Truth commission

Everybody has truths. I have mine, so do others. So whose truth is the Truth Commission seeking? As far as I know, those egging the Truth Commission have long found and proclaimed theirs. What they lack is a patina of regularity and formality, hence the commission.

The language of those behind the creation of the “truth commission” betrays the nature of its mission. I don’t have to repeat it here because everyone knows what it is all about. There is no ambiguity in its one and only purpose, which is to prosecute Gloria Arroyo at whatever cost.

But if the only purpose is to investigate and possibly charge the former president, why drag the entire nation through the charade of a search. The work of the truth commission has long been compromised before it could even start.

Let us not try to pretend otherwise. Ask anybody you know about Arroyo and the only answer you get is that she is the most corrupt president since Ferdinand Marcos, possibly even more so. So what search are we talking about? Just charge her and let us get on with our lives.

Now would be as good a time as any to charge Arroyo. We have a new president in Noynoy Aquino, whose clear mandate and high trust ratings should rub off on all our existing democratic institutions. He could give them the excellent opportunity to prove their own credibility.

With the entire nation riding high on his promise to clean up the government, I do not think there is an existing institution that would dare fumble and miss a step under such an intense environment of public participation and unwavering glare of public scrutiny.

Even the Ombudsman, Merceditas Gutierrez, long reviled as partial and protective of Arroyo, cannot be impervious to the prevailing mood of the nation and will have to shape up or risk the ignominy of being hauled off to impeachment.

Having skewered her in public without benefit of trial, subjecting Gutierrez to the litmus test of investigating Arroyo should come easy. Let Gutierrez be judged as well, on the basis of how she performs her task, and not on cheap, unaccountable talk.

What I am afraid of, however, is whether we can match our brave words with the political maturity to accept any decision whatever it might be, including that which may go against our preconceived notions, the biases at the root of why we have never moved forward as a nation.

It is not enough that truth commissions have precedents in other countries. It is the spirit by which they are created that matters, or why others in fact shun them, for that matter. It is easy to invoke truth because everyone has one. Even Arroyo has hers. So whose must prevail?

   If we truly want truth, we do not have to go creating truth commissions. Our democracy is already amply equipped with institutions that, if they are good enough to give us Noynoy Aquino, should be good enough to give us the rest of the one truth we seek.

   As it is now, the legality and constitutionality of the truth commission is not only suspect, so will the morality of its composition be, knowing how the basis for its creation has long been amplified, its judgment already rendered.

And while I have no question about the integrity of former chief justice Hilario Davide Jr., who has been appointed to head the truth commission, I cannot speak for others who do not feel comfortable with the fact that he campaigned day and night for Aquino’s Liberal Party.

If we have to investigate and prosecute Arroyo, so be it. But let us skip the melodrama that the truth commission is guaranteed to bring on, live and on primetime. Washing in public the linen that we already know to be dirty is not instructive but counterproductive for all of us.

More than anything in his avowed fight against corruption, Aquino needs to strengthen the judicial system, not undermine it. Setting in motion a “truth commission” to determine a separate truth will weaken the very system that keeps everything together.