The format and nature of congressional hearings are booby-trapped for utter comedy. A Senate hearing is particularly vulnerable to outbursts of uncontrollable laughter.
That is especially the case in this hearing on the flustered coup attempt.
To begin with, congressional hearings are basically free-fire sessions. For optimal media interest, legislators tend to call in more "resource persons" than is necessary. Every senator would want his prove he is worth his pay by grandstanding.
Multiple interrogators confronting multiple "resource persons." In and of itself, that is a formula for chaos. There is no rhyme and reason, no order and sequence to speak of. Each honorable senator is a republic unto himself, free to grind his axes in plain public view, pursue the most trivial curiosity or use the forum to advance a partisan agenda or clear one’s name.
In the case of the hearing on the Oakwood incident, the Senate finds itself in a delicate situation.
One senator, Gregorio Honasan, is implicated as godfather, adviser and probably double-crosser of the mutineers. Another senator, Luisa Ejercito, is suspect since vehicles used in the mutiny are traceable to her doorstep. Two other senators, Rodolfo Biazon and Vicente Sotto, materialized at the site of the mutiny along with Honasan and nearly tripped up the negotiations effort of government.
Independent of whatever evidence may stand up to judicial scrutiny, at least four of the senators may be said to have stood too close to the event to make it uncomfortable, to say the least, for them to sit as jurors and interrogators in a hearing about an event that threatened to very life of the constitutional order.
The Senate, it must be said, has every right to conduct an inquiry into the Oakwood incident. But prudence might have dictated that they postpone doing this until the dust has settled and the Feliciano Commission has done its job.
Fortunately, the Feliciano Commission had first crack at hearing out the leaders of the mutiny last Wednesday. That, at least, gave the public a view of what a disciplined proceeding looks like. That, at least, might have constrained the honorable senators to behave, avoid grandstanding and temper their own process to approximate the parameters of sober inquiry.
Nevertheless, that did not stop the comedy from seeping in. That did not mitigate public disgust for the quality of the present Senate.
At one particularly low point, Senator Sotto, confronted with the claim that the "Oplan Greenbase" document was fake, demanded he be presented the original.
He must have had in mind fake Levi’s jeans or fake VCDs. Fake is Taglish for counterfeit.
Secretary Angelo Reyes, managing a straight face and mustering all the politeness he had in him, informed the senator that fake did not mean duplicate.
The Greenbase document is a complete fabrication. That is obvious on its face. It is a crude piece of black propaganda, probably manufactured by the same dark forces behind the coup attempt.
Senator Loi Ejercito, expectedly, used the Senate hearing to clear herself of involvement in the coup attempt. That was inappropriate. She was in a clear conflict-of-interest situation, using her position of power and privilege to preempt judicial determination of her possible involvement.
But what the heck, the entire Senate hearing was tainted from the very start by the suspected involvement of Senator Honasan in this latest coup maneuver. That chamber is now seen as behaving like any old boys’ club, circling wagons to protect one of their own.
The real spectacle, however, is not the Senate shooting itself in the foot. The real spectacles are the mutineers themselves.
When military authorities, for reasons of prudence and national security, prevented the public exposure of the lead plotters of the mutiny, lawyers for the rebel soldiers demanded they day in the limelight.
But the limelight has been harsh to the boys from the barracks.
Before the Feliciano Commission, the rebels comported themselves way below the standard for officers and gentlemen. They lied blatantly, performed incoherently, used abusive language and, all in all, demonstrated a fatal mixture of arrogance and stupidity.
They made accusations they could not substantiate. They attempted to grandstand, without the grammatical and rhetorical skills of sustain the act. They withered under the unforgiving questioning of superior minds seeking to ferret out the truth.
At the less disciplined Senate session, the mutineers just cracked under the glare.
Lt. Trillanes, unable to explain discrepancies in his testimony and oddities in his lifestyle, resorted to cuss words before the Senators. He did not have to do that. He and his fellow plotters are insulting everyone’s with the story they are trying to weave.
With their clients performing badly under the glare of transparent inquiries, the lawyers for the rebels now rue the fact that they demanded media time these spoiled brats. They are now pleading that the Feliciano Commission for a break in the inquiry – perhaps to give their clients time to better memorize their scripts.
But Pandora’s Box has been opened.
The self-appointed messiahs who chose to terrorize the nation in their self-styled war against corruption now have difficulty convincing us that they are themselves not corruption with a younger face. Those who so casually accuse everyone else, the entire corps of generals included, of corrupt practices, could not stand credibly in the light of transparent processes.
In the end, their testimonies and their claims wilt in the light of day. That happens because these testimonies and these claims are contrived.
They were contrived precisely to conceal the truth about this adventure. What they set out to do was a power grab motivated by naked ambition. The true beneficiaries of this power grab will soon be unmasked.
Meanwhile, the vain effort to conceal the truth will bring forth much hilarity.
ABS-CBN’s Frankie Evangelista put it well, when he began describing the actual mutiny as the Awkward Incident.