Babe's Eye View article

After three years of waiting, the public finally got the chance to hear Jocelyn “JocJoc” Bolante and his story about the alleged P728 million fertilizer fund scam. Everyone had almost forgotten the former Department of Agriculture Undersecretary except for occasional stories about his detention in the United States and the subsequent denial of his application for asylum. And when he was finally deported by the US-INS, it was still a good two weeks before people finally got to hear what he has to say at the start of the Senate investigation last Thursday.

It was the 13th Congress under the unrelenting persistence of Senator Jun Magsaysay, chairman of the Senate committee on agriculture at the time, which conducted the initial investigation and subsequently recommended the filing of plunder charges against Bolante and other officials for allegedly diverting the funds to politicians allied with the administration for their use in the 2004 elections.

The Senate investigation was a 10-hour telenovela telecast live over ANC which some people intermittently watched, starting at around 10 in the morning until dinnertime. It was obvious at the hearing that some senators were better prepared than others based on the kind of questions they were shooting at the cool and apparently unflappable Bolante. But it was the feisty Miriam Santiago who provided some comic relief with her style of questioning and her comments, sparing everyone from what could otherwise have been a “usual” and boring Senate investigation.

Like the exasperated Miriam who commented that JocJoc was trying to defend the indefensible, people have become very cynical about the whole proceeding as it quickly became apparent that there was not much the senators could ferret out from their witness. The fact of the matter is, Filipinos have become so used to these types of Senate investigations where nothing really seems to come out after the initial hype and hoopla, with the issue soon buried to relative oblivion after another controversy catches everyone’s attention.

Just how scornful Filipinos have become can easily be gauged from the text messages sent to ANC and to radio commentators even the day after the investigation. Everybody was disappointed and frustrated at the way things have turned out, and a lot of viewers felt some senators were not prepared. As one texter put it, the failure to prepare is like preparing oneself to fail, while another one said they could spare themselves from frustration and disappointment by lowering their level of expectation regarding the outcome of Senate hearings and investigations.

Yet in the minds of many, it was pretty obvious that the alleged fertilizer fund scam happened, and that many—if not most local officials whose names were in the list of “recipients”—used the money during the 2004 national elections. As it is, JocJoc had a heyday, unchanging in his testimony that he had no hand in the anomaly. Bolante had earlier won a tactical victory when the Office of the Ombudsman dismissed a case filed by slain journalist Marlene Esperat for lack of sufficient evidence.

From the way things look, the only thing left for everyone to do at this point is to learn from all these things that have come to pass. The reason why these Senate hearings and investigations are “important” is because they are conducted “in aid of legislation”—that is, the purpose is to guide them in crafting laws that would change the entire system of procurement and disbursement of government funds especially during election time, for instance. Obviously, something is not right if one man—in this case JocJoc Bolante—can be so powerful that he could have a huge budget approved and even decide how the money is disbursed or who the recipients are.

After all these years, legislators should already know how the system goes—and be convinced that it doesn’t seem to work. No one can argue that Filipinos can go around and even beat the present system due to various loopholes and weaknesses in a number of provisions that have not been amended or modified. Nevertheless, people are still hoping that perhaps in 2010, the Philippines will have the kind of credible leadership that could initiate changing the system into one that is peculiar to Filipinos and takes into account our endemic quirks and cultural idiosyncrasies.

But let’s not despair. After all, it took the Americans more than two centuries to get their democratic system right, amending their constitution 27 times before coming up with a version that is suitable to the changing times. And let’s not forget that it was only recently before Americans could claim success for their civil rights movement which started 40 years ago with the victory of Barack Obama in the recent elections.

It has become perfectly clear to many people that the presidential system we have today is not working for us and thus has to be changed—but it has to be done in a manner that is transparent to the public. We must avoid the same mistake made by FVR when he tried to change the Constitution with suspicions that he just wanted to prolong his term.

More than political ambition, senators, especially the presidentiables, should realize there is so much more at stake today especially with the specter of a global credit crunch that is starting to cripple the economy of some countries.

No doubt it will take a long time before we can have a system—be it federal or parliamentary or some other form—that would be “perfect” for us. But we have to cross the line now. Otherwise, every time there is a Senate investigation, we will keep wondering if the “Joc” continues to be on us.