EDITORIAL – This silence isn’t golden

Elections Commissioner Virgilio Garcillano is missing, and now Public Works Secretary Hermogenes Ebdane Jr. is also largely incommunicado. They must be taking their cue from their boss the President, who has kept her mouth shut on tapped mobile conversations allegedly between her and Garcillano.

Silence can be golden, but it can also be perceived as an admission of guilt. People tend to expect passionate denial from an innocent person whose integrity has been maligned. For an election officer, what can be a worse accusation than connivance in poll fraud? The typical reaction of a public official in this country, when faced with such a serious accusation, is to call a press conference immediately and deny the story. Libel and slander suits follow days later.

Instead we have not heard a peep from Garcillano, even when the pe-riod lapsed for his reappointment to the Commission on Elections. And instead there were stories from the opposition that he had left through the southern backdoor for Kota Kinabalu in Malaysia, taking a private plane with Ebdane as escort.

Ebdane, if the stories were false, should have also come out immediately to deny them. He made a lame denial in one radio interview but for the most part has dropped out of sight, leaving the public to believe the worst of his boss. It does not help that Ebdane is known to be one of the most trusted aides of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, having been by her side since the turbulent months that culminated in the second people power revolt in January 2001.

If all the accusations about the alleged wiretapped conversations are false, we should have heard vehement denials many days ago. Instead everyone implicated in the scandal is behaving like a child feigning innocence even after being caught with his hand in the cookie jar.

This could all be a matter of perception, and perhaps we should wait until the President deems it "the appropriate time" to comment on the scandal. The longer the silence of those implicated in this controversy, however, the more the perceptions of guilt are reinforced. Unseen, unheard, Garcillano and the others tagged in this scandal are allowing enemies of the administration to give only their side of the story.