MANILA
The real highlight of the Senate hearing on the pork barrel scam last Nov. 7 was not the appearance of alleged pork queen Janet Lim Napoles. That much-touted Senate debut was a non-event. As the Brits like to say, it was a damp squib, a dud of a firecracker.
The real substance came when whistleblower Benhur Luy rattled off project amounts and the corresponding money figures that allegedly went to lawmakers.
According to Luy, Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile got P726.55 million in pork barrel allocations and a kickback of P363.2 million. Bong Revilla, P652 milion in pork and P326 million kickbacks, and Jinggoy Estrada, a pork budget of P751.5 million and P375.7 million that he could pocket (P183.79 million was actually released). There were other lawmakers involved, but the amounts they allegedly got were not as obscenely huge.
It’s fantabulous amounts like these that roil the people, the figures that rub their spleens raw. It’s what scandalizes the public, the kind of offensive lowdown that sends them out to the streets to vent. As well they should if the information is true, which seems to be up to now.
The senators’ alleged kickbacks had been exposed before but listening to them stated at the hearing somehow still sounded like a revelation. This is the nitty-gritty of this case, we’re talking big bucks here. As a crusty US senator once commented: “A billion here, a billion there, soon we’ll be talking real money.”
The amounts Luy read into the record were only in millions, but they were still real money. And of course the Napoles scam is alleged to have cost the Filipino people a total of P10 billion pesos.
If Napoles’s performance was a non-event, the rest of the hearing was equally devoid of substance. It was just a humdrum tableau of talking heads, mouthing predictable motherhood and other inconsequential statements.
With an exception. Sen. Miriam Santiago had earlier warned the public that the hearing would be a circus. She proved herself correct by providing the “entertainment” herself. She began her monologue (yes, it was a monologue) by invoking the need and importance of civility in the Senate. Then she proceeded to violate what she had just said by being uncivil toward Napoles. She mocked, insulted, degraded, bullied and embarrassed her.
Surely there are more effective ways of getting out the truth from witnesses other than by being rude, self-important and even irrelevant.
Judging from the way Napoles answered questions, or more correctly how she didn’t answer them, this case will go on what will seem to be forever. Napoles is not in any mood to be cooperative. She doesn’t appear to be in a revealing mode. It would be the height of naivete to expect a torrent of revelations from her.
She was edgy, she smiled a couple of times. Her tenseness was palpable. Which was to be expected from the so-called mother of all scams.
Her court trial will not be smooth at all; nothing will flow as syrup on a hotcake. Dilatory tactics will dominate the trial, her lawyers will make their prosecution counterparts jump through hoops, and legal hurdles will be thrown at every possible juncture.
If Napoles is not the scam’s mastermind, as is widely believed, then she must be protecting the identity of the real orchestrator(s). Will she eventually talk and reveal everything, including the scam’s real brains and manipulators? Only if her court interrogators do a better job than the senators.
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