August 12, 2005

FROM THE BARREL OF MY PEN
By Gonzalo “Jun” Policarpio

ARMED AND DANGEROUS!


He may look innocent as Rosemary’s baby and meek as a lamb but Mr. Mike Defensor, the diehard Arroyo fan and defender, can be armed and dangerous. He must have mastered the art of deceit with his remarkable skill in convincing the gullible to look at a crooked line as a straight line.

Perhaps anointed by Malacanang to “search and destroy” the enemies of his lady and master, he targeted the “Garci tapes” to be invalidated by all wicked means possible. He used the inconclusive report of an independent U.S. based sound recording expert, Barry G. Dickey and a local audio engineer with a string of criminal records. Then he boasted to the media that this “will kill the impeachment complaint.”

Mr. Defensor did not go to the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation to get an authentication for obvious reasons. Definitely he will not be satisfied with the FBI report. He would not be able to say “Yes, it is the voice of the President, but that is not the President talking.” What he presumably did was submit a spliced copy of the tape to Dickey for examination to get the report he needed. That indeed was the work of a genius with a questionable mind.

Senator Ping Lacson should not allow himself to be always outwitted by President Arroyo’s whiz kid, an ex-student activist trained in the art of mind manipulation. Defensor’s fingerprints were all over the 2003 abduction of Lacson’s witness, Eugenio Mahusay Jr. against the President’s husband at the height of the Jose Pidal Money Laundering hearings. His fingerprints can also be traced in the “rescue” of Army intelligence agent, Vidal Doble, who confessed as the eavesdropper of the Gloria-Garci conversations. Both witnesses recanted their testimonies because they were tampered. Where’s the accounting?

Before he left his tour of duty in the Philippines U.S. Charge d’Affaires, Joseph Mussomeli criticized the Philippine government for of a lack of accountability and undue tolerance of wrongdoing which may be attributable to the people’s culture and virtues. In a recent speech before the Foreign Correspondents Association of the Phiippines(FOCAP), he said that Filipinos put loyalty to relatives and friends over the notion of the rule of law. He advised that “strengthening of the rule of law is at the heart of the solution to so many problems affecting the country today.”

Mike Defensor is just one of Gloria Arroyo’s henchmen commissioned to keep her in power. He once told the media that her embattled president “will never resign.” If the U.S. declares that it will not support another “people power” or other extra-consitutional means to remove a sitting president from power, it may not also support another “revolution from the top” a la Ferdinand Marcos. But when the Filipino people decide to protect their sovereignty by all means, they know what is best for them..

End