UNSEEMLY is the best word to describe how the administration rushed to take credit for the stay of execution granted by Indonesia to convicted drug trafficker Mary Jane Veloso last week.
Even if the last-minute efforts by President Benigno Aquino III and his Cabinet to save Veloso did make a difference, the Palace would have done better to simply keep quiet and let the public decide how much they did.
But modesty and statesmanship have never been this administration’s strong suit, so a Cabinet member rushed to fill the news cycle on Wednesday with a minute-by-minute account of what the President did to save Veloso’s life, mere hours after her execution was suspended.
The narrative—that the President had approved approaching the Indonesians with a new legal angle—seemed plausible. Veloso, the Indonesians were told, would be needed to testify against her recruiter, who duped her into smuggling 2.6 kilos of heroin into Indonesia, where she was arrested in 2009. This argument gained credence when the recruiter turned herself over to police one day before Veloso’s scheduled execution.
But the Cabinet secretary who announced the stay of execution seemed all too eager to dramatically play up how Mr. Aquino broke with protocol to pass that proposal on to Indonesian President Joko Widodo just hours before she was scheduled to face the firing squad.
The shameful attempt to hog the limelight stumbled on two inconvenient developments.
First, the Indonesian government itself confirmed that it was the efforts of an Indonesian human rights group that swayed Widodo into granting Veloso’s stay of execution.
“President Jokowi hears and heeds the voice of human rights activists who continue to accompany him in performing his constitutional duties.”
Anis Hidayah, executive director of Migrant Care Indonesia, said she had met on Tuesday afternoon with Widodo, who unexpectedly asked about Veloso’s case.
In that meeting, she tearfully told Widodo that Veloso was a victim of human trafficking, just like the many Indonesian migrant workers abroad who were on death row for serving as drug couriers. She also told the Indonesian president that Veloso’s recruiter had already surrendered.
“If we kill the victims and tomorrow we find new evidence, how can we be responsible for this, after the execution?” she told Widodo, who seemed to take her words to heart.
Even more damaging to the administration, Veloso’s family flew home the next day and tore into the administration for grabbing credit for her stay of execution.
Veloso’s mother called the President a liar and blamed his administration for waiting too long to help her daughter.
In an apparent reference to Aquino, she said: “He is telling the whole world that he helped save my daughter’s life. That is not true.”
With Veloso’s life still on the line, her family has very little reason to lie. On the other hand, the politicians, from the President on down, have much to gain from minimizing the fallout from their own inaction and for playing up their role in the last-minute efforts to save Veloso.
Whom will the public believe?