Sinners

Who is without sin in this country? Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile can’t name one.

This was Enrile’s reaction to doubts expressed by Catholic bishops, couched in polite language, about the moral fitness of his wife Cristina (not estranged from him, he emphasizes) to be the country’s ambassador to the Holy See.

Enrile knows about sinning – and the Filipino’s deep well of forgiveness. One of the architects of martial law, who as defense chief signed the notorious ASSOs (arrest, search and seizure orders) of the Marcos dictatorship, Enrile found redemption in the original people power revolution, which erupted 22 years ago this month.

He broke away from the dictatorship after Ferdinand Marcos and his formidable intelligence network uncovered a coup plot involving Enrile’s clique of reformist soldiers whose most prominent member is now a senator, Gregorio Honasan.

As the four-day revolt unfolded, Enrile confessed that he had staged his own ambush to give Marcos a pretext to declare martial law in 1972.

The nation, grateful to Enrile for providing the spark that ignited people power, forgave him and turned him into a hero together with Honasan and the military’s deputy chief of staff at the time, Fidel Ramos.

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These events are worth remembering as defenders of the current administration try to demolish the credibility of witness Rodolfo Lozada Jr. by digging up every sin he has committed since kindergarten.

Lozada, facing the Senate, simply said mea culpa and moved on to the next question.

So far the sins he has admitted pale in comparison with his kidnapping and the government conspiracy to keep him from testifying before the Senate.

Poor Sonny Razon, generally a decent cop, may one day also have to seek redemption by saying mea culpa for allowing himself to be used in a cover-up. He should at least stop insisting that those guys in civilian clothes who gave Lozada an armed welcome at the NAIA, then drove the witness to what he feared (with reason) was “salvage” country, were not cops. Those shady characters can only give the Philippine National Police a bad name.

Really, General Razon, people will understand if you incriminate yourself in the course of telling the truth. As Lozada openly lamented, the things public servants have to do in this administration to keep their jobs …

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It starts from the moment a person decides he wants to join the government. Civil service eligibility is not enough; an applicant needs someone to endorse him for the job. Otherwise someone else, whether qualified or not but with the right connections, might get the job.

The endorser can be a friend, a relative, a local politician. It can be the friend of a friend. Whoever the endorser is, he and the applicant will share a bond arising from a debt of gratitude.

Such debts are lifetime burdens; the interest accumulates forever and the debt is never considered fully repaid in this country.

There is no such thing as a free job endorsement. One day the endorser will want some form of payment, and the debtor will be hard-pressed to say no, even if the payment involves bending the law.

In our culture, ingratitude is a mortal sin. Jose de Venecia Jr. kept rubbing this in throughout his valedictory rant hours before his ouster as speaker of the House of Representatives, and later when he nominated his replacement. He reminded almost everyone who betrayed him that they owed him big time, and that was the thanks he got. Of course neither sticks and stones nor angry words could penetrate thick crocodile hides, and De Venecia got kicked out anyway.

In the case of Lozada, his friendship with his recruiter, former socio-economic planning secretary Romulo Neri, made him go along with a possible overprice of the national broadband deal with ZTE Corp., although the two friends stopped at around $65 million, which Lozada said represented a typical kickback percentage in government projects.

Lozada dropped out as consultant in the broadband project not out of disgust over the overprice, but after he received a severe dressing down from someone who was not even his boss, Benjamin Abalos, at the time the chairman of the Commission on Elections.

And yet it took Lozada many months before he finally decided to unburden himself. By his own account, he worried about his job and what would happen to his family if he disclosed corruption at high levels of government.

He also indicated that he worried about his friend Neri, who did not and still does not seem to have any intention of becoming a hero. Even during Lozada’s Senate testimony, he said he still held Neri in high regard.

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Look the other way once in the face of corruption, or commit even a petty act that constitutes graft, and you worry forever that it could one day be used against you.

Many public servants, by looking the other way, can be deemed guilty of complicity in corruption. Among the first questions that will be hurled at them if they ever denounce colleagues or superiors for corruption are, “What took you so long to make the denunciation?” followed by, “Did you get cut out of the payoff?”

For many public servants, the trouble simply isn’t worth it, especially if they are on friendly terms with the corrupt.

Look the other way once, twice, and every new anomaly becomes easier to tolerate. The sins pile up all around.

Our nation of sinners readily forgives under two conditions: first, the sinner denounces someone worse; second, he admits his own indiscretions and seeks forgiveness.

That was how the nation perceived Enrile in February 1986, and Luis “Chavit” Singson in January 2001.

Lozada’s bureaucratic indiscretions do not come close to the sins of Enrile and Singson. The two helped bring down two presidents – one an entrenched dictator, the other a hugely popular former movie star. Singson’s revelations turned Joseph Estrada into a convict.

Now another administration is scoffing at another confessed sinner.