Opposition October 18, 2006

AS I write this, the official goons of Malacañang, also called the Philippine National Police, are swarming all over Makati City Hall trying to pry Makati Mayor Jejomar Binay loose from his office. They are serving the order issued by the Department of Interior and Local Government suspending him for hiring ghost employees, something that is allegedly costing Makati taxpayers millions of pesos. Binay has holed up in hisoffice, and so far the scene reads like a standoff. The police do not seem inclined to storm in and haul him out, and Binay seems determined to stay where he is. How this thing will unravel, we'll know soon enough.

An interior undersecretary who spoke on TV said in unctuous tones that this wasn't a case of harassment, this was a case of principle. It didn't matter that Binay was quite a thorn on Malacañang's side, it was simply that he had done something wrong. This was simply a case of crime and punishment. You commit a crime, you get punished.

Has Binay really been hiring ghost employees? I don't know. I leave that to the courts to determine. But what makes this effort to yank Binay out of his chair breathtakingly odious is the hypocrisy suffusing it. It is not unlike a judge who has managed to own a row of mansions and a congregation of mistresses from extorting money from litigants sentencing a man who has stolen a loaf of pan de sal to life imprisonment. The injustice is that monumental.

Yes, that is the exact equivalent of Malacañang's effort to oust Binay as mayor of Makati, a horrendously corrupt judge sentencing a petty thief to life imprisonment. No, more than imprisonment, to lethal injection. You grant that Binay hired ghost employees -- and that takes some granting, certainly Ronaldo Puno's Department of Interior and Local Government (DILG) is the last entity to judge that, since Puno himself has much toanswer for -- that is still petty thievery compared with what the very head of this government has done. This is the kind of injustice that cries out to heaven for lightning and to the gallery for jeering.

At the very least, what's wrong with it is that Binay is an elected official while Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who is the source of this scourge, is not. Binay got the votes, and despite grumbling by his rivals about his use of force and money, they grant that he pretty much won the elections. Arroyo's opponents do not just grumble, they show proof she stole the electoral returns in Tawi-Tawi and other places. That is quite apart from the damning piece of evidence called the "Hello, Garci" tape. Binay is not the first person this government has ousted from office. The fact that this government can even remotely contemplate it, let alone actually do it, is a testament to the ruthlessness it is capable of. There are no limits to where it will go. There is no embarrassment it will not brook.

At the very most, what is Binay's crime compared with Arroyo's? Binay hired ghost employees? Let us grant that that is so. But what is that compared to counting ghost votes? Binay stole millions from the taxpayers, money that could have gone to various services? Let us grant that that is so. But what is that compared to stealing the electoral will, which could have gone to installing a rightful president, one the people can trust to serve them? Binay robbed the residents of Makati of their well-being, thereby betraying public trust? Let us grant that that is so. But what is that compared to robbing this country of its soul, razing down the very foundations of democracy, its chief pillar being a duly elected leader, and murdering this country's future, quite apart from a good portion ofits population?

You commit a crime you get punished? Why hasn't Arroyo been punished? Why is it the easiest thing for the DILG to oust an elected mayor for a presumed malfeasance and the hardest thing in the world for Congress to impeach an unelected president for a patent atrocity?

In fact, the suspension of Binay, as of the other elected officials of Metro Manila, is just part of a bigger atrocity government is wreaking on this country today. The pattern is for government to punish selectively those people it doesn't like who are guilty of committing the very crimes it is guilty of, indeed far more so.

Arroyo spawned the mother of all cheating in this country when she called up Garci demanding to win by a million votes, yet she deigns -- no, dares -- to interfere in the nursing exams to ferret out the cheaters there. Arroyo mounted a coup upon this country by stealing the vote, which is as much a seizure of power as the forcible acquisition of it by troops and tanks, and propped it up with no small help from friends in the militaryand police and Joe de V's House of Representatives, with coercion and guile. Yet she deigns -- no, dares -- accuse Dodong Nemenzo et al. of fomenting, or indeed joining, a revolt against her. And Arroyo has never won a presidential election but remains in Malacañang notwithstanding survey after survey that says the people do not like her or want her. Yet now she deigns -- no, dares -- boot elected officials from their rightfuloffice.

At the very least, what this does for her is to allow her to remove any opposition from the horizon -- especially with elections down the corner. But far more than that, far more subtly but weightily, what this does for her is to deodorize her, to make it appear by the very righteousness or cheekiness or brazenness with which she is doing these things that she could not possibly be guilty of the crimes she means to correct. That she could not possibly be a cheater, that she could not possibly be a coup plotter, that she could not possibly be a usurper. Evil riots, the good are damned and the malefactors are king -- or queen.

We do not protest the monstrosity in Makati with every nerve of our being, as though we are being robbed of breath itself, heaven help us. Nothing else can.

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