The fall of Mike Defensor

I never thought I would see Michael “Mike” Tan Defensor, 57, behind bars, holding the cold steel bars of a suburban detention facility where inmates wear a bright orange t-shirt emblazoned with PDL – person deprived of liberty.

The former Quezon City congressman is accused of plunder, the crime of stealing at least P50 million, whether it is tax money or private money. He “donated” P30 million to the 2025 senatorial campaign of Rodante Marcoleta who eventually won, thanks for his being a faithful acolyte of the Dutertes and the powerful Iglesia ni Cristo sect.

Marcoleta refused to report Mike’s money as a campaign donation, as required by law. He deemed it a gift. When you, a government official, like a congressman, receive money from people and pocket it, it’s bribery. When the bribe amounts to P50 million, it becomes plunder. Marcoleta received money from three people and their gifts totaled P75 million. The penalty for plunder is life imprisonment and perpetual disqualification from holding public office. Your assets can also be seized.

Mike is accused of another grave crime – peddling prostitutes so he can influence people in power. In today’s law, peddling prostitutes is human trafficking. Mike owns a bar in Pasig that doubled as a hotel and a prostitution den. Human trafficking, when involving minors and multiple victims, is punishable by life imprisonment.

Mike Defensor was once considered what Rizal called the hope of the fatherland. As a fresh face in politics and a young, dashing solon, he embodied the dynamism of youth, the energy of a good-government crusader and the pro-people and pro-country purposefulness of an honest-to-goodness public servant.

A fifth of 220 congressmen elected in 1998 were young, below 40. They changed the way legislation was done. One group of seven congressmen called themselves the “Bright Boys” because they were ardent supporters of then president Joseph Estrada. Another group of eight congressmen called themselves the “Spice Boys,” because they sought to spice up the life of Erap, the actor turned president. Mike led the Spice Boys.

In January 2001, when Erap was ousted by People Power for corruption after an aborted impeachment trial, Defensor et al gravitated towards the new president, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. Mike held a number of powerful positions – housing czar, 2001 to 2004; secretary of the Department of the Environment and Natural Resources (DENR), 2005 and chief of staff to Mrs. Arroyo, 2006 to 2007. In such positions, it is easy to make hay while the sun shines, the cliche goes. One of Mike’s partners – Marcoleta.

Defensor said Monday, July 6, that his arrest on a non-bailable plunder charge was politically motivated, to silence him because he was making life difficult for Ferdinand R. Marcos Jr. Mike had claimed, through willing witnesses peddled like parrots, BBM received flood control money, by the hundreds of millions, if not billions. He offered no convincing proof.

Defensor has maintained that the charges against him have no basis.

“We fought corruption, yet we were the first to be jailed in a case that has no basis,” he said.

The anti-graft court Sandigan had ruled that probable cause exists to proceed with the plunder case and ordered the arrest of Marcoleta, Defensor and two co-donors, businessmen Aristotle Viray and Joseph Espiritu. The court denied their motions seeking to suspend the proceedings and defer the issuance of warrants.

“With our imprisonment, we will no longer be able to speak about corruption because all we want is for the truth to come out. Transparency, accountability and justice,” Mike said.

Defensor also questioned why he was being jailed ahead of those he described as corrupt officials. “We were jailed ahead of those who truly stole from the people’s coffers,” he added.

I read from Facebook a beautiful lamentation on the fall from grace of Mike Defensor. I quote it liberally:

Once upon a time, I walked with this man in the streets of Manila. We were young, restless and unyielding – student activists who believed that the system could be dismantled, that corruption could be defeated, that the people’s voice could thunder louder than the machinery of power. His name was Mike Defensor. Back then, he was one of us. Today, he is the very embodiment of what we fought against.

Defensor’s descent is not a sudden fall but a slow erosion of principle. He was eaten alive by the system he once claimed to resist, seduced by the comforts of patronage and intoxicated by the privileges of power. For decades, he maneuvered within the halls of government, not as a servant of the people but as a loyal functionary of dynasties and vested interests. The activist became the politician, and the politician became the plunderer. The time of reckoning has arrived, and history has caught up with him.

The tragedy of Mike Defensor is not merely personal – it is emblematic of a generation betrayed. He represents the activist who traded conviction for convenience, the reformist who became a defender of rot, the comrade who abandoned the march to join the banquet of the elite. His arrest is not just the culmination of legal proceedings; it is the moral verdict of a people who remember the promises he once made and the betrayals he later committed.

Defensor’s name now stands as a cautionary tale. It is a reminder that the struggle is not won in the slogans of youth but in the integrity of adulthood. It is a warning that the system we fight against does not only crush dissent – it corrupts it, absorbs it and spits out hollow men who once carried banners of resistance but now carry placards of shame.

The streets of Manila remember. The people remember. And history, relentless and unforgiving, has finally remembered Mike Defensor.

*      *      *

Email: [email protected]