Analysis
The Falsehood Commission
Mrs. Arroyo’s Truth
Commission is likely to turn into a total war against truth, first because
the very government accused of wrong-doing will in effect investigate
itself; second because it is likely to be used to exonerate its creator;
and third because it will be used to persecute Mrs. Arroyo’s accusers.
Truth can only be the Arroyo commission’s first casualty, as well as its
last.
By the Center
for People Empowerment in Governance
Posted by Bulatlat
THE ARROYO
government, as Archbishop Oscar Cruz so aptly describes it, is without
values, morals and principles, and one of the values it least respects is
truth. The bribery and harassment of witnesses implicating Mrs. Arroyo
and her family in the jueteng pay-offs scandal and in electoral fraud
which Archbishop Cruz alleges is in fact not the only way to keep the
truth from the public to which Mrs. Arroyo and her gang have resorted.
They have themselves taken liberties with the truth at various times, and
from all appearances are prepared to keep doing so.
When the “Hello Garci”
scandal was about to break out last June, Malacañang tried to discredit
whatever recordings the opposition would make public by claiming that
these had been doctored, and that, indeed, it had the original ones—in
which a woman who sounded like Mrs. Arroyo was talking to someone
Malacañang said was a “Gary” who was other than “Garci” (former Comelec
Commissioner Virgilio Garcellano).
In making this claim,
Press Secretary Ignacio Bunye initially said the woman was definitely Mrs.
Arroyo, only to declare later that he wasn’t sure, and that, in any case,
he was only expressing an opinion. Later Mrs. Arroyo herself admitted to a
mere “lapse in judgment” in talking to the man in the tapes—whom she would
neither confirm nor deny was Garcillano—supposedly to “protect” her
votes.
The list goes on and
on, and not only in connection with the “Hello Garci” and jueteng
scandals. Mrs. Arroyo’s State of the Nation Address, for example, was
replete with claims, such as her having supposedly generated four million
jobs in four years, and her government’s providing the homeless with
shelter, that in other cultures would have been dismissed as outright
lies.
But as long as the
Arroyo government’s list of lies already is, it is likely to lengthen
further, ironically through, among other vehicles, the so-called “Truth
Commission” Mrs. Arroyo said last July 19 she would organize, and whose
membership she said she would announce by July 25.
Mrs. Arroyo has so
far done neither, primarily because no one with an ounce of self-respect
would like to be identified with it. Mrs. Arroyo, however, will not be
deterred, and is determined to create the Commission, since, it was clear
from the very moment she announced her willingness to create it, that it
is the means through which she plans to exonerate herself.
She has thus
announced that (1) the commission would have no power other than that of
fact-finding, and (2) its mandate would include not only the investigation
of the charges of electoral fraud leveled against her, but also the
“destabilization conspiracy” that Malacañang claims was behind the
allegations.
Although an outrage
from the very beginning—not only would the accused create a body to
investigate herself, much like a murderer’s selecting the judge and jury
in his own trial—that she should also turn the tables on her accusers by
investigating them, which is roughly equivalent to the same murderer’s
ordering the judge to investigate the prosecutor was expected.
The alacrity with
which Mrs. Arroyo grabbed at the suggestion of the University of
Santo Tomas,
the Catholic Bishops Conference of the
Philippines, and the Bishops-Businessmen’s
Conference to create the commission was a clear indication that their
suggestion was exactly what she wanted. Her inclusion of the so-called
“destabilization conspiracy” against her in the yet-to-be-created
commission is now saying that she intends to use the commission not only
to conceal rather than find the truth, but also to blame the crisis on her
accusers.
Mrs. Arroyo will
first of all create the commission through an executive order. She will
define its functions. She will decide its responsibilities. She will
specify its objectives, membership, and organization. She will assign it a
budget. She will name the members herself. And, as she announced last
July 27, she will include in its mandate not only that of looking into the
allegations that she cheated in the May 2004 elections with the connivance
of key Commission on Elections as well as police, military and civilian
bureaucracy officials, but also that of looking into the “conspiracy”
supposedly behind the allegations against her.
Under these
circumstances the commission Mrs. Arroyo plans to create might as well be
called The Falsehood Commission. It is obvious why. Truth
commissions—only five were created in the last two decades in testimony of
the fact they are not to be taken lightly—are first of all premised on the
assumption that a wrong has been committed.
In Chile, South
Africa, Argentina, Peru and El Salvador, the wrong-doing of the previous
government was a given and well established. The mission of the truth
commissions in each of these countries was to determine the causes of such
state-sponsored crimes as arbitrary arrests, torture, kidnapping, force
disappearances and murder so that they may never again be repeated. In
addition, they were meant to identify and punish the guilty, as well as
compensate the victims as preconditions for the healing and reconciliation
that was needed.
Especially critical
in the credibility and integrity of truth commissions is who creates
them—a fact obvious to anyone except Mrs. Arroyo and company. The truth
commission of Chile was thus created by the successor of General Augusto
Pinochet; that of South Africa by Nelson Mandela after the collapse of
apartheid; Argentina’s by Raul Alfonsin; El Salvador’s by the United
Nations; and Peru’s by Alejandro Toledo to investigate the regime of his
predecessor Alberto Fujimori.
The “Truth
Commission” is an idea whose time has not yet come in the Philippines. It
is best left for the successor to the Arroyo government to create. A bad
idea from the start if created and implemented by the very officials
accused of conspiracy and other high crimes against the Constitution, in
the hands of Mrs. Arroyo and her cabal of liars it is likely to turn into
a total war against truth, first because the very government accused of
wrong-doing will in effect investigate itself; second because it is likely
to be used to exonerate its creator; and third because it will be used to
persecute Mrs. Arroyo’s accusers. Truth can only be the Arroyo
commission’s first casualty, as well as its last.
Contact Person:
Prof. Luis V. Teodoro
Telefax: (+632) 929-9526 and Tel. No. 9285406
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