chorus to celebrate his "perpetuation" in 1981 with the stirring strains of Handel's Messiah, this regime would tap Apl de Ap and Manny Pacquiao doing a duet of Dante's Inferno set to music by Tito Sotto.

Perish the thought of change by 2010. With every institution in its pocket, with military and police generals conscripted into the cause of the unholy, the syndicate of the Republic will "reign forever and ever."

If we were not of strong enough faith, we would have asked where, oh where, is God in the midst of all these?

Who, oh God, will protect the people? Who will save the Republic?