PEOPLE POWWOW

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HERBERT VEGO
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When ‘might is right’

WHILE we were at the coffee shop of Hotel del Rio yesterday, we had “all ears” and “all eyes” glued to the TV set.  Showing live was the Senate hearing “starring” suspected drug lord Kerwin Espinosa,  confessing that he had millions of pesos to then senatorial candidate Leila de Lima.

A fellow viewer remarked, “With the entire machinery of the Duterte administration pinning her, de Lima will end up behind bars.”

I recalled a supposedly erroneous philosophical theory behind the three words, “Might is right.”  Where a government is in control of the levers of power, whoever it wishes to destroy ends up destroyed – as in the impeachment of the late Chief Justice Renato Corona, who had the misfortune of being an appointee of the past president, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.

Beholden to President Benigno Aquino Jr., (the year was 2012), the majority of congressmen and senators fast-tracked the prosecution and conviction of Corona for “culpable violation of the Constitution and betrayal of public trust” because he had failed to declare dollar and peso bank deposits in his statement of assets, liabilities and net worth (SAL-N).

The decision, however, could have been spurred by Aquino’s desire to see Chief Justice Corona out of the Supreme Court. The “tyranny of the majority” somehow diluted the administration’s tuwid na daan (straight path) battle cry.

Going back to Senator de Lima, she thinks President Rodrigo Duterte wants her jailed because of a past circumstance.  The lady senator – while Justice Secretary during the Aquino presidency – had alluded to him, then mayor of Davao City, as the mastermind behind the Davao Death Squad, which was reportedly in the business of killing suspected drug pushers.

If it was Mar Roxas who won the May 9, 2016 presidential election, no way could the lady senator have encountered the legal problem she is facing now; they are political allies.

If it’s any consolation to de Lima, she is not the first sitting senator linked to drug lords. In 1997 during the time of President Fidel Ramos, lest we have forgotten, Sen. Tito Sotto was also a victim of trial on the pretext that he was “protecting” a drug lord named Alfredo Tiongco. But there was no better evidence to support the hearsay that Tiongco had financed the senator’s 1992 senatorial campaign.

Looking back to the 1992 presidential election, the late Miriam Defensor-Santiago hollered that Ramos had stolen the win that should have been hers had he not corrupted personnel of the Commission on Elections.

I remember an interview I had with famous lawyer Salvador Demaisip, who had voted for Jovito Salonga – instead of Ramos or Santiago – for President. In his mind, ex-Senate President Salonga could have been a better choice.

Since 1992, in Demaisip’s opinion, democratic institutions have failed to effect vital changes.

“Elections have hardly provided ways and means to improve the lot of our people,” he lamented. “Candidates offer no innovative platforms of governance to improve the people’s lives. Elections in this country are not about alternatives for result-oriented governance. They are about candidates waiting for the opportunity to wield power and make money for themselves

“In a representative democracy like ours, government should limit itself to keeping the equilibrium for governance from becoming dysfunctional, particularly in the fields of peace and order, public education, infrastructure, roads, bridges, health, tax collection, defense and foreign relations. The constituents, not the politicians, are supposed to enjoy priority in exploiting our country’s patrimony.

“The poor find no sources of income because they are victims of an educational system that has failed to train them as employable and productive citizens.”

Well, as this corner has repeatedly espoused, the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) – not the extension of high school from four to six years — should be strengthened to the point that it could fully subsidize training in technical-vocational courses and turn out skilled welders, carpenters, masons, electricians and plumbers, among others, who could fill enormous labor demand here and abroad./PN
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