Before Jinggoy Estrada opened a new door in his life,
literally his detention cell at the refurbished custodial center of Camp Crame,
he encountered an emotional storm. He was going to leave his family, sleep in bed
alone for an indefinite number of days that can go into months and years, shirk
an enviable life of luxury and power, and go through the thorny road of trial
for the capital crime of plunder. Those gave him nightmares.
On June 23, came the moment of truth: no big talk was going to
hold back detention anymore. The indicted named Sexy was going through the
unsexiest pose of them all: fingerprinting and mug shot at the police camp. No
amount of showbiz drama and body language choreography could make up for the
disaster that waited to damn his movie-fashioned political career.
In the day of his surrender to the Philippine National
Police, as he came into the glare of media at his house in the Corinthian
Gardens, the senator’s eyes swelled. He held back tears, but could not. His
jaws quivered as he answered questions. Yes, he was still defiant. He was going
to yield to the authorities with head unbowed, he said, because he had done
nothing wrong. But he struck a distant mien from that brave stance, once, on the
podium of the Upper Chamber for a privilege speech denying having anything to
do with the Priority Development Assistance Fund scam. He had immensely
softened.
It was a nightmare indeed, but one that would be his
nation’s awakening. Was it ever possible for personalities like him and Senator
Bong Revilla to be so humbled? Was it ever foreseeable in the near future for
powerful political figures like them to go down from their lofty perch and go
through the police criminal procedure? Was it ever imaginable to see top government
officials and movie idols of their level lose clout and be forced to take the
finger print and mug shot, and later shamefully locked up?
That used to happen only to folks in the lower rungs of
society. But they happened to Bong and Jinggoy, capped by their iconic images melting
in the public esteem. And the people, who have been used to viewing the law as
a spider web where only the small get caught but the big ones pull through, were
starting to view power – specifically where it resides, differently.
There were things that were hard to believe in the country,
not the least the high and mighty going to prison. But Bong and Jinggoy are
where they are now, probably because they did not thought such could happen. They
must have always believed as the people did in the past that no crime can be
attached to them, that they were beyond the arm of the law, and out of reach of
punishment for violating it. Indeed, there was an era when these were so. But
the recent nightmares of the two riveting figures in Philippine politics today signify
such may no longer be the case.
The incarceration of the two top vote-garnering senators begs
the question: Could it have happened if the people have not awakened? Could it
have passed if public consciousness remains as it was? What have recently
unfolded in mass media about their fate were once untenable. But they happened,
because the people would no longer settle for less. It had become impossible
for the Department of Justice to merely sweep aside the news of the P10 billion
heist of the people’s PDAF money, not conduct an investigation, and avoid
filing the merited charges.
It has become impossible already to halt without any logical
conclusion the course of getting into the truth of the Janet Lim Napoles
racket, the connivance of senators and congressmen, and the modus operandi of
corruption in the halls of power. The overarching interest of the people not
only on the truth, but in seeing things done compelled it to go all the way,
eradicate the source of the evil, and do justice to the aggrieved. The awakened
citizenry would no longer permit anything short of them.
This was the new reality that slammed the effort of Jinggoy
and Bong to wriggle out of their mess. Politicians
and celebrities were losing power, because the people have begun to regain it.
Once, their word was bible truth. Now, most of it are either dismissed or taken
with tongue in check. The people know better to trust the politicians or take
them by their word.
Part of the nascent empowerment is the amount of information
accessible by citizens, coming to them no longer through the traditional mass
media, but alternative media at their fingertips, the cell phone in the age
of social networking. Ordinarily gullible segments of society have caught up
with the phenomenal advancement in the modes of information delivery available.
If Bong and Jinggoy can only find it in their brains to stop
their self-delusion, they will find out that it is hard to override anymore the
tide of awakening that has met with scepticism their denials and obfuscations
of criminal liability on the PDAF scam. The citizenry is getting truths long
hidden from it from sources other than that of traditional authority. Simply put, it is
getting them on its own, with big help from the ceaseless upgrading of information
and communication technology.
The people are getting information in amounts unheard of before.
With these, they weigh, they think, they analyze. They form their own conclusion.
Most of the time what comes out of the mouth of politicians are no longer given
any weight. They are heard not to be believed, but to believe the opposite. Because
of what the people know of the corruption that assail their daily lives, they
won’t go for other outcomes than that the public thieves in the guise of public
service are meted the brand of justice that they deserve, or at the very least subjected
to the course of justice to ferret out the truth. And when the thieves simply say,
“We did not steal,” all the more that they invite lynching.
Up to now, senator Jinggoy insists that he is just being
persecuted for being in the opposition. Hence, his predicament is allegedly all
about 2016, the administration’s plot to eliminate the imagined formidable
challenge he and his peers in the opposite camp will mount in the presidential
race. He either has come around to believing the deception or is clueless of
the fact that the people do not believe that angle. Even his camp takes caution
at giving credence to the political persecution theory, or personalities like Vice
President Jejomar Binay and other stalwarts of the United Nationalist Alliance
would have already rallied behind him. What got him and Bong Revilla was not politics of
the powers-that-be, but power already in the hands of the people. That power is
information.
Hopefully, the new door that Jinggoy has opened would lead
him to change for the better. The nation is awakening. His fate would have been
unthinkable yesterday. But today it’s become the compelling thought.
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