The Senate syndrome / Xmas furlough for Erap? / Espinosa needs help

All the suspicions we harbored about today’s Senate being an Old Boys’ Club rang true in just one photo. There it was, five-column wide on the front page of the Philippine STAR Wednesday. It was a photo that assaulted the eye, corrugated the mind, trapped the shins, and made you wonder if the Senate has any conscience or sense of propriety at all. It was the birthday of Senate Minority Leader Aquilino (Nene) Pimentel, a lark of a photo. It showed the birthday celebrant whooping it up atop a shoe-shine chair. Shining his shoes were Senate President Franklin Drilon and Sen. Joker Arroyo, as odd a pair as mine eyes have ever seen in a lifetime of journalism, on their knees – to shine shoes. Everybody was giving out with the hee-haw and the har har. Others in photo were Senators Blas Ople, Juan Flavier and Bing Pimentel.

All right, they were having fun so why be such a killjoy, you will say. Boys will be boys and senators will be senators and hyenas in the night will be hyenas in the night. Right?

I don’t know. Maybe I’m getting old. Maybe it requires adjusting to the times for an aging codger like me. But whatever you say, that photo exactly depicted what the Philippine Senate is today, snitches when they want to be snitches, clowns when they want to be clowns, old fools when they want to be old fools, and always, always, a rollicking band of phony patriots who by some uncanny twist and turn of fate, managed to get elected to what was once the loftiest citadel in Philippine politics.

Looking back, Claro Recto would never debase his Senate calling by allowing his shoes to be shined thusly even if it was his birthday. Even if it was all for fun. I couldn’t see Sen. Jose P. Laurel (that old fiery and feisty nationalist) bowing from his waist to polish the shoes of a fellow senator. My memory of Senators Recto and Laurel had them up there, worthy of membership in the Roman Forum and the House of Lords of yore. They would stand up, tilt their chins like the prow of a Grecian warship, and emit oratory of the kind that stills and stuns the audience and shatters crystal windows. And they were men of unassailable integrity, masters of political prose as they were sculptors of the minds of Filipinos who worshipped them.

Lorenzo Sumulong? No, he knew his place in the Senate, clutching bolts of lightning in his hands as he dreamed of and fought for independence from America. A Manuel Quezon in the Senate would be the supreme musketeer, D’Artagnan, a lover of women, yes, but he had Gothic arches for patriotism that loved the Philippines much, much more. Shine shoes? He would have answered: When God spun the wheels of creation, he saw to it there would be shoeshine boys, as there would be captains of industry, as there would be senators holding up the skies. Sergio Osmeña was the superb political aristocrat who would not be fiddling around the Senate with a shoeshine brush. He had honesty writ on his face and political wisdom tattooed all over his body.

Now, listen. That old Senate is no more. They quested for glory and glory was there for the taking. But more than anything else, they knew what proper decorum was, they knew the Senate was not a place for hi-jinks, but a political basilica that could never shelter criminals and cutthroats. Theirs was not an Old Boys’ Club but a gathering of 24 individuals whose heart beat for the nation and the nation alone. There was never a Loi Ejercito among them or a Panfilo Lacson or a Tessie Aquino Oreta. They would have been horrified. Theirs was the aristocracy of the intellect, each a Prussian solon of the age of Bismarck who could suffer a sword slash on his cheek and not flinch at all. They never clowned or bent a pretzel to get a laugh.

Today, the Senate quibbles interminably on trivia and often is a Ship of Fools. The Senate of yore sailed by the stars.

* * *

There was a time I could never give Joseph Estrada the benefit of any doubt. For me and for many others in and outside of media, the man was guilty, his presidency a disgrace, the example he set for the youth a shame, his profligacy an international embarrassment, his every breath a pox on the elegant Palace by the river. Today? I pity him. Even as I write this piece, I look at a picture of the former president in a courtroom. The face broods. It is a face that has gone into slow motion, contemplative mostly, like a polar bear in a cage looking wistfully at snow-capped mountains in the distance.

