P-Noy’s non-apology to go down in history

It is pointless to ask President Noynoy Aquino to apologize for the Mamasapano debacle. He is too proud to do so.

P-Noy’s self-proclaimed bosses, the people, have watched closely. At last he owned up to responsibility. But it came offensively late and reluctantly, 50 days after the public furor over the massacre of 44 police commandos. Still he refuses to say sorry, against the counsel of elders like ex-President Fidel Ramos and ex-senator Panfilo Lacson. Filipinos are not about to waste time waiting. They’ve weighed and found P-Noy wanting in character. They will treat him the way they do erring but un-contrite relatives, house helpers, or friends. They will move on, forgiving perhaps but not forgetting.

And so Mamasapano will be listed among P-Noy’s lasting legacies. Along with it are the spikes in food prices right after harvests, mining grants to Chinese spies, and blatant graft in commuter train maintenance. To be etched in history is Jan. 25, 2015. On that day Special Action Forces took down one of three targeted terrorists, but on exfiltration were waylaid by Moro separatists with whom P-Noy was supposed to have a truce. The details will be embarrassing: P-Noy for years had kept out of the loop top security officials — the Secretaries of Interior and Defense, and the Armed Forces chief. Instead he dealt only with his bosom friend and ex-bodyguard Alan Purisima, whom he had made National Police chief. The Ombudsman had suspended the latter while under investigation for multiple corruption. Still, P-Noy entrusted him with planning and executing the delicate commando operation inside Moro separatist territory.

To go down in history too are the aftermaths. Foremost was P-Noy’s snub of the arrival in Manila of the remains of the SAF-44, preferring instead to play with new cars at a factory launch. This insulted the bereaved families. Followed a pendulum swing to the other extreme. He had his Cabinet lavish them with housing, educational, farming, small business, and personal benefits. He has yet to grant the same to soldiers and cops slain by rebels before and after the SAF 44.

Matching such placatory acts was Malacañang attempts to hide the truth. Lies were foisted on the public, congressional investigators, and the National Police-Board of Inquiry. Efforts were made to blame it all on SAF Dir. Getulio Napeñas. The latter at first willingly acted as scapegoat, emboldening P-Noy to spin more tales, even before an audience of politely uncritical Born-Again Christian bishops. But this, and the BOI’s accounts of his ineptitudes as a commando general, provoked Napeñas to start talking. Exposed was P-Noy’s abetting of Purisima’s usurpation of the authority of the post from which he had been suspended.

There are two perceptible reasons for P-Noy to decline to apologize. One is to avoid criminal liability when he loses immunity from suit upon term end. This is a wrong notion. Whether or not he apologizes, a persistent litigant can still bring up charges against him for abetting Purisima’s misdeed. An apology does not extinguish criminal liability. If at all, it can fetch a lighter penalty.

Coupled with the attempt to deflect criminal prosecution is Justice Sec. Leila de Lima’s distortion of legal definitions. There is no chain of command in the National Police, she purports, because it is a civilian, not a military organization. Thus, P-Noy supposedly is not the Commander-in-Chief of the police but only the Armed Forces. That opinion goes against the wording of the Constitution, Lacson points up. Besides, Ramos during his Presidency had defined the command chain from the C-in-C down to police rookie. That executive order has been ingrained in the police under three succeeding Presidents, including P-Noy. De Lima cannot now uproot it to ease the pressure on P-Noy a year and a half before term end.

The other reason for not saying sorry is as wrong as the first. Supposedly, a true leader must never apologize; underlings just have to suffer public humiliation and decapitation for his mistake. That same belief had prevented Gloria Macapagal Arroyo from apologizing at once for the Hello Garci scandal of 2004. For weeks, when it already was being murmured about in political and media circles, she made PR handlers prevent the disclosure of her wiretapped phone calls to election commissioner Virgilio Garcillano while her presidential votes were being counted. Later they devised a pre-emption by presenting two tapes, one billed as fake, the other as genuine — but both were fakes. Eventually the truth came out. On threat of resigning, her Cabinet forced her to say “I’m sorry.” She did so on national television — ever so insincerely. Arroyo lost moral ascendancy; her admin went downhill from thereon. The Cabinet members resigned just the same.

Those same Cabinet turncoats are now in P-Noy’s official family. Most likely they’re the same ones now coaching him to “not do a GMA.”

Often has it been said that fawning advisers are a leader’s undoing. Listening to his yes-men is P-Noy’s lookout. They are but fleeting names in the story of the nation. Truths are immutable, however. One of them is that apologizing diminishes not one’s manhood, but adds to his humanity.

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“Crossing Over: The Energy Transition to Renewable Electricity” will be launched Monday, Mar. 23, 9.a.m., at the patio of the UP Hotel, Diliman campus, Quezon City. The book by Roberto Verzola assesses energy issues and provides solutions to the country’s energy dilemmas. A must-read for policy makers and energy technocrats.

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Catch Sapol radio show, Saturdays, 8-10 a.m., DWIZ (882-AM).

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