Category: enrile

eggie apostol laughed #enrilememoir

…in the chapter “Setting The Record Straight” of his memoir, Sen. Juan Ponce Enrile presents Eggie Apostol as an opportunistic social climber who curried his family’s favor during the martial law years to protect and advance her own business interests.

Enrile says he has no monopoly of the truth, so it is conceivable that he may have fudged facts in his desire to steer public perception away from what he is more popularly known for: the architect of martial law.

that’s from the first of three inquirer columns that butch hernandez, director of the eggie apostol foundation, devotes to a detailed response to enrile’s allegations re eggie.

Total Recall
 Eggie’s Mr & Ms
And then she laughed

Horror story, too

By Conrado de Quiros

IT COULDN’T have come at a better time—that is, the decision of a US Court of Appeals to cite the Marcoses for contempt for their contemptuous attitude toward an earlier judgment forbidding them from dissipating their assets. Imelda and Bongbong were found to have been trying to repatriate precious artworks, deemed part of the Marcos estate, and to have agreed with the previous Philippine administration to split their estate with it, with them retaining 25 percent of it tax-free.

The contempt judgment carries a hefty fine: $353.6 million. It will be added to the $2 billion a US district court awarded to the human rights victims in 1995 as compensation. “Human rights victims” sounds almost benign, referring as it does to the nearly 10,000 Filipinos who were tortured, “salvaged,” and made to disappear during martial law, who filed a class suit against the Marcoses shortly after 1986.

It couldn’t have come at a better time. It reminds us forcefully, and forcibly, of a couple of things.

At the very least, the scale of pillage the Marcoses wrought upon this land. The original class suit sought $10 billion in compensation from the Marcoses, already a gross undervaluation of the amount of loot they had amassed. The $2 billion that was actually awarded to the litigants is an astonishing amount, as is the $353.6 million. Our failure to appreciate the mind-boggling plunder this represents comes from the very mind-boggling-ness of the amounts. Their size gives them an air of unreality, an air of abstraction. In a thoroughly impoverished country like ours, where kids are seen lying on the pavement, sleeping the sleep not of the just but of the drugged, those amounts become almost ungraspable.

What helps to grasp it are things like the poster on malnutrition that came out during martial law. The poster showed a child in an utterly emaciated state, wasting away from lack of food, and a bauble-d Imelda representing the initiator of a nutrition program. The poster was meant to show how government cared for the poorest of the poor, but it had the unintended effect of showing instead why we had hungry kids. There, people said, pointing at the poster, was cause and effect: Imelda was the cause, the emaciated child was the effect. The poster disappeared from the city’s walls faster than you could say “the true, the good, and the beautiful.”

But the question that arises from all this talk of millions or indeed billions of dollars is how the Marcoses managed to acquire all that. Ferdinand was just a small-time politician—or hood; he was accused of shooting Julio Nalundasan, his father’s political rival, with a sniper’s rifle while the guy was brushing his teeth—and Imelda a poor cousin of the Romualdezes when they began. To have created an estate—what gentile airs that connotes!—worth that much, it makes the phrase “stealing the country blind” sound like a euphemism. That is not their estate, that is ours. That is not their wealth, that is ours. They have no right to use it as they please. Hell, they have no right to it.

At the very most, it reminds us of the horrors of martial law, and prevents the kind of revisionist rewriting of history Juan Ponce Enrile has begun. Etta Rosales is right, the contempt judgment is worth far more than the money it entails. “The contempt ruling means that the US courts are taking seriously the disrespect shown by the Marcoses. More than the heavy fines, this is a big embarrassment to the family who has shown no remorse for the deeds they have done.”

My own hope is that it goes more than embarrassing them to stopping them from carrying out the kind of political laundering Enrile has. Of course Enrile has also been the beneficiary of exceptional luck, quite apart from an exceptional share of the spoils as custodian of martial law, being there at the camps when the people arose against the regime he helped build and defend, and being the Senate president when the impeachment of the first Filipino chief justice took place. The Marcoses have not enjoyed the same breaks. But you never know, stranger things have happened in this country. This should help to stop things from getting even stranger.

Indeed, I hope that the victims of torture and the kin of the “salvaged” and disappeared take it upon themselves to publicize the accounts that are contained in the class suit. I attended one of the collective dredging of memory in the course of that suit in the 1990s, and some of the recollections there were truly harrowing. No horror story beats the capacity of human beings to inflict pain and harm on other human beings.

Enrile has been challenging the leftists to show proof of his guilt and of their innocence, claiming to have the documents that prove the complete opposite. All the victims have to do is bring up their personal accounts in the class suit to the public gaze to disprove him. What Enrile’s documents are, only he can say. What the victims’ documents are have been scrutinized by the American courts, from Manuel Real’s Honolulu court, which ruled in their favor, to the higher courts that continued to rule in their favor after various appeals by the Marcoses. Those documents, not quite incidentally, often mention Enrile as the one who signed the victims’ ASSOs (arrest, seizure and search orders). He may not have directly ordered their torture or “salvaging,” or disappearance, but neither did Marcos. And Judge Real, as well as the other American judges, who heard the class suit found him guilty anyway by command responsibility, or by creating the conditions, policies, and premises that made them possible.

