Chutzpah

Posted on June 30, 2014 Updated on June 30, 2014

By Ronald Roy

It’s understandable that for high-profile actor-politicians, nothing is more humiliating than being arrested, handcuffed, brought inside a patrol car with head being shoved into it by a strong hand, fingerprinted, made to pose for mugshots, then locked up in a high-security cell like a “common criminal”.

And the ironic humiliation is devastating for senators, particularly Sen. Bong “Pogi” Revilla and Sen. Jinggoy “Sexy” Estrada, top cinema action stars who not only play roles risking life and limb in heroic defense of the oppressed poor, but were also 2016’s top contenders for president and vice president, respectively, until they were implicated in the scandalous pork barrel scam.

It’s pretty certain that it was Revilla’s bruised pride that made him design and fund his voluntary surrender cum theatrics and fanfare, his egotistical tact fixated on redeeming a tarnished image or worse: delusively reliving his glory days with captive voters with an announcement he might seek the presidency in 2016 . Love him or hate him, you just have to admire the guy’s chutzpah — an attribute that shows that his die-hard fans had elected an unfit person into the senate.

But, well, there’s nothing in the law that prevents Pogi from becoming the first prisoner to run the affairs of our country as its president. After all, he’s still presumed innocent until proven guilty, ‘di ba? That way, he gets to be the first president to pardon himself — hahaha — ‘di ba? But wait, this scenario is not as loony and farfetched as it looks! Seriously, with crazy votes snowballing for him and P-Noy’s popularity steadily vanishing, the indictee’s dream may yet come true!

Reform comes best from the worst of misfortunes like Ondoy’s havoc, Yolanda’s wrath, bloody revolutions, and the Lord’s crucifixion. Yes, no less than the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth was imposed by his Father to reform a sinful world; so, if it takes a catastrophic Revilla presidency to wipe out this generation, then by all means let’s welcome the opportunity to warn the next generation that it will not pay to vote clowns and showbiz “celebs” into public office.

But what if, by some celestial miracle, the Revilla presidency turns out to be a smash hit?! Then, jolly by golly wow, we’ll have to respect the so-called vox populi despite its stupidity, and let all the laugh be on me and other Pogi-bashers!! After all, Dimas the thief and Cupertino the dullard were not barred from becoming saints.

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Over a month ago, scuttlebutt had it that, by a vote of 8 to 6, the Supreme Court had thumbed down as unconstitutional the Disbursement Acceleration Program, or DAP, for short, also derisively taken to stand for Drilon, Abad and P-Noy. Shortly after that, rumor circulated that alleged pork barrel brains Janet Lim Napoles had advanced the sums needed to be granted to those senator-judges who had voted to convict then impeachment respondent Chief Justice Renato C. Corona, reimbursable from the DAP fund, which incidentally has come to be known as President Noynoy’s discretionary kitty.

It taxes the imagination to contrive a refutation that the president — who incidentally was the knowledgeable Chair of the Budget Committee when he was a solon — had nothing to do with the DAP’s creation, an act in flagrant violation of the constitution’s express and unequivocal mandate that only Congress can appropriate funds for the operations of government. He adamantly remains in denial mode, although his camp once posited that the DAP’s constitutionality issue had become moot and academic since they had already stopped using the fund. What??? “You cannot arrest me now because I already stopped killing people last year”???

In fairness to Drilon, it may be doubted that he is a co-inventor of the DAP. But, holy macaroni, the heinous culpability of P-Noy and Abad here is as manifest as Satan’s horns, tail and hooves!! It’s an open-and-shut case. No ifs or buts about it, they are both answerable to all Filipinos this very instant!! Huh??? The high tribunal has scrapped, back-burnered or revised its 8 – 6 resolution for hundreds of millions of reasons???

Sorry, but I don’t buy that. These robed men and women of the high tribunal are made of honorable stuff. They are learned and incorruptible. Call me naive, but I prefer to laze in a comfort zone seeing them that way. On the other hand, P-Noy will be hard-pressed to deny that he had made an attempt to cross government officials’ palms with silver. And this is explained by two public perceptions: his notorious temerity for bribing officials, like Corona’s impeachment senator-judges, and his visceral disdain for minority leaders.

Hmmm…who can be certain that the president’s downfall isn’t now being foretold by his own unmitigated chutzpah?