Bu-lat-lat (boo-lat-lat) verb: to search, probe, investigate, inquire; to unearth facts

Issue No. 26                       August 11 -18,  2001                    Quezon City, Philippines

The Political Animal
Teddy A. Casiño

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The Corpus-Lacson saga: the real score

Let’s see. The last time we checked, the score was 2-4.

Intelligence Chief Col. Victor Corpus scored first by leaking to the press a post-operations report on an intelligence mission sent to the US to investigate Sen. Panfilo Lacson’s and former Pres. Joseph Estrada’s illegal bank accounts. The report said both men had between themselves nearly $1 billion stashed away in 18 bank accounts in the US, Hong Kong and Canada.

The money was said to have been amassed from drug-trafficking, kidnapping, smuggling and other illegal activities since 1996, with then Vice Pres. Estrada and Lacson in the Presidential Anti-Crime Commission (PACC).

Lacson was obviously prepared to defend himself. In a privilege speech delivered a day after the expose, he called Corpus and his men lazy and stupid, citing the misnumbering of most accounts as tell-tale signs that everything was carelessly fabricated to suit the political agenda of Corpus and the ruling party. He issued a document authorizing Corpus to withdraw money in all of his alleged accounts after an official of Citibank denied the existence of such accounts. The score, 1-1.

Lacson also tried to turn the tables on Corpus, persuading his colleagues in the minority to question the right of Corpus and the ISAFP to investigate members of the Senate. Score, 1-2 Lacson.

Corpus fought back on Wednesday. He showed the press a statement from Al Santoli, a senior national security and foreign policy adviser of US Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, that US authorities were in fact investigating Lacson’s possible involvement in money laundering activities. He also chided Lacson for misspelling his name in the authorization Lacson earlier made. Score, 2-2.

Corpus took the lead 3-2 on Thursday, with Lacson’s admission that he indeed went to Hong Kong recently. This bolstered Corpus’s claim that Lacson made the trip to withdraw all his accounts there.

On Friday, it became 4-2 in favor of Corpus with an assist pass from Reynaldo Wycoco of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI). The NBI chief told the press, but without showing the documents, that the US State Department has confirmed the existence of at least $50 million in Lacson’s California bank accounts. All Lacson could say was “hogwash.”

Lacson has also been trying to score points by calling Corpus a communist deep penetration agent but with little success. I guess people are not that stupid anymore.

While everyone was watching the Corpus-Lacson duel, First Gentlemen Mike Arroyo scored a spectacular slam dunk, with the telecom franchise deal finally buried in all the ensuing excitement.

Pres. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo scored several points from the outside, with Lacson getting farther and farther away from the goal of 2004, what with Corpus constantly bugging him from all sides.

Even Sen. Loi Estrada got away with a brownie point for denying her and her husband’s involvement in the controversy. She and her colleagues in the minority have made it impossible for the majority under Sen. Frank Drilon to score, what with their impregnable defense led by the filibustering Sen. Serge Osmeña.

In far-away Basilan, the Abu Sayyaf keeps running rings around the Armed Forces of the Philippines (AFP), with 13 hostages in counting. The AFP continued to lose even bigger credibility points after Fr. Cirilo Nacorda’s revelations about how military officials connived with the Abu Sayyaf in Lamitan town, where the bandit group miraculously escaped an AFP blockade last June.

In other parts of the countryside, the AFP keeps on piling up the scoreboard with summary killings and scores of human rights violations against suspected members and supporters of the New People’s Army (NPA).