That is one horror story for Undas, too, Marcos, Enrile, and the others who never had to wear masks to horrify the country for so long.

the ambush was “staged”

I said the ambush was staged, but I did not say who staged it… I never said I faked it or staged my own ambush… What do they think, that I will park my car and shoot it? 

that’s senate president juan ponce enrile in a howie severino interview two days ago.  here’s his version of the september 22, 1972 ambush according to inquirer:

… his three-vehicle convoy was driving through Wack Wack subdivision on his way home to Dasmariñas Village from Camp Aguinaldo where he had just briefed top military officers on the implementation of martial law.

“A speeding car rushed and passed the escort car where I was riding. Suddenly, it opened several bursts of gunfire toward my car and sped away. The attack was so sudden that it caught everyone by surprise. No one in the convoy was able to fire back,” Enrile said in the book.

and here’s the version of oscar lopez, patriarch of the lopez family that owns ABS-CBN Publishing Inc. that published enrile’s book.

Oscar Lopez, who lived in Wack Wack where the ambush supposedly took place, narrated his memory of that fateful night in the 2000 book, “Phoenix: The Saga of the Lopez Family.”

“After the shooting died down, I went out. I took a peek at what was happening outside my fence, and I saw this car riddled with bullets. Nobody was hurt; there was no blood. The car was empty,” Lopez said in the book.

The car was Enrile’s. At the time, Lopez did not know who owned the car, but he did know “it had been no ambush.”

“Our driver happened to be bringing our car into our driveway at around that time, so he saw the whole thing. He told me that there was this car that came by and stopped beside a Meralco post. Some people started riddling it with bullets to make it look like it was ambushed. But nobody got killed or anything like that. My driver saw this. He was describing it to me,” Lopez said.

we need to know what enrile really said.  maybe enrile remembers it correctly, he only said that the ambush was “staged,” and since media didn’t ask, staged by whom, it is now open to interpretation; had the question been asked, then enrile might have answered, by the dissidents (as it seems he is alleging, correct me if i’m wrong), and we would not be arguing about this now.

and then, again, if it had been a real ambush by the communists, and he had had a chance to say that it was staged by the communists, that would have sounded oh-so-like marcos, di ba, and it would have worked against him.  why even bring it up at such a time when he was appealing for our sympathy and support?  why would he, master of spin, even risk being likened to marcos who blamed everything on the communists?

the consensus of countless people, filipinos and foreigners, who heard that presscon is that he said, in effect, that it was faked.  and it makes sense, considering that at the time, he was out to convince us that he had turned his back on marcos, and what better way than to confirm what we had suspected all along about that ambush, and also about cheating in cagayan.  of course we lapped it all up, it was all so deliciously anti-marcos.

so now he’s saying he said nothing of the kind.  it was a true ambush.  which means what, we all misheard him in feb 22, 1972 1986 and it’s taken him this long to straighten us out?

how about, let’s hear those radio veritas tapes of that presscon.  i’ve tried “Listen to History: The Veritas/Radyo Bandido Broadcasts – February 22-25, 1986.” Interaksyon Online. February 2012 but i can’t find the ambush quote in the replays that are putol-putol.  maybe i just missed it.  how about uploading the 7 pm presscon in one go?  are there competent transcripts of the proceedings?

but the real question is, why is enrile suddenly so keen now, after 26 long years, to make the point that it was a real ambush.  is he playing with us?  are lawyers betting, he’s so galing, he can convince the people that it was for real, even if he has said it was fake?  siguro naman hindi, but that would be wild.

the only other explanation that occurs to me is that it could be in defense of marcos.  perhaps he thinks  it would make marcos smell less foul if we deleted from our memory banks the fake ambush; after all, marcos did not need such a pretext to declare martial law that night?

we believed him then, but he’s saying we heard wrong then.  so why should we believe him now, we may be hearing him wrong yet again.  once burned, twice shy.

JPE and cyber libel

By Rene Saguisag

THe Inquirer asked: “But didn’t he [JPE] himself tell the public on Feb. 22, 1986, as he and . . . Ramos barricaded themselves at Camp Aguinaldo after the discovery of their coup plot. . . , that the ambush was fake? Together with Ramos and [soldiers] that formed the Reform the AFP Movement (RAM), Enrile, speaking on radio, confessed, among other things, that Marcos ordered the staging of the ambush to contrive a final act by his [foes] that forced him to place the country under martial law. The Filipinos forgave him, and trooped to Edsa by the millions to shield him and Ramos and their troops against an assault by Marcos’ military.” PDI, September 30, 2012, A8, col. 1.

If JPE lies, will son Jackie with his Alfie Anido problem? Fruit does not fall far from the tree? The version in the auto-bio that there was no fake ambush seems to be revisionism by one who has done good, validating that all autobiography is vanity (Durants). Falsus in uno, falsus in omnibus?

