Who gains or suffers from Ang plea deal?

From a legal standpoint, Joseph Estrada need not fear Atong Ang’s court admission of bribing a public official. As Ombudsman Chief Special Prosecutor Dennis Villa-Ignacio explains, Ang’s plea bargain is a personal deal with indicters of plunder against him and Estrada. In confessing to a lesser offense, plus returning P25 million in filched taxes and at most six years in jail, Ang would avoid 40-year conviction for plunder and possibly higher cash penalty. It would not affect Estrada’s own plunder trial because prosecutors had long finished presenting evidence. Ang’s lawyer Alfredo Villamor adds that any mention of Estrada’s name in the confession is mere hearsay unless his client is cross-examined in court. But prosecutors need not do that, main witness Chavit Singson butts in, since Estrada already sealed his own fate by acknowledging in a hearing that he did sign as alias Jose Velarde in a multibillion-peso bank account. In short, Estrada has himself to worry about, not Ang, and need not speculate that his long-time gambling buddy was tortured in America and Manila into junking him.

From a political standpoint, Ang’s surprise plea should vex Estrada. For one who uses politics as leverage for legal woes, being linked to theft of P130 million in tobacco farmers’ money is bad news. Estrada is busy sewing up a senatorial slate to fight a Presidency viewed to have cheated its way to office in 2004. He must thus look clean to be an alternative. It matters not to him that thinking voters saw through ploys, like the May 2001 assault on Malacañang or coup funding or putting one wife and one son at the same time in the Senate, as foils against court raps. So long as the 30-percent poor segment of the electorate adores him as former matinee star, Estrada figures he can sit enough friends in the Senate to impeach Gloria Arroyo and then get him out of his legal scrapes. Tapping another son by another wife to go for a Senate seat is part of the grand plan – and Ang’s guilty plea only puts Estrada’s own crimes back to public mind when everybody is snickering at the administration’s inability to form its own senatorial ticket.

But news dies fast. By next week another event would have grabbed the headlines, and Estrada can breathe easy that the press and public have forgotten again about Jose Velarde and the P4-billion in illegal wealth.

By then, the only person to agonize would be plunder co-accused Jaime Dichaves. Believed to be hiding in Australia or Europe, Dichaves has a global arrest warrant for money laundering in relation to the Estrada loot. Ang’s plea deal requires him to assist in ongoing and future cases against Estrada cohorts. Prosecutors may have rested their case against the former President and senator-son Jinggoy, and thus don’t need Ang anymore in it, but Dichaves has yet to be tried because absent. Ang will have to tell all he knows about Dichaves’s fronting role in the Velarde account, and more.

Another party to worry is the family of long-missing casino worker Edgar Bentain. Ang has been linked to Bentain’s disappearance in 1999 after divulging a videotape of Ang and Estrada playing high-stakes baccarat. His plea bargain should be limited to the plunder rap, and not to other offenses. But with Ang merrily singing out his and Estrada’s tax theft, authorities may no longer see fit to nail him with other criminal raps. For that matter, Indian businessmen who were kidnapped in the 1990s and forced to pay multimillion-peso ransoms must fear that they never will get justice. Like Estrada, the administration is known to mix legal matters with politics.

But then, a lot will depend on the tenor of the senatorial campaign. If the Estrada ticket happens to uncover too much corruption in Malacañang, then it can provoke retaliation. This could mean counter-exposés – of drug trafficking and summary killings – long overdue but held back for political convenience.

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Yen Makabenta, who brought the World Pool Championship to the Philippines for the first time last Nov., was named Man of the Year by Billiards Digest, the bible of the sport worldwide. Yen was cited for the impact on the world of his promotion of billiards in the Philippines.

As chairman of the Billiard and Snooker Congress of the Philippines, Yen staged pro events, developed new players through a national billiards academy, and created an official ranking system – things that government should have done. His successful hosting of the world championship earned him the right to do it over again this year. Thrilled with the prospects, Billiards Digest noted: "With nearly three generations of great Pinoy players in good stroke all at once, and the strength of an egalitarian promoter behind them, it looks like the Philippines will be the epicenter of international pool for the foreseeable future."

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The Bangko Sentral’s formation of a "problem banks" unit under its supervision and examination division IV (SED IV) has caused a stir among rural bankers. A group of them has written Deputy Gov. Nestor Espenilla to warn against discrimination and public alarm.

SED I and II which oversee commercial banks, and III which handles thrift banks have no such units, the rural bankers complained. To make a "problem banks" unit only for SED IV would create the impression that all rural banks are ailing, and thus weaken their business. The label alone of "problem banks" could cause bank runs.

In announcing the plan, Espenilla assured that divulging a bank’s classification would always be a last resort. But the rural bankers noted many past incidents of information leak that panicked depositors. They have written the Monetary Board to either scrap the idea or create similar crisis units for all other banks.

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