Once again, never again

The suspected looters are being identified, vilified together with their entitled children and their vulgar ostentation, and facing criminal investigation.

Their obese bank accounts are being frozen, their fleets of luxury cars seized, and their private jets and helicopters grounded.

“Never again” – a slogan against the Marcos dictatorship – is again a battle cry in mass protests, this time against corruption.

The next step for the nation is to ensure that the seized assets are not retrieved and the frozen accounts are not fully restored, and the looters can no longer go back to business as usual.

In short, there must be indictments, ASAP, forthwith, followed by speedy and efficient prosecution, to ensure that the guilty will be punished.

Emphasis must be on speed, so that the lessons about crime and punishment become indelibly entrenched instead of the culture of corruption.

We have so many laws against various forms of graft and corruption, but enforcement is nearly ghost or non-existent. The country is also one of over 140 signatories to the 2003 United Nations Convention Against Corruption, a legally binding pact that we have yet to tap in going after dirty money parked overseas by the looters.

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Apart from the budget process, now under microscopic scrutiny after the grand-scale thievery institutionalized in the General Appropriations Acts under the previous 19th Congress, public vigilance must also be focused on the legal processes in prosecuting those now facing accusations of plundering trillions from the national coffers.

Specifically, judges and justices who handle the cases must also be closely watched. A website similar to the sumbongsapangulo.PH, dedicated to the legal services, must also be set up to alert anti-graft and money laundering watchdogs about justices, judges and prosecutors, including those who have retired, for inexplicable surges in wealth or signs of living beyond their means.

There must be scrutiny of the lifestyles and career trajectories of every magistrate who has dismissed the Marcos wealth cases, or who issued controversial rulings that cleared wealthy or influential defendants.

Joseph Estrada had declared war on those he described as “hoodlums in robes” and “fix-cals.” Unfortunately for him (and the nation), he didn’t practice what he preached.

Noynoy Aquino during his presidency also complained often of “judicial overreach” and corruption in the legal system.

These points are raised because the public outrage generated by the flood control scandal must not end up wasted, with all the people now seen as villains eventually going scot-free thanks to weak prosecution, a corrupted judiciary, or both. Or else with only the small fry, as usual, ending up in the New Bilibid Prison while the big fish get away, free to steal again.

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We’ve had major corruption scandals in the past years, but look what happened. The Pharmally case is crawling along at the usual glacial pace, with former ombudsman Samuel Martires ensuring that the president who appointed him to the post was spared.

Amid the flood control scandal, audits are set to be conducted on farm-to-market roads built by the Department of Public Works and Highways.

It’s not the first time though that corruption has been suspected in the agriculture sector. Way back in March 2004, Panfilo Lacson – already a senator at the time – exposed the release of P728 million in fertilizer funds to local government officials, including those in areas with no farmlands.

Lacson suspected that the funds were used for vote-buying in the presidential campaign of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, who was seeking election to the post that landed in her lap in 2001 courtesy of EDSA II.

Among those indicted in connection with the scam were the accused mastermind, then Department of Agriculture undersecretary Jocelyn “Joc-joc” Bolante, then DA chief Luis Lorenzo, several other DA officials along with businesswoman Janet Lim Napoles.

Bolante cleared Arroyo in the scam. In 2016, the Sandiganbayan cleared Bolante and his seven co-defendants of plunder. In 2023, the Sandiganbayan cleared Napoles together with several DA officials, citing “inordinate delay” in their prosecution by the ombudsman.

Lorenzo and former National Food Authority administrator Arthur Yap were cleared of graft by the Supreme Court in 2022.

Napoles also applied her talents to the ingenious diversion of the congressional pork barrel. For this, she’s facing life in the Correctional Institution, while her VIP co-defendants have either been cleared or are free while their plunder cases are pending.

There are folks who say GMA will never be convicted in any court because members of the judiciary are grateful for her enactment of Republic Act 9946 in January 2010, just months before she stepped down from the presidency. The law significantly increased the retirement packages for members of the judiciary, with judges getting pensions similar to justices, and covering their surviving spouses and children.

The pensions, as in those of members of the uniformed services, are pegged to current pay levels and increase automatically when those in the active service get a pay raise.

GMA was also cleared in the NBN-ZTE corruption scandal together with Benjamin Abalos, who as chairman of the Commission on Elections was accused of brokering the $329-million deal with the Chinese telecommunications giant for a kickback.

The only person who did time in Bilibid for several years, in a graft case not directly related to the NBN-ZTE deal, was the whistle-blower, Rodolfo Lozada Jr. and his brother Orlando. They were released only last July.

In our country, it’s good to know the law, but it’s better to know the judge, and it’s best to be the appointing power for the judiciary.

Pasig Mayor Vico Sotto had bewailed that there are people who enrich themselves through corruption and other illegal activities, use a fraction of the dirty money to buy favors and portray generosity to the public, and then seek elective office.

There’s another thing that dirty money can finance, and which deserves public vigilance: expensive lawyers, and the best justice that money can buy.

We’re saying “never again” to corruption. This time, we better mean it. Or else we would end up realizing that Ferdinand Marcos Jr. had a better grasp of Pinoy realpolitik when he said, “Never say never.”