Making NBI cover up for her lying

Malacañang keeps denying it, but nobody believes that the NBI on its own is looking for the leakers of the President’s medical records. The witch-hunt can only be on orders from on high — to cover up for Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s habitual lying. Also, to scare future disclosers of her true health condition. Perhaps to sate as well her desire for vengeance.

We can only pray that the NBI will not follow illegal orders to harass suspected news sources. Arroyo will be out of power in a year. But the harm that the agency can do to presumed informants can be permanent. Reportedly three doctors already have been questioned at the Asian Hospital, and more are being lined up for grilling. Will they be fired on trumped up charges of “annoying” the President? Have pity on them. Or else, somewhere down the road, karma may strike the harassers’ families.

Actually the news moles are protected by the Constitution. Article VII, Section 12 states that “in case of serious illness of the President, the public should be informed of the state of his health.” Dysfunctional bleeding due to polyps or myoma or cancer of the uterus or cervix is serious enough. Even excision of groin cyst and mammoplastic repair of leaking breast implants can be grave, given that it’s the one and only President going under the knife. Concerned but unnamed citizens sent word to the press as a matter of constitutional duty.

Conversely, it’s Arroyo and her spokesmen who broke the fundamental law of the land. They were duty-bound to disclose her true state of health. Instead, they concealed her ailments that required hospital stay by claiming she was going on post-travel self-quarantine. True, Arroyo’s chief spokesman belatedly admitted that “an abscess was taken out of the breast and something was put in its place” shows a grave health situation. But since it was stated more to defuse public furor over their habitual lying than to follow the Constitution, it doesn’t count. The NBI, if truly earnest to enforce the law in this booby episode, must file appropriate charges against the pretenders.

Other obvious crimes have been and are being committed in relation to the President’s two-day hospitalization. Again her chief spokesman claimed that Asian Hospital gave Arroyo accommodations, two VIP suites for P18,000 a day each, and five rooms of her bodyguards and cooks at P4,000 a day each — all for free. Complimentary as well, he indicated, were lab tests, medicines, and professional services. If so, then Arroyo broke anti-graft laws. The Code of Conduct and Ethical Standards forbids public officials from receiving gifts of value. The implementing rules define such gifts as anything worth over P5,000. Again here, the NBI will not have a hard time investigating. Ab-Cerge said it all on national television.

And this very minute, according to media friends, the Presidential Security Group is peering into my phone and e-mail records. Supposedly they want to find out whom I’ve been communicating with in order to flush out my mole. They need a search warrant from the court to do this. And since they obviously don’t have any (no judge has directed me to respond to any application), they are violating my privacy. The NBI should step in if it truly aims to uphold the law.

Of course, we know that the NBI has been politicized of late. In 2007 an agent was used to falsely accuse me of having a hand in the (concocted) “theft of the ZTE contract hours after Arroyo witnessed its signing in China.” When I persisted exposing the scam, they falsely invoked confidentiality of proprietary information of the Chinese firm that was expecting Filipinos to pay $330 million sight unseen. What I went through was nothing, though, compared to the abduction of whistleblower Jun Lozada, and death threats on Joey de Venecia and Dante Madriaga.

At any rate, fear could have driven Arroyo et al to lie about her health. Ferdinand Marcos’s reign began to decline when his former press secretary Kit Tatad wrote about his kidney transplant. The report got the dictator’s business cronies, political allies and generals thinking twice about continuing to support him. He was near the end, so they started deserting him. The old Marcos pals now in Arroyo’s court must have recounted the fall to her. Hence, her desire to keep her ailments secret.

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The Rotary Club of Makati-West is in for an exciting year, with the assumption this week of Fernando Peña as president. Congratulations.

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