I borrowed a copy of JPE’s auto-bio last Tuesday, but had time only to skim it, with all else I have to do. Kindly repeatedly invited to the book launch by JPE’s staff and the sponsoring Lopezes, I could not go. I was curious on JPE’s takes on certain items. Like 1) JPE’s supposed 1986 shouting match with PCGG’s Ramon Diaz, presumably over ill-gotten wealth. Gutsy of RD as the rest of us had been tsunamied by the JPE-FVR getaway. No mention. 2) How JPE got word on the need to meet Prez Cory who fired him on Nov. 23, 1986, a Sunday, and whether what happened was what he had expected. Page 665. Cryptic. Elliptical 3) Our early post-Edsa meets on freeing all political detainees, etc. In Club Filipino and Camp Crame meets were difficult and emotional. Uncle Jovy Salonga and I were committed to release all such detainees, a battle cry of years, which unimplemented, would put our credibility on the line right off. FVR was taciturn. JPE was against, as to the extreme left. Page 660. JPE wrote about the Ver-Edna romantic rumors. Page 482. What about his own love life? Page 37. GFs, he said in one memorable interview.

JPE wrote that on the night of Feb. 25, 1986: “I met President Aquino in an open area behind the house of Mrs. Josephine Reyes. With her were Jimmy Ongpin, Nene Pimentel, and [ex-]Justice Cecilia Muñoz Palma, Joker Arroyo, Ramon Mitra, Jojo Binay, Ernie Maceda, Rene Saguisag, and others. . . . President Aquino asked someone to call Ambassador Bosworth and she talked to him. All of a sudden, I heard her exclaim, “No! I do not want him here. I want him out of the country!” I was certain her remarks meant President Marcos.” Page 635. “. [S]hortly after her oath-taking, Cory held court at the head of the huge rectangular table in the cabinet room where Marcos had presided. Doy Laurel as Vice President sat normally to her right and I sat next to Doy as the Defense Secretary. To her left was Joker, her first Executive Secretary, who was pretty much the one steering the meeting. The rest of the cabinet members like Nene P, Neptali G, Rene Saguisag, Bobbit Sanchez, Ernie M, and the others occupied the other seats.” Page 656. To those still doubting I was Present at the Creation, belat kayo lahat. But, As Cory, Jr. I could not move freely as I wished. JPE, I was told, would not touch our food in our Cabinet meets. Poison concern?

The book affirms that he was behind forming ACCRA (Page 350) which he would deny at the time, if my memory is true. Ed Angara asked me at Manila Hotel during a Con-Con lunch break to join it; I declined. I dimly recall JPE suing a mag for mentioning the JPE-ACCRA link in he 80’s. In 1972 an ACCRA partner showed me around the ACCRA office in a Philbanking Bldg. on Ayala and pointed to JPE’s room. Another terminological inexactitude?

Another sizzling topic. Did the cybercrime law (R.A. No. 10175) change the notion of libel?

The penalty therefor was upped by R.A. No. 10175 but the Supreme Court (SC) has been liberal in acquittals and in imposing libel penalties, only a fine in the last decade given more-speech-not-less culture. But, no one should libel whatever the medium; the SC is there to temper. Trial courts may reflect the local power situation. A severe penalty can be nullified as impermissible under the substantive due process and equal protection clauses in a case filed by an actually prejudiced person in a real, not hypothetical, case; particularly so where the media is concerned. The SC strokes and massages the press.

Can Sen. TG Guingona, crying Uncle! make sumbong to the SC after he failed to convince his colleagues? I question too whether a Senator can violate the Consti by being a party. Lawyers-lawmakers are not supposed to appear in courts. What about non-lawyers? May both be circumventive? I prefer the prudential approach of Sen. Chiz Escudero, Sen. Allan Cayetano and Rep. Sonny Angara. They will work to amend and not have the SC do the dirty job. What TG is doing it to show up the executive and legislative branches as constitutional innocents. Given the trio’s initiative the SC should show judicial restraint: give Congress time to “correct” its work. I admire the courage of any Senator going to the SC asserting that close to 300 lawmakers abetted by PNoy’s legal team—do not know the Consti. Is TG the proper party, a lawmaker who lost in the Senate voting? And there is no actual case or controversy involving anyone personally on which he seeks an SC veto via an advisory opinion. Solons may differ but the Cabinet must speak with a single voice.

The Revised Penal Code penalizes libel by six months and one day to four years and two months and a fine ranging from P200 to P6,000, or both, in addition to the victim’s civil suit for damages. Courts may impose a fine, or imprisonment, or both, and award crippling damages.

We redeem valuable human material and prevent unnecessary deprivation of personal liberty and economic usefulness with due regard to the the social order. Buatis v. People, 485 SCRA 275, 291 (2006)(libel). In Sazon v. CA, 255 SCRA 692, 703 (1996) (libel) the SC ruled that “ the decision of the Court of Appeals is hereby AFFIRMED with the modification that, in lieu of imprisonment and fine, the penalty . . . shall be a fine of [3,000].” Better than having the SC shame the other branches, and immunize those saying what they think of Justices and their ancestors. To doubt is to sustain – Malcolm. The elected can cure the defects. Anyone calling a Justice a rapist online will be out of line and cannot be insulated from suit. But, the Right thing must be done by the Right party at the Right Time in the Right Way and for the Right reason. My Five R’s.