Siege ring moves on Lacson: The American hand / The Osmeña filibuster

This writer had long suspected – and now I am almost sure – that a powerful, shadow-limned, awesome cluster of US intelligence agencies and organizations had now Sen. Panfilo Lacson in their gunsight. Now they are beginning to close in. With barrels blazing. I am talking figuratively, of course. Col. Victor Corpus of ISAFP (Intelligence Service, Armed Forces of the Philippines) has done his part of the job. remember, US and Philippine military intelligence agencies are closely knit. I wouldn’t be surprised at all if we eventually find out Uncle Sam’s super sleuths are the ones actually calling the shots.

I implied as much in my last column and now I have more to go on. And much more will be forthcoming.

The office of Rep. Dana Rorabacher, a US congressman who specializes on the Philippines and security affairs among others just announced the US government was "seriously investigating" the suspected involvement of Senator Lacson in laundering hundreds of millions of dollars in American banks. Al Santoli, senior national security and foreign policy adviser to Rorabacher additionally said there were "very real incidents" that triggered the probe in Lacson’s – and regardez! – Joseph Estrada’s alleged money-laundering activities in the US.

Then Santoli delivers his sockdolager. It is the "obligation" of US law enforcement agencies to investigate, and if the evidence warrants, to "prosecute" those suspected of breaking international laws. The key word is prosecute. Given the extradition treaty between the US and the Philippines, it is just possible, assuming "the evidence warrants," that Estrada and Lacson can be tried in US courts and there sentenced by judges and the jury system to HARSH prison terms.

Okay, so the whole thing is warming up. There is the additional confirmed report that Alice Lacson, reported wife of the senator, has an account in the Bank of America, Van Nuys Branch, California. The amount, of course, is not mentioned. The Corpus report listed the amount as $190 million. The total amount mentioned in this money-laundering melodrama is $722 million. The Marcoses didn’t have that much in Swiss and other secret bank deposits after eight years of power.

Look at Lacson now. Observe. The man is staggered by all these charges and accusations. Normally elusive, nimble and unflappable, he has been dealt a crushing left hook to the mandible. The groggy boxer does what he has to do, pretend he has not been hurt, releases a flurry of punches hitting nothing, smiling a silly smile – seeking to get his wind back, stop the chattering of his knees.

Lacson and his supporters do not see the huge American shadow at all.

All they see is Victor Corpus. So the reputation of the colonel has to be destroyed at all costs. His past as an NPA guerrilla has to be resurrected. He has to be dirtied, sullied and vilified, fed to the sharks. Accused of being a superkiller himself, Lacson charges Corpus with having killed many people, including soldiers and police while he was with the NPA. Lacson conveniently forgets Corpus was arrested, tried, convicted, spent about ten years in jail. He has paid his debt to society, gone back to the straight and narrow path. And we Filipinos must be proud and honored men like him – who in his youth too had the courage of his convictions and was willing to die for them – continue to serve the republic.

I should know whereof I speak. Fifty years ago (My God! How time has flown!) I was a member of the revolutionary Left. I, too, was ready to die for the cause until eventually I found out Marxism-Leninism was a big, big hoax, a page out of the Bible, dirtied and bastardized by human hands claiming to hold the entire truth through the hocus-pocus of dialectical materialism. I was arrested, detained, paid the price of my youthful indiscretions and whenever anybody brings out that part of my past again – of course, with malice aforethought – I invariably reply: "When at the age of 20 to 30, you are not a communist, you do not have a heart. Between the age of 30 to 40, you are not a socialist, you do not have a soul. After the age of 40, if you are not a capitalist, you have no goddam brains." I learned that as a political science student in Paris.

So there. In between – mirabile dictu! – the Roman Catholic church has seen it fit to confer many awards on me, including a scrolled honor in 1997 as an "outstanding Catholic writer." And I have breakfasted often with Jaime Cardinal Sin who knows my past inside and out.

The gauntlet has already gathered to bring Lacson down as it would an intruding and vicious polar bear.

As we had previously explained, money-laundering is a dagger pointed at the heart of America. This is because the source of these billions cover the gamut of high international crime particularly drug trafficking, illegal arms sale, smuggling, prostitution rings, embezzlement, insider trading, computer fraud schemes and others. The US government has gone to war against drug syndicates. And I mean war. I have read some US intelligence reports to the effect that if America cannot win this war against drugs, then like ancient Rome, it would eventually implode from within and collapse from sloth, vice, avarice, degradation and moral decay.

And as I have written earlier, US intelligence sleuths had zeroed in on Lacson since three years ago, because their experience with the Medellin cartel in Colombia convinced them the Philippines was going the same way – a major transit point for drugs enroute to the US mainland.

The first to fall was disgraced President Joseph Estrada. Although he fell, not because of American interference or aid (their bases Clark and Subic had already been expelled), but because of People Power. But US intelligence had Estrada long logged in its index expurgatorius on drugs, so highly informed sources tell me. But they couldn’t move against him at the time because Erap was a useful foil in forging the US-Philippines Visiting Forces Agreement. The US needed the Philippines in its geo-political strategy against China, which was then beginning to emerge as America’s main strategic adversary if not enemy.

Estrada and Lacson, I believe, never imagined for one moment – if indeed both were involved in the drug traffic – that they could come up against an America already sharpening its tools against an international drug traffic they were more scared of than Russia’s International Ballistic Missiles. And what is worse is that neither – again assuming concrete proof emerges both are guilty of money-laundering – can bribe US agencies and media as they can presumably bribe judges, justices, media all the way to some justices in the Supreme Court in the Philippines.

Vanitas vanitatum, omnia vanitus! Nietzsche had the best definition of vanity: ‘The most vulnerable and yet the most unconquerable of things is human vanity; nay, though being wounded its strength increases and can grow to giant proportions." Like eyeing the presidency in the year 2004.

"Out, out, brief candle!" Shakespeare wrote. But the suspicion is that Estrada and Lacson had many candles in the dark, burned their candles at both ends. Ah, even the greatest plans of mice and men can go awry! What doth it profit a man if he gains the whole world but loses his soul?

For all we know, US courts may act faster on these money-laundering charges than our own Sandiganbayan on the plunder-perjury cases against Erap Estrada. If Sandiganbayan Presiding Justice Francis Garchitorena is moving at all, it is with the speed of a tortoise bent over with stomach ache, sciatica and sclerosis. Let’s get going, Francis. Ugly rumors are already swarming in your direction. Whenever any comparison is made between you and Supreme Court Chief Justice Hilario Davide, he fills a well while you hardly fill a thimble.

Okay, Senate? You ladies, and gentlemen of this august chamber, do your job. The whole nation awaits your investigation of Panfilo Lacson with bated breath.

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A word before we close. I am repelled by the sight of Senator Serge Osmeña III engaged in a disgusting filibuster and reportedly saying: "I will have sex on the floor if I have to." To boot, he would even pee and defecate on the floor. His plaint is that the Senate majority is "stepping on the minority." So that’s it? More particularly, he resents the grant of committee chairmanships to Senate President Pro Tempore Manuel Villar and Majority Floor Leader Loren Legarda. Serge says this is "tyrannical’ even if it has been practiced and accepted by the upper chamber in the past.

For a man who aspires to the presidency in 2004, Serge’s conduct is unconscionable.

I had learned to respect him during the Senate impeachment trial when he took a stand against Joseph Estrada and braved the waters even when they began to swirl up to his waist. This man has courage and integrity, I told myself. Now, in my view, Serge Osmeña III is just an ordinary tradpol.