There was some inevitability to this, a sense that at the right time and proper place justice will be served.
That time has come. It took long in coming, but it has come.
For six years, the Noynoy Aquino administration harassed and harangued Gloria Macapagal Arroyo. For over four of those six years, she was kept in jail – the better to keep her out of the public eye.
Through all of that time, she needed urgent medical attention. She was denied that, constrained to basically self-medicate. A little drip of this and a little drop of that, until eventually the disease either goes or grows malignant.
Meanwhile, the Noynoy Aquino government went after everyone else with hammer and things.
They forced out the sitting Ombudsman, layering all sorts of charges against her until she went. Merceditas Gutierrez stood no chance against the onslaught.
They went after the sitting Chief Justice, penalizing him for a crime that could have been remedied by a mere alteration in the entry for the SALN. Against a hacked Congress and a paid Senate, Chief Justice Renato Corona stood no chance. By the time the man was forced from office, he was broken.
While at this, Noynoy Aquino assembled the most awesome pork barrel state the nation ever saw.
Before being declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, the congressional pork barrel ballooned to impossible proportions. Before the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) was declared unconstitutional, billions have been folded into it. It will take years for that money to be fully audited.
Then there were the hundreds corralled into all sorts of cases, mainly nuisance. They were accessories to the crime, bystanders really forced to answer charges on a whim.
Two of those, colleagues from the DBP, did not survive. One was a lawyer that the new management pressured into testifying against his colleagues, leading to suicide. The other was an account officer who fell ill and died from the pressure.
What was the reason for this overarching ambition, this irascible need to reach beyond what normal politics demanded?
I doubt this was just about exacting vengeance.
Sure, maybe Corona and Gutierrez may be in a position to interfere in the way government was run – although negligibly. But well over 90 percent of the people dragged to court and charged, all of them by now redeemed, are bystanders.
There is something more craven here. There is something more insidious.
There seemed to be an attempt to stamp out vestiges of the old order. If it was, the effort was grossly misled. There was every effort at the outset to link the various cases, demonstrate these to be held together by some grand conspiracy and then torch the hapless perpetrators with a little held from the grand propaganda machine assembled for the purpose.
If that was the intent, the whole enterprise collapsed the weight of incompetence.
Recall that while they were torching perceived allies of the old regime, Aquino propagandists were preoccupied with their social media toys and announcing the dawn of a new order. This was quite obviously a set-up to the theme of “continuity” that permeated the early Aquino years when the LP spoke of 18 years of sustained reform.
Nothing too, became of that. The intended successor, Mar Roxas, was last seen writing a travelogue.
Victim
Meanwhile, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo prepares to resume her interrupted political life and possibly seek medical treatment abroad.
Nothing she had said so far allows us to “read” her intentions. As far as I can see, she is a woman broken by the events of the past few years. She is exhausted and might want nothing more than quality time with her grandchildren.
She deserves that too.
But then again, this is not a woman who comes through the fire only to withdraw from it. There is some steel in this woman.
From her record as congressman, we know that detention has not kept her from her duties. She kept the legislative stream running from her cell. The stream continues even now, with Arroyo filing one bill after the other. This includes, among others, a bill summoning emergency powers to address the traffic situation.
Contrary to public perception, Arroyo receives numerous visitors. Through them, she keeps herself well briefed on the comings and goings in the larger society. Few people could be better informed than she is.
Then there are the manuscripts she is said to be working on. We are not sure about how advanced the stages of preparation are, but there will surely be some manuscripts ready.
As a matter of course, all the remaining cases against Arroyo are expected to be dropped in due time. This will certainly help relieve the pressure of these harassment suits.
The most important fact remains: Arroyo remains free to do with her time what pleases her.
If is easy to imagine she might retreat to anonymity as it is easy to imagine she could reemerge as an important voice in our affairs. Give her the chance to catch her breath.
At this point, let us give her the peace she deserves.
Grant her the tranquility and the discernment. Grant her the time to be with the people she loves. Grant her the sharpness, the elegance and the poise to live her life well.
We have a victim of injustice here. She, too, needs time to recover.