Former Senate President Juan Ponce-Enrile, courtesy of his Facebook page
It really takes two to tango. Everyone knew the recent off-tangent attacks of Sen. Juan Ponce-Enrile would not go unchallenged. We have this pungent Tagalog saying, “lintik lang any walang ganti.” (Only a lighting strike does not invite revenge.) And so it happened.
Much of what Sen. Miriam Santiago’s rants — carried live by everyone and witnessed by 200 students she had personally invited to the opera — were historical “truths”.
Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago, courtesy of her Facebook page
Perhaps, only Enrile believes otherwise, lost as he is in his games. We’re all waiting for the Ombudsman to strip him of the last of his statesman posturing. 100 days since the surrender of everybody’s good friend — Janet Napoles — we’re still waiting.
Miriam had a good thing going. But she had to go ruin it with prurient, unnecessary stuff and psycho-babble.
Truth didn’t win this round — we still don’t know just HOW he became plaster mastermind and that was what I was waiting for. The biggest loser: the Senate as an institution.
Lest Enrile gets underserved underdog status (and, no, neither is Miriam), here’s a short blast from the past, courtesy of the senator from Iloilo:
”My attacker is the icon of shameless lying. Under President Ferdinand Marcos, he claimed that as defense secretary he was ambushed, thus laying the ground for the imposition of martial law. Under President Corazon Aquino, he retracted and admitted that his ambush was faked and staged. Then under President Benigno Aquino III, he retracted again and he now claims in his memoirs that the ambush was genuine after all. He eats his own words for breakfast. In the law of evidence, he has absolutely no credibility. Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus. False in one thing, false in all things.”
”In 2012, the Communist Party of the Philippines sent an email to media, with the following condemnation of Enrile as delusional in his notorious memoirs: “Enrile was Marcos’ hatchet man and the one who signed countless warrants that led to the capture and detention of thousands of former leaders, workers, students, activists in the Church, and other critics and opponents of martial law. Enrile’s hands are forever stained with the blood of close to 4,000 people ‘salvaged’ during Marcos’ reign of terror…. Enrile exposed himself as a liar.” (Inquirer Visayas, 10 October 2012).
”During martial law, Enrile was the almighty defense secretary, when I was appointed the youngest RTC judge in the mecca of judges, Metro Manila, serving in Quezon City. In 1985, when gasoline prices went up, some fifty students from UP and Ateneo joined a street demonstration in Cubao to protest the martial law regime. Most of them were seniors scheduled to take their final exams and to graduate from college. Enrile ordered the military to arrest the students, on the basis of a martial law presidential decree that defined the crime of illegal assembly as any gathering opposed to the administration, and that imposed the death penalty.
“I was assigned to the case. I suspended trial in all other cases and continuously heard the illegal assembly case morning, afternoon, and evening. The issue was: Does martial law automatically cancel the right to bail? My decisive answer was no, and I ordered the release of the students. However, the military defied my release order, and in fact filed a second charge of inciting to sedition. The accused appealed, and the Supreme Court in effect upheld me. This was the 1990 case ofBrocka, Cervantes, et al. v. Enrile, Ramos, et al., 192 SCRA 183 (1990).
From the very beginning, Enrile has always resented that Supreme Court decision and held it against me, for refusing to kowtow to him even during the dark days of martial law, when he swaggered around town as if he owned it. The Supreme Court slapped him down, ruling: “that the criminal proceedings had become a case of persecution, having been undertaken by state officials in bad faith.” The Court pointed a finger at Enrile, and criticized “respondent’s bad faith and malicious intent.” The Court warned Enrile that he did not have a license to run roughshod over a citizen’s basic constitutional rights, such as due process, or manipulate the law to suit dictatorial tendencies.” (Emphasis added). This was and remains Enrile’s arrogant, tyrannical attitude to young people: persecution in bad faith, malice, and dictatorial. He has never changed. Brocka v. Enrile, at p. 189.”
What makes me sad: they had to become enemies for her to expose this. But that’s the way it is in the land of the gods.
