Right between the eyes

With his privilege speech at the Senate last Monday, Senator Bong Revilla did a great job of bringing the fight right to the doorstep of Noynoy Aquino. For so long, no one has dared confront Noynoy in such an open and challenging manner. Now someone has, finally.

Revilla is, of course, in the middle of the so-called P10 billion PDAF controversy, in which he and two other senators were alleged to have funneled portions of their pork barrel into bogus NGOs created by Janet Napoles who, if pictures do not lie, is at least an acquaintance of everyone high and mighty, Noynoy included.

In his speech, Revilla denied participation in the scam. That, of course, is something he will have to prove in the proper forum. At least Revilla said as much in the same speech by concluding that he was ready to face the music.

Those who say Revilla should face the music instead of bringing the fight to Noynoy were therefore not paying attention, or paying attention only to what they wanted to hear -- which never came -- or worse, heard but chose not to listen.

Revilla began by denying any participation in the scam and ended by promising to face the music. Anyone who still cannot see anything categorical and direct in that should see a doctor. Still, it is asked -- why not stop there and let the courts, or whatever forum, decide on the merits of what he faces?

Ah, there is the rub. People just do not see, or simply refuse to understand, that what Revilla tried to do was not to deflect attention away from himself but refocus it to what this whole thing is really about. And it is not about the PDAF per se but about politics.

Every politician who has ever laid a hand on the PDAF is, as a matter of course, under a cloud of suspicion. Even Noynoy is no stranger to PDAF, having once been a congressman and senator. And now that he is president, Noynoy has his own version of the PDAF for the executive called DAP.

What Revilla was trying to do was bring attention to the fact that while every politician in this country is under a cloud of doubt, it is only the prominent enemies of Noynoy who are being taken to task over the scam. Selective accounting is no accounting at all.

It was not the intention of Revilla to deflect attention away from himself. He was not trying to shirk responsibility for answering the charges against him. In fact he was very clear, except to the yellow-eyed Noynoy fans, that he was ready to face the accusations he has already denied.

By bringing the fight to Noynoy, Revilla was trying to show that justice can never be truly served if served with hypocrisy. Revilla was trying to remind everyone that Noynoy cannot use "daang matuwid" as a battle cry only when he is shouting at his enemies or titillating his own crowds.

If Noynoy has to lead by example, he needs to be the president of all, and not only of those in his favor. So if he needs to fight corruption, he needs to fight it wherever he finds it, and not just come looking in the closets of his enemies.

But as many have already discovered, with Revilla being the only one with the temerity to stick the discovery up Noynoy's nose, Noynoy is not the president he has cracked up himself to be. The path he follows is not "daang matuwid" because he makes a detour whenever the road takes him up to a relative or a friend.

If I had one major disappointment in Revilla's speech, it was when he stopped short of actually naming Noynoy's relative who he said was implicated in some scam. I would have loved to hear the sound of that name in the same way Noynoy has no qualms skewering people he hates by naming them and convicting them in public.

Unlike Noynoy, Revilla was just too much of a man. He was too gallant to bring the matter down to the level of a cat fight, like shaming everyone at an affair to which he had been invited. But it was good enough that he brought up the matter of presidential relatives, because it rubs this whole sham into the wound.

Revilla succeeded in wounding Noynoy where it hurts. Whether he hurt him mortally, I don't know. By putting Noynoy categorically in the center of the Renato Corona impeachment storm, he has placed the president squarely on the spot directly opposite where he purportedly stands -- Noynoy ain't where he says he is.

The more Noynoy and Mar Roxas and Butch Abad protest their innocence about a Malacañang meeting where Noynoy tried to influence the vote, at least of Revilla, in the Corona trial, the more they sound ridiculous and limp. Maybe they should just shut up and lick their wounds. If you can dish it, be able to take it.