Mr. Estrada has not yet completely resigned himself to his fate, that of a prisoner charged with capital crimes, unable to post bail. His lawyers, earlier optimistic time and tide would snatch Erap from his predicament by clever and shyster lawyering, a hundred motions to delay or dismiss the plunder case against him and still counting, are no longer as arrogant and dismissive as they used to be. The Supreme Court jerked them back to reality by upholding the constitutionality of the plunder law. The vote 10-3-1, was an ironball descending on scrap metal.

They of course can still delay, delay, delay. Justice Anacleto Badoy unwittingly has snagged the proceedings with his health frequently going dipsy-doo (that ambulance ride was a lulu). But all that hasn’t done any good for Joseph Estrada. He is in a vise and feels it, the pleasures of the outside world denied him. Not being a religious man, he cannot seek comfort or solace in spirituality. So there is no tug from inside, no Christ nailed on the cross, no apparition of the Virgin Mary, no rosary on which to bleed out the sins of his colorful and prodigal past. The tug is from outsde, what he misses, his drinking buddies, the carousals, and – yes – his women who treated him like a god. Without all that, he is a tiger whale deprived of the ocean deep.

Now Mr. Estrada wants out during the Christmas holidays. He pleads for a furlough just this once and just this time. He wants the hearth of home at Greenhills, the joys of the Yuletide, the froth and the furbelow that only Christmas brings, the wide sweep of his many families, a huge pile of presents to be unwrapped beside the Christmas tree, the children and grandchildren yelping and yahooing in delight.

But the odds are against him. How about the tens of thousands other prisoners in so many jails all over the Philippines? They too are in terrible need of their families. And their plight is even worse. They languish in grim jails with prison bards. For years they have suffered and languished, the majority unable to get medical help for injuries or diseases that are much worse. Aren’t they too entitled for the generosity that Erap seeks from the government? Do not our laws mandate that all men are equal? And our Scriptures clear as a lodestar that before God, no man is superior to the other?

Would we set aside all this simply because Joseph Estrada was once a president? So what, if he hasn’t been convicted yet? He is charged with plunder, a crime rendered even more heinous because he committed this or was alleged to have committed this after swearing to God and man when he took his oath of office. The Constitution of his office began with the preamble to "promote the common good, conserve and develop our patrimony and secure to ourselves and our posterity the blessings of independence and democracy under the rule of law and a regime of truth, justice, freedom, love, equality, and peace." So there.

No, Estrada cannot be given this Christmas furlough he seeks.

* * *

The inimitable and ubiquitous Hermie Rivera, the Philippines version of Nick the Greek, has a row to hoe. Left out for many years, Hermie has again taken over the ring fortunes of Luisito Espinosa who was jobbed in the amount of $150,000, the purse they did not pay him when he successfully defended his WBC world featherweight title last December 6, 1997 in Koronadal, South Cotabato. Espinosa through Hermie has filed civil and criminal suits against ex-governor Larry de Pedro, Rod Nazario and Lito Mondejar, promoters of the fight. In a letter to WBC president Jose Sulaiman, Hermie said he was amending the complaint to include Luisito’s former manager Joe Koizumi, former Games and Amusement Board chairman Dominador Cepeda.

In a letter to President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo last June 1, 2001, Luisito sought Malacañang succor, saying "I have never lost focus in representing the Filipino people . . . Please note, I was the first Filipino to win the WBA bantamweight title . . . I am the only Filipino boxer who has defended the featherweight crown a record seven times. Currently, I am seeking to regain my crown under the auspices of my friend and manager Emmanuel Rivera" (son of Hermie).

In any language, $150,000 is a lot of money. In these days of crunching economic crisis, it is a whopping fortune. If anybody can turn the tide and succeed in helping Luisito, it is Hermie Rivera, who knows the world of professional fist-fighting just as good as anybody else. This guy Hermie is fistiana’s Joe de Venecia. He can sell coal to Newcastle, a freezer to Eskimos. This column hopes he succeeds. Luisito is one of the finest ring gladiators to bring glory to the Philippines, humble, modest, self-effacing who would still be a world chmpion today except that bad luck dogged him for sometime. With Hermie back, and Malacañang helping, Lindol can be Lindol again.