Ringleader

Getting oneself hospitalized to escape an arrest warrant has become a fashionable thing these days. But only for those who can afford camping out in a premium private hospital instead of a jail cell.

Unfortunately, a hospital stay is not a bail out plan. It is at best a temporary reprieve for those used to living comfortable lives. The courts could be relentless adversaries.

Martin Romualdez is currently confined at the Cardinal Santos hospital – even as monitors indicate his vital sings are normal for someone his age and build. The Sandiganbayan asked his doctors to explain his confinement. He has nevertheless been ordered to appear before the court today.

Romualdez was charged with plunder to the tune of over P7 billion. The amount allegedly looted well exceeds the P50-million threshold for a crime our legislators invented in an imperfect bid to curb corruption. The charge is non-bailable. He cannot forever avoid seeing the inside of a regular jail.

The charges filed against Romualdez et al was not a surprise. The ombudsman announced for weeks about charging the former Speaker of the House with a heinous crime. The President spoke of the forthcoming filing last July in his State of the Nation speech.

In the ombudsman’s theory of what happened, Romualdez is tagged as the “master plunderer.” He is accused of being the ultimate ringleader and the biggest beneficiary of a comprehensive scheme to systematically siphon off money from government projects. Among his other co-accused is his household staffer who received bags of money at his residence and a money exchange operator believed to have helped launder the stolen funds.

Romualdez tried to fight off the charges with a platoon of lawyers and an army of media operators tasked with building a more benign public opinion. The fact that the ombudsman filed cases against him nonetheless changes the game decisively.

The President’s cousin was earlier considered the key player in securing a friendly transition in power after his term ends. He was considered the designated successor to his cousin. Earlier, the House of Representatives under his control tried to change the Constitution to ensure the sort of transition they preferred. The effort was flustered.

Handicapped by Romualdez’s lack of charisma and inarticulateness, the plan appeared to be to completely overwhelm our electoral democracy with sheer volume of political funding. If they could not win public support, they were ready to buy it. This sort of capital intensive plan for regime perpetuation opened the doors to the massive public works scandal that exploded two years ago.

The flood control scandal involved a broad scheme to exact kickbacks from literally thousands of projects. The scheme required the participation of too many people. The kickbacks were of such magnitude impossible to conceal. Whistleblowers eventually appeared.

There appears to be a frantic attempt in the early stages of this scandal to limit the political damage. Zaldy Co, former chair of the House appropriations committee, seemed destined to be thrown under the bus, to take all the blame for what happened.

Co did not fully cooperate, however. He fled and is now trying to win asylum abroad. He released a number of videos pinning the blame not only on Romualdez but also on the President.

The effort to contain the political fallout then shifted to force Romualdez to hold the bag and thereby spare the President. Like Co, Romualdez did not seem to welcome being thrown under the bus. He released his own video statement seemingly threatening to involve more people in the scandal if he is taken down. This is where we stand at the moment.

Court proceedings can be tedious and long. Romualdez will eventually have to endure detention while the legal process works itself out. He may or he may not accept this drawn out process placidly.

Meanwhile, the filing of charges against Romualdez changes the political dynamics drastically. He can no longer be the principal actor in ensuring the continuation of the current ruling political faction. He no longer wields the sort of power he once had to dictate on the congressmen and force other political players to submit.

With Romualdez marginalized, the ruling faction lost its most valuable political operative. No one has risen to replace him with approximately the same influence and logistics. The ruling faction does not seem to have assembled a political executive committee to fill the void the beleaguered Romualdez leaves. This as we begin the run-up to the vital 2028 elections.

The President is quickly losing his handle on political outcomes. He does not even have a reliable political party to draw support from. His Partido Federal is a joke. He has no mass movement to support his vision – whatever that vision might be. This while his public approval ratings continue to plumb new depths.

Romualdez, while he was there, did not build a stable coalition of forces to ensure support. He relied on buying legitimacy. Transactional politics never builds a reliable political base.

Instead of organized political forces, the ruling faction leans on troll armies to win the daily political tit-for-tat. Even on that most transient of terrains, the administration is losing.

Worse, the economic situation is not cooperating. Prices are rising. Life becomes more miserable by the day for all Filipinos.

Everyone now pays a price for the transactional politics that overwhelmed us.