Two women are very much in the news these days. One is accused, the other is her erstwhile accuser. One is already behind bars, the other will soon join her.
I’m referring of course to Janet Lim Napoles and Leila de Lima. And much of what fascinates me about their intertwined stories is how (i) local feminists and (ii) the Yellow crowd (not always so distinct from each other) have reacted so differently to their plight. It simply reconfirms the old aphorism: Where you sit is where you stand.
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Ma’am Janet hit the headlines three years ago, during the PNoy administration, with her scandalous tales of multi-billion peso scams and 100 percent kickbacks at the highest levels of government, not to mention her alleged kidnapping of Ben-hur Luy, a distant cousin turned whistle-blower.
The Yellow crowd immediately pounced on all those lurid stories of corruption going back to way before PNoy’s time. And who can blame the feminists for steering clear of their sister in light of all the damning evidence against her?
Then-Justice Secretary Leila de Lima jumped into the prosecutorial fray with gusto. Just in time for her senatorial campaign, three sitting senators ended up arrested for plunder, while Ms. Napoles landed in prison for kidnapping her poor cousin.
But have you ever experienced smelling something rotten, no matter how much perfume you spray around you? This must have been what President Duterte was feeling when he complained that so much had been left unexplained in the whole Napoles debacle.
Among the questions that must have been bothering him:
Why did Luy not behave at all like a kidnapping victim throughout his purported ordeal?
Why are there only three senators behind bars, all of them members of the opposition to PNoy? Was it possible that—gasp!—the Yellow crowd has cornered the entire market on virtue?
Why did De Lima’s investigation stop at the point when PNoy took office? Was it also possible that—double gasp!—the shining young prince had immediately banished all sin from the land with his sheer beneficent presence?
These are the almost-theological questions that will now preoccupy our unassuming new Solicitor General Jose Calida. I’ve learned from him on TV that he’s actually “the people’s tribune” (or, more familiarly, “the 16th Supreme Court justice”) as well as government’s chief prosecutor.
It was in the former role that he decided to seek dismissal of the illegal detention case against Ms. Napoles. By thus answering our first question above, we may soon be seeing the answers to the other two.
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The painfully slow movement of the great karmic wheel has finally caught up with Ma’m Leila, who ran after Ms. Napoles with such selective gusto. It was she, too, who, after some hesitation, defied the Supreme Court in 2012 just to keep former President Arroyo from leaving the country for medical treatment abroad.
[Of course, PNoy’s grubby hands were all over that incident, and he’s still footloose and fancy-free on Times Street. But, hey, that karmic wheel’s still turnin’, turnin’, turnin’…]
As soon as our chief anti-drug crusader came into office last July, it was only a matter of time before all those festering rumors about De Lima’s chumminess with drug lords saw the light of day. And what a show indeed we were treated to: One drug-related witness after another stood before Congress to confirm that, yes, the new senator had been their biggest protector at the Justice department!
Some have complained that the witnesses are unreliable because they are criminals. But from whom else might we expect to get knowledgeable testimony about such matters? If some of them—or indeed, maybe all of them—are lying, that is what a court of law, following the rules of evidence and due process, is supposed to find out.
On the other side, many others have resorted to shaming De Lima about her physical appetites and the men in her life. Whatever probative value may be found there, I cannot for the life of me understand how such public shaming can be stomached by any man who has a mother, wife, sister, daughter. Only after Ma’m Leila finally faces the judge can she put an end to the appalling sexual innuendoes, by replacing them with the much more gossip-worthy tidbits of a real trial.
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Thus, De Lima should in fact be gratefully embracing our unassuming Justice Secretary Aguirre for bringing her to court. And yet she’s having to be dragged in there, kicking and screaming. And with her considerable dramatic skills, she’s cobbling together an interesting coalition of supporters:
Catholic nuns surrounded Ma’m Leila when she joined the Church’s “walk for life.” They must have been the same nuns who were escorting NBN-ZTE whistle-blower Jun Lozada all over the place years ago, until the courts wised up to his fantasizing. The bishops should really be more careful about whom, and what, they embrace.
Feminists are rallying around her as a convenient symbol of oppression by our openly chauvinistic president. I won’t even ask where they were for Ms. Napoles, or earlier for Mrs. Arroyo. But I can certainly ask them if they think victimization by sexist shaming is enough of a free pass for de Lima to get out of a court trial for something as lethal as coddling drug lords.
And of course the Yellow crowd has been ratcheting up the level of tension by talking about EJKs and threat of martial law—as if, even if true, these issues had anything to do with the drug charges against her (see “feminists” above). Do these inveterate plotters hope to gain anything from escalating disorder?
Secretary Aguirre is a transparently good man who wears his faith on his sleeve. I wasn’t a fan of his when he joined the legal team that impeached the late Chief Justice Corona. But I’ve been won over—wig and all—by his even-handed ways and his doggedness in the pursuit of justice, qualities that he shares with SolGen Calida.
The country—and, yes, even these two women—are in good hands with these two men. Let the trials begin.
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