Only Senators Ramon Revilla and Tito Sotto, as far as we can keep track, have not said anything at the public hearing being conducted by the Senate blue ribbon and justice committees into a jueteng scandal linking President Estrada.
It could happen that all senators who have made some judgmental statements or have asked loaded questions during the hearings would either inhibit themselves or be disqualified from sitting to judge President Estrada when the time comes.
It would be something to see the accused Erap Estrada in a reunion of sorts with his showbiz pals Ramon Revilla and Tito Sotto during the impeachment trial.
She was originally expected to testify yesterday before the Senate joint committee hearings co-chaired by Senators Nene Pimentel and Rene Cayetano. But, in a familiar routine, the witness suddenly ended up hidden in a hospital room.
Let’s all pray for her to have the strength to tell the truth and nothing but. As this vital witness testifies, bless her. Keep praying for her and projecting a steady stream of truthful statements from her lips.
Sen. Miriam Santiago, for one, is questioning the propriety of the inquiry occasionally touching on accusations against President Estrada while impeachment charges are being investigated in the House.
But Senator Pimentel, blue ribbon committee chairman, maintains that their inquiry into the jueteng payola scandal is not a trial of President Estrada but is a process in aid of legislation.
This line must be maintained despite the unfortunate antics of some hyper senators who browbeat witnesses, who say things not to their liking or who give derogatory information about persons close to the senators.
The Senate must hold the in-aid-of-legislation line, otherwise the entire system of legislative inquiries would collapse.
The House processing of the charges against President Estrada is, if we may draw a parallel, only in the investigation stage. The House functions much like a prosecutor or fiscal who first investigates to look for prima facie evidence, while the Senate acts as the judge or jury when the charges are officially elevated to it by the House.
At this point, no one knows if the House would forward or file the charges in the Senate. Further, nobody knows if jueteng payola – the subject of the Senate inquiry – would be in the bill of particulars to be forwarded to the Senate.
With that, the Senate has no reason at this stage to speculate and gag itself on the jueteng payola scandal.
We know that some senators burn incense before Malacañang, some hang around the presidential floating casino to earn some balato, some look upon Erap Estrada as a god, but still . . . Thou shalt not take the name of Erap Estrada in vain?
Some senators appear to be taking their being the President’s lawyer too seriously.
Senate President Franklin Drilon, sir, what’s happening to the once venerable Senate?
They can relax and just let the democratic process take its due course. Anyway, truth will prevail in the end, di po ba, if we do not tamper with the process.
If Erap is indeed innocent, there is no need to destroy evidence, to stubborn witneses, to tell lies, or to threaten media. If Erap is innocent, Malacañang’s main concern should be to ensure a fast, free flow of information.
The President’s attorneys among the senators should move to expedite the inquiry, not to derail it. They should not be afraid of the truth – if indeed their friend and benefactor Erap is innocent.
The most common advice was to reinstall Communicator to overwrite any error or bad file. Some went farther back and suggested that we reinstall our Windows operating system since there might be some corrupted registry files. There was one reader, only one, who said we better reformat our hard disk!
After assessing the pile of advice, we first installed Communicator 4.75, wanting it to overwrite the malfunctioning 4.7 and thereby correct the errors. It did not. Messenger still refused to open. Next, we installed 4.75 clean in another location in drive C:, but its Messenger also refused to open. However, its Navigator, as in the 4.7, worked normally.
Terrified by the task of backupping files, software and drivers whose CDs we no longer have, we hesitated reinstalling Windows.
We let one day pass to clear our head, meantime shifting to our existing Eudora v.5 as alternate e-mail tool. Facing the problem again, we uninstalled Communicator 4.7 and Communicator 4.75 (both appeared in the Add/Remove Programs window in the Control Panel).
Then we went to Windows Explorer to delete whatever files or debris left after the uninstallation. After the cleanup, we installed 4.75 in the old (now empty) Netscape folder.
We went to Windows Explorer to look at 4.75. There was no User folder! We looked for the old User folder that we saved earlier in another part of the C drive and dropped it into the Netscape folder.
Then we went to Netscape’s Utilities to check on our old user profiles (we’re using three different profiles), deleted the existing profiles and recreated them.
Back to Navigator (deliberately avoiding Messenger), we went to Preferences and made sure the right entries were made for each user profile. And we made sure the paths leading to the different user folders and mail folders were correct.
While doing all this, we kept logging off and on, because we were working on three user profiles.
We were back to business – for a while. Tinkering with the Preferences to refine them, we were once confronted with a box asking three questions one of which asked if we wanted to make Netscape our default mail facility.
We answered No (unchecked the question), and when we went to Messenger, it refused to open.
It seemed Netscape did not like our not choosing it as the default mail tool and was, in a manner of speaking, jealous of theEudora5 also installed in the machine. So we went back to the question and checked the box to say that Netscape was to be our default mail tool.
We went to Messenger again, and it opened. Question: Was all that trouble caused by our giving the wrong answer to the email-default question?