MikeLigalig.com

Daily Tribune

FRONTLINE
Ninez Cacho-Olivares

03/16/2010

Presidential and vice presidential candidates love to project themselves as opposition or “independent” candidates, even when clearly, they were hardly that, from 1998 to 2005, with some even allied with the administration up till 2009.

It should be asked: They are in opposition to whom, Gloria Arroyo and her administration?

But the facts show that they — Noynoy Aquino, Manny Villar, Mar Roxas, Loren Legarda and Ralph Recto, among others, were hardly in opposition to Gloria Arroyo.

In 2000, Villar, Aquino, Legarda and even Senators Francis Pangilinan and Franklin Drilon were certainly not in opposition to Gloria, since they not only moved unconstitutionally, to have then sitting President Joseph Estrada tried in the Senate but also stage-managed a coup d’etat against him when it was clear that they wouldn’t be able to get the numbers to convict Estrada.

Mar Roxas was never in the opposition. He was the Trade secretary of Estrada but resigned, under pressure from the civil socialites who wanted him out and wanted Estrada ousted. Then after the Edsa ll coup, Roxas joined the Gloria government as her Trade secretary.

Villar, Legarda, Drilon, Pangilinan and Roxas, among others, also ran under Gloria’s “People Power” coalition in 2001 as Gloria’s senatorial bets. And in 2004, even as they all knew she had cheated, and massively, they all covered up for her and railroaded the canvassing and her proclamation.

And they would still have covered up for Gloria’s electoral fraud and other scams, if the “Hello Garci” tapes did not surface and made them look like fools, as it was also they who had known about the fraud, and were accessories to the crime.

Truth is, the only reason the Liberal Party members now try to identify themselves as opposition is that they, together with the usual civil socialites, had attempted a “constitutional coup” in 2005 against Gloria and her government when they called on her to resign, believing that the coup will succeed. It didn’t, and they had no choice but to state that they were now in opposition to Gloria.

It is on record that most of the congressional hearings on Gloria and Mike Arroyo’s scams and scandals in the early days of her regime, never came up with a report for submission to the Ombudsman. That’s mainly because all of these congressmen and senators were with the majority, and part and parcel of Gloria’s ruling class.

Remember the telecoms probe where Gloria sought majority control in exchange for no veto on the franchise? The jueteng probe, and many more besides? All of Gloria’s men in Congress were there to protect the interest of Gloria. And they claim to be against corruption, when they did nothing all those years to curb the corruption in Gloria’s government, to the point of protecting the corrupt?

It is also on record that Noynoy Aquino, as congressman, voted against the airing of the Hello Garci tapes. He now claims he voted against its airing because the tapes were “illegally obtained.” That’s really rich. In the first place, there was never a ruling from the high court that the tapes were illegal. For another, the tapes were already being aired all over and played and replayed, apart from which the transcript was published in the Tribune, which had the scoop.

Noynoy claimed in an interview that he had decided against playing the tapes since they were obtained illegally. “The bottomline is there is a legal promise called the fruit of the poison tree. That means that any evidence taken illegally cannot be used in judicial proceedings,” he said.

But who said a congressional hearing is a judicial proceeding?

The truth is, Noynoy, along with his fellow Liberals and civil society, was still hoping that this scandal would blow over and that they would still be Gloria’s allies, as Manny Villar was. Notice that they were so silent about the massive cheating all that time, even when the proof was already staring them at the face. Such acts hardly substantiate their claim of their being against government corruption.

Truth is, they were all protectors of the grafters and the corrupt, as they were true-blue Gloria administration allies.

It was only after they realized that they wouldn’t be able to win an elective seat if they still identified themselves with Gloria, that they suddenly claimed to be in opposition to Gloria.

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