So the picture is now getting clearer on the role of the military during elections and how the people in the Comelec works wonder in directing the results of the elections.

Warning: Be careful especially if you are taking bus or train or around a big crowd. I’m a little paranoid but I need to tell you that there might be some incidences of criminal acts or a major news like bombing a mall. All I’m saying is that they might use some diversionary tactic to distract the attention of the people. Again, be careful and be vigilant.

No way out
By Conrado I. Generoso

TIME Asian edition’s June 13 issue has President Gloria Arroyo on the cover with the title “The Lord Put Me Here,” quoting GMA herself. Coming as it does at the height of the Senate probe of allegations her husband, son, and brother-in-law are on the jueteng-payola take—and with the ghost of Bong Pineda continuing to hound her since she became senator—the cover could have been more appropriately titled: “The Jueteng Lord Put Me Here.”

But unlike in the case of her predecessor, it is not jueteng that will likely seal GMA’s doom. Rather it is Garcigate, or the Garcillano tapes.

For unlike in the jueteng issue, in which the President had taken a categorical “no-member-of-my-family-will-be-spared” stand, GMA has kept mum about the Garcillano tapes and left it to her flip-flopping subalterns to make conflicting statements.

One is reminded of the late US President Richard Nixon in the early days of the Watergate scandal. Remember, what eventually led to Nixon’s downfall was not the Watergate break-in but the ensuing cover-up and Nixon’s taped conversations with his men.

Nixon and his men fought hard to have the tapes sealed—even invoking the national-security argument—but after hearing all arguments, the US Supreme Court on July 24, 1974, ordered Nixon to turnover the tapes to the US Senate that was then investigating Watergate—with instructions to delete portions that involved national security.

Since Nixon’s taping of the conversations did not have permission from the people he talked with, the tapes were initially deemed illegally obtained and constituted a violation of the constitutional right to privacy. But the Supreme Court, weighing such argument against greater consideration—truth, justice, and the American national interest—decided that they should be given to the Senate committee as evidence in the Watergate scandal.

The decision to make the tapes available to the US Senate paved the way for their use in the subsequent impeachment case against Nixon. Three days after the US Supreme Court decision, the US House of Representatives passed the first of three articles of impeachment (for obstruction of justice) against Nixon. On August 9, 1974, Nixon resigned.

Malacanang and Justice Secretary Raul Gonzales have been warning that the tape of the conversations was obtained by wiretapping—and therefore illegal—and that anyone possessing tapes or compact discs containing the conversations may be haled to court for violation of Republic Act 4200 or the Anti-Wiretapping Law. Even the National Telecommunications Commission, which is under the Office of the President, has warned broadcast stations against airing contents of the tapes or CDs or face closure.

What they do not realize is that by insisting on this stance, they are shooting themselves in the foot. And they are digging a bigger and deeper hole for GMA.

First of all, they have already admitted that indeed the telephone calls and conversations took place and that either the President’s or Comelec commissioner Virgilio Garcillano’s phone was tapped. (Recall that Malacanang even warned that if the President could be wiretapped, what security do ordinary citizens have?)

It then leaves only to prove that the tapes have not been altered or tampered with—and there goes the end of Gloria Arroyo.

That’s why it would do well for former NBI deputy director Samuel Ong to surrender now and ask for a one-day trial—not a day longer—since evidence is already on hand and very strong.

In order to convict Ong of violating the Anti-Wiretapping Law, government prosecutors would have to present as evidence the tape of the wiretapped conversations between GMA and Garcillano—otherwise they have no case.

The day after, the opposition can then—on the basis of the contents of the tapes—file an impeachment complaint against GMA for violation of the constitution, high crimes, and treason. There can be no higher crime, no greater treason in a democracy than to subvert the electoral will.

Since the tapes of the wiretapped conversations have been previously presented in court, GMA’s lawyers cannot then argue against their presentation in the impeachment trial.
Even if GMA’s political allies—by sheer dictatorship of numbers—manage to thwart any impeachment initiative, Arroyo would have been so weakened by this scandal that she would be unfit to govern. One way or the other, she has to go.

For now, she may think na nakaisa siya noong eleksiyon.

But as we are taught in the elementary grades about the parable of the monkey and the turtle, “Tuso man daw ang matsing napaglalalangan din.”