Far From Neutral Notions - Philippine politics, culture and stuff

Norberto Gonzales, that means you

The Senate didn’t have to cite National Security Adviser Norberto Gonzales for contempt - Heaven knows it’s unsettled some people. And I don’t particularly blame them; this is a committee, after all, that has somebody named Jinggoy in it. So yes, maybe Gonzales’ impersonation of Bill and Ted got the better of our Senators, and they may have overreacted a bit. After all, it was fairly obvious what the panel was after - namely, Gonzales incriminating GMA. No, they didn’t get that.

But whether or not the Senate cited the National Security Adviser for contempt, I certainly do. As a Filipino, I hold Mr. Gonzales in contempt - not the legal kind, I’m not a lawyer and God forbid I ever become one - but the personal kind. And seeing as how he is supposed to be GMA’s alter ego¹ when it comes to matters of national security, I hold GMA in contempt as well. Contempt may even be too nice a word.

He doesn’t know who’s paying for the Venable contract, just that it’s not the taxpayers’ money. He says he didn’t have the approval of the President when he signed the contract. And in breaking news, the devil just bought stock options on sweaters and a jumbo jet crashed in the Pacific after hitting a flock of pigs².

Humor me and forget the legal arguments [ burden of proof, shadow of doubt, whatever ] for a moment - would you have done something like that? If you ran a business, would you go into a US$ 50 million, 6 month contract that would effectively allow them to to interfere in the inner workings of your business, not knowing who’s going to foot the bill and without the consent of upper management? Let me add one more analogy, say you’re the husband. Would you do pay that much money to a marriage counselor without telling your wife? Even if the amounts involved were in the thousands of pesos range, I wouldn’t do it. But then again, Satur Ocampo never demanded for my resignation either, so I guess it’s a matter of perspective?

I don’t know about GMA and Mr. Gonzales, but my perspective is coming from a regular citizen’s point of view who’s still paying for the debts Marcos incurred and is trying to deal with the devalued peso, rising oil and commodity prices (which