‘Puno’t dulo’ 01/17/2007

AT nearly the same time early this week, two things happened in two parts of the world that are as different from each other as the earth is from the moon. One was the hanging of Saddam Hussein’s half-brother, Barzan, and the former head of Iraq’s Revolutionary Court, Awad Hamed al-Bandar, by Iraq’s new government. The other was the sacking of Pasay Mayor Wenceslao “Peewee” Trinidad and several others by the Ombudsman. The two have nothing to do with each other. But they have one thing in common: They both turn a common act of justice into an uncommon act of iniquity.

Do Barzan Hussein and Awad Hamad al-Bandar deserve to die? Possibly, as did Saddam Hussein. Barzan and Awad were, in fact, supposed to have been hanged on the same day as Hussein, but their jailers decided to give Saddam a “special day,” the better to spark jubilation from a people he had oppressed. Barzan and Awad were convicted of helping Saddam commit humongous crimes against humanity, which included the gassing to death of thousands of Kurds.

There is little doubt the condemned were bastards, but if the reports from CNN and BBC are anything to go by, jubilation is the last thing the hangings have sparked among Iraqis. Sporadic riots and widespread resentment are first. As one reporter said, if the Iraqi authorities had hoped the hangings would bring closure to Saddam, they were wrong. They merely opened up fresh wounds.

There has in fact been little jubilation in the world as well. The reason for it is easy to see. There is no doubt that the condemned were bastards, but there is no doubt as well their condemners are bigger bastards. There is no doubt that the Iraqi government is a puppet government put up by an occupation force. There is no doubt that the occupation is completely illegitimate, backed up neither by the approval of the United Nations nor by the conscience of the world. There is no justice in hanging Saddam Hussein, Barzan Hussein and Awad Hamad al-Bandar in their prison unless you also hang George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld from the nearest telephone pole, with or without their royal jewels intact.

The same is true with the ouster of Trinidad, Gov. Neil Tupas of Iloilo province, Mayor Antonio Esquivel of Jaen, Nueva Ecija, and several others. I saw Local Government Secretary Ronaldo Puno on TV on the day it happened, saying the move had nothing to do with politics, notwithstanding that the timing seemed to suck (elections are just months away) as any time was a good time to do what was right. The wonder of it was that a lightning bolt did not strike him where he stood and leave only scorched ground and a wisp of smoke in its wake. The day Puno does anything -- oh, yes, or did you really think that idea originated from the Olympian head of the ombudsman? -- that has nothing to do with politics and everything to do with principle is the day Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo shuns power forever and enters a cloister to reflect on a miserable life. Well, maybe God really works in mysterious ways. Maybe God is punishing Puno by keeping him alive. Can you think of a worse punishment?

Do Trinidad et al. deserve to be sacked? Well, unlike Saddam et al., that is the part we can’t be sure of. The current ombudsman’s capacity to see wrong is not only selective, it is misguided -- ombudsmen who get in time to be deathly afraid of being hit by a lightning bolt, like Simeon Marcelo, are suddenly afflicted by disease and resign. Maybe the condemned are guilty, though that is something that cannot be resolved by the courts, the recourse Puno proposes to the sacked officials instead of barricading themselves. At least not by Arroyo’s and Puno’s courts.
But even granting that the officials are guilty as hell, Arroyo sacking them is about as much a cause for rejoicing as Bush hanging Saddam. The deepest tragedy of this is that it turns what may very well be a common act of justice into an uncommon act of iniquity.

At the very least, it gives this already power-laden and power-mad regime another layer of power, indeed a mind-boggling one, to bludgeon this country to submission. It makes elections idiotic. Henceforth, no elected official, unless he is a senator or congressman, may ever feel safe in his office again. He can always have a crime dredged up against him (and name one official in this country, elected or otherwise, that hasn’t a skeleton in his closet). Open Puno’s and you’ll be buried in an avalanche of bones. In this country, it’s not “behind every great wealth is a great crime,” it’s “behind the pettiest ambition is the grandest malefaction.” Henceforth no elected official may be safe -- unless his name is Virgilio Garcillano or any variation thereof.

That fact alone, not quite incidentally -- that one Virgilio Garcillano lives and breathes, never mind that he will probably find any vote for “Hello” and “Garci” counted in his favor in the coming elections -- shows up the absolute malice of singling out Trinidad et al. for wrongdoing.

But far more than that, can there be any wrongdoing that is deeper, higher, heavier, blacker, deadlier, more enveloping, more crippling, more crushing, more wrong, wronger, wrongest, than what Arroyo and Puno did in the last elections? What is wrong with this government’s sacking of Trinidad et al., independently of whether they deserve it or not, is exactly the same thing that was wrong with this government’s attempted sacking of Makati City Mayor Jejomar Binay last year. It is that people who have no right to be there have the gall to sit in judgment over people who have every right to be there. Trinidad et al. may have betrayed the public trust, but the people who are ousting them never had the public trust at all.

That’s the "puno’t dulo," the source and wellspring, of all that’s wrong in this country.

http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/columns/view_article.php?article_id=43827