Lacson, Pimentel, Estrada and Madrigal should also resign

My, how the tables have turned. Now it can be told that those who sounded like candidates for sainthood in their moral pontifications, people like Senators Panfilo Lacson, Aquilino Pimentel, Jinggoy Estrada and Jamby Madrigal, do not come to the table exactly with clean hands.

Richard Garcia, a witness in the Senate inquiry into the illegal numbers game called jueteng who confessed to have been a bagman in the bribery of government and police officials, is now saying these senators have used him to implicate members of the First Family in the payoffs.

Normally, prudence dictates that accusations such as these, spat from the mouth of people of dubious character, have to be taken with a fair amount of salt. In other words, it is almost automatic that the veracity of their claims be first checked, and their motives determined.

But as they say, what is good for the goose is good for the gander. Thus, the same legal and moral standards that these senators applied in using the testimony of Garcia as a battering ram against President Arroyo can now be applied in his new statements against these senators.

If previously Lacson, Pimentel, Estrada and Madrigal were satisfied by the credibility of Garcia for him to be used as a witness against Arroyo in the Senate hearing, it would look stupid for them to suddenly find him not credible now that he has turned the gun on them.

And since the credibility of Lacson, Pimentel, Estrada and Madrigal are consequently now under very serious doubt, isn't it the prudent thing to do for these senators to either inhibit themselves forever from the hearing or, better yet, call for the termination of the inquiry?

The Senate inquiry cannot be considered as anything but a sham now that at least four of its members (there could be more) have been shown to have tampered with Garcia as a witness, according to Garcia himself.

But if we have to really push the envelope, Lacson, Pimentel, Estrada and Madrigal should also resign as senators, in the same manner that they called for the resignation of Arroyo, for compromising the integrity of a Senate inquiry through manipulation of a witness.

If Lacson, Pimentel, Estrada and Madrigal have the gall to stick to their offices and not resign, despite having been exposed as having manipulated a person to bear false witness in the course of an official legislative function, then they should just shut up.

At the very least, they are no better than the person against whom they are directing all the firepower they can muster with their vast resources to unseat and topple, presumably for interests so vested they are willing to sacrifice the peace of an entire nation.

What about Archbishop Oscar Cruz, to whom Garcia was delivered by Lacson as a witness? Having been clearly used in a sham, he should, at the very least, henceforth shut his provocative and accusing mouth up and forever keep his peace.

This new twist also brings a million dollar question waving before the faces of the allies of these four senators, people like Reps. Francis Escudero, Alan Peter Cayetano and Imee Marcos. How do you plead?

Are Escudero, Cayetano and Marcos as deep into the same vile hypocrisy as the four senatorial candidates for sainthood or have they been merely used as unwitting actors in a sham? Oh, we correct ourselves. Actors, maybe, but never unwitting.

No, we correct ourselves further. Escudero and Cayetano, perhaps by some stretch of condescending imagination, can be manipulated as actors. But Marcos? Never. She is too steeped in the same recurring bad dream she pretends to now suffer. A manipulator cannot be manipulated.

So what do we do now? The unmasking has begun. The accusers are themselves accused. Their hypocrisies have been laid bare. The bluff of the kettles have been called by the pots. The real circus has begun, and the nation is paying through its teeth for it and is not amused.

Oh, we almost forgot one other pesky thing. Remember the priest called Robert Reyes, who spends more time enumerating sins than forgiving them? If he is still alive from his hunger strike, then he should snap out of it. He has backed the wrong horse once again.