To Take A Stand
By Oscar P. Lagman, Jr.
BusinessWorld
The resignation statement of the ombudsman would have drawn credulity, sympathy, and esteem had it been made by a brilliant, erudite but humble and deferential person. But because the statement was made by Ms. Merceditas Gutierrez, it drew mockery, pity, and greater contempt.
The statement must have been prepared by one of her obsequious underlings who just put words in her mouth without regard to Ms. Gutierrez’s personality, language, and public image. To paraphrase Mike Defensor’s monumental declaration after studying the “Hello Garci” tapes, that was Ombudsman Gutierrez’s voice but she was not the one speaking.
She started her statement by thanking the President for graciously accommodating her on very short notice when she went to see him to tender her resignation. It was as if the President was clueless as to who she is. The President was fully aware of who she is and what she represented — a huge stumbling block — in his quest to bring corrupt public officials to justice.
When the 2010 election results began to indicate a victory by the presidential candidate whose election campaign was anchored on bringing GMA to justice, there were already calls from the advisers of the presumed president-elect for Ms. Gutierrez to resign. Were it not for the position’s fixed term, Ms. Gutierrez would have been summarily dismissed hours after PNoy was sworn in as president. That was therefore no gracious accommodation accorded her on April 29. Her resignation letter was long overdue. Personal delivery of it was totally unnecessary.
“I have always been guided by the precepts that the public and moral responsibilities of public officials transcend all other considerations,” said she. The public’s perception is precisely that having been appointed by Gloria Arroyo, she owed allegiance to her and not to the Filipino people and the Constitution. People strongly believe that she ignored her public responsibilities in consideration of her patrons Gloria Arroyo and her husband. She is accused of deliberately sleeping on the Fertilizer Fund scam and the malodorous NBN-ZTE deal to shield them from criminal charges. It is alleged that the Fertilizer Fund was used for GMA’s presidential bid in 2004 while it is bruited about that the NBN-ZTE deal was really the First Gentleman’s scheme.
She absolved the Comelec officials involved in the P1.3-billion Mega-Pacific contract nullified by the Supreme Court of all administrative and criminal liabilities because they were the ones who purportedly manipulate elections to favor GMA and her minions. She sat on the case of the Euro generals because they are the ones who suppressed public demonstrations against the Arroyo administration.
She said her unblemished record in public service is the greatest and lasting legacy that she can leave her family, her children, and her children’s children. On the contrary she is referred to as only the second public official to be impeached by the House of Representatives, President Estrada being the first.
Only 79 congressman or 33% of the members of the House signed the resolution to impeach Erap. Out of 285 members of the House, 212, or 74%, voted to impeach Ombudsman Gutierrez. Many of those were former toadies of GMA in Congress. That is the legacy she leaves behind.
She said that as a government official, she must place first and foremost the interests of the nation, the Office of the Ombudsman, and as a mother and wife, her family. “The impeachment proceedings have consumed not only the members of the House of Representatives and the Senate, but the Chief Executive of the land as well. At a time when the present administration is in its infancy and beset with more urgent problems, the last thing that the nation needs is for the House and the Senate to be embroiled in a long-drawn-out impeachment proceeding against a single public official,” she declared.
If those were her true sentiments, she would have resigned in July last year, when she was strongly urged to do so, instead of distracting PNoy and tying up the Lower House of Congress and the Supreme Court in her vain attempt to vindicate herself. Her attempt at heroics comes too late in the day.
She herself said she was firm and resolute to participate in the impeachment trial before the Senate. Maybe she was assured by her patron of the favorable votes of Senators Lapid, Revilla, Zubiri, Sotto, Santiago, and Marcos (all four Arroyos signed the House resolution urging PNoy to allow the burial of President Marcos in the Libingan ng mga Bayani), but her advisers must have pointed at the handwriting of 212 congressmen on the wall.
I cannot let Sen. Santiago’s nomination of Gilbert Teodoro for ombudsman go by without comment. It will be recalled that when Teodoro was asked during the presidential campaign if he would push for the prosecution of GMA if he were elected, he said he would not go against a president who put her trust and confidence in him, young though he was, when she appointed him secretary of Defense. Did Sen. Santiago think of PNoy as brain-damaged?
* * * *
Today is supposed to be Gus Lagman’s turn at this column. As he has become a public official, it has become inappropriate for him to render his opinion on national issues publicly.
When he was asked to join the pool of writers of this column, he declined at first. But then he realized he could use the column as a medium for his advocacies. Indeed, his first articles were on our electoral system and the Comelec.
We in Manindigan!, the cause-oriented group that is behind this column, join other civil society groups in hailing our colleague’s appointment as election commissioner. We expect great reforms in our electoral system from hereon.
By the way, Gus is blocking the resolution signed and promulgated by the Comelec authorizing the chairman to sign a contract with Smartmatic-TIM for the purchase of: hardware and software (P130.9 million), election and stress test consumables (P50.4 million), technology-related services (P756.0 million), and ballot boxes and non-technology-related services for a few hunded million pesos more. He says the price is too high to pay for an election where each voter only writes five names chosen from a very short list of maybe a dozen candidates. Counting the votes manually will only take an hour or two.
He also said that the Comelec’s technology consultant has admitted that Smartmatic is still fixing defects in the system. He believes Smartmatic-TIM has to first demonstrate that the defects have already been fixed before the Comelec should even consider purchasing the system.
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