JGL Eye

By JOSEPH G. LARIOSA

(© 2009 Journal Group Link International)

C HICAGO, Illinois (JGLi) – There is no doubt, Joseph Estrada’s second bid to return to Malacañang will be sweeter if he can make a successful comeback.

But it looks like Mr. Estrada will be playing the legendary role of a Greek king named Sisyphus, who offended the God Zeus. Zeus punished him to roll a huge boulder to the top of a steep hill; each time the boulder neared the top, it rolled back down and Sisyphus was forced to start again.

If only Mr. Estrada was picky with his Cabinet and his choice of his military and police officers during his first crack at the presidency, he would not have been struggling to run for president in the 2010 elections.

After Mr. Estrada announced that he was running for president, a lawyer filed prematurely to disqualify him. Naturally, the Supreme Court dismissed it.

And after Mr. Estrada filed his certificate of candidacy for president, another lawyer filed a case to disqualify him before the Commission on Election, citing constitutional bar and being a “bad precedent.”

I believe Mr. Estrada is going to win the round before the Comelec, which will gladly pass the buck to the Supreme Court to resolve the issue once and for all.

But based on the arguments raised by Justice Magdangal B. Elma that the presidential reelection ban applies only to a sitting or incumbent president to prevent said president from using his vast powers to ensure his reelection, I believe, Mr. Estrada is going to get the support of the Supreme Court.

ESTRADA WILL BE ALLOWED TO RUN

A nd besides, since President Estrada served only two years and eight months of his six-year presidential term of office, the “absolute ban” on reelection is not applicable to him because the ban only applies if the president held office for four years.

With that pesky matter outside the window, let’s go back to what went wrong with the aborted Estrada presidency.

When he was vice president, I got the impression from Mr. Estrada that he would be very successful in office because he impressed upon me that he would only appoint members of his official family with people with known probity and without checkered past.

But some of those that he got were bootlickers, who never told him the truth. Or maybe, some of them told Mr. Estrada the truth but Mr. Estrada ignored them.

For instance, Estrada’s men supported the lie that when Mr. Estrada was in the second grade at Ateneo de Manila University in Quezon City, he had a quarrel with an American, who bullied a classmate.

Based on my investigation, it turned out that that the “American” was really a Filipino, who was an adopted son of a black American military serviceman.

The sister of Erap’s “American” classmate was so mad at Erap and his handlers for making a “bad guy” out of her brother that she cursed the Erap presidency even as Erap was basking in popularity.

By failing to go after the killers of Dacer and Corbito, which happened under Mr. Estrada’s watch, Joseph Estrada cannot escape the blame. In the same way that Ferdinand Marcos was being blamed for the assassination of Sen. Benigno Aquino because it happened under Mr. Marcos’ watch. – Joseph G. Lariosa

If I were Erap, he should have reached out and listened to his old friends to get to the truth, and not to rely too much on his Chinese cronies and other drinking buddies that made up his cordon sanitaire.

PRESIDENTS NEED THE TRUTH TO GOVERN

I now realize why President Barack Obama would not let go off his Blackberry. Despite the objections of his Secret Service protectors that his Blackberry is vulnerable to being hacked that could compromise his security, Mr. Obama still wanted to keep his old toy.

With the Salahis couple crashing a White House state dinner even without invitation, I don’t know if Mr. Obama will change his mind.

I believe Mr. Obama still would like to keep his Blackberry in order to keep his ear to the ground. He does not want to lose contacts with his old friends, whom he could talk to, to validate the information given to him by his White House advisers.

If Erap wins on May 10 and he would like to complete his unfinished term of office, he should not make the mistake of losing contacts with some of his old friends, who supported him in his campaign.

Even if he fails to offer them jobs in his administration, he can still count on some of his old friends for advice and to validate if he is being fed the truth by his cordon sanitaire.

If he has an informed decision based on the truth, he won’t go wrong.

And he should be brave enough to handle the truth.

He should always learn from the mistakes. But if he repeats the same mistake, he should be man enough to accept full responsibility for his actions and the actions of his functionaries.

This is the very essence of “command responsibility,” which means that superiors that ordered, or "should have known," of such violations yet failed to intervene are also criminally liable.”

BUCK STOPS AT THE PRESIDENT

In other words, at the first opportunity that he heard of the murders of his family friend Salvador “Bubby” Dacer and Dacer’s driver, Emmanuel Corbito, Mr. Estrada should have ordered an investigation so the responsible parties would have been prosecuted.

By failing to go after the killers of Dacer and Corbito, which happened under Mr. Estrada’s watch, Mr. Estrada cannot escape the blame. In the same way that Ferdinand Marcos was being blamed for the assassination of Sen. Benigno Aquino because it happened under Mr. Marcos’ watch.

As U.S. President Harry S. Truman would say, “The buck stops with me.” Truman didn't 'pass the buck' to anyone else but accepted personal responsibility for the way the country was governed. (lariosa_jos@sbcglobal.net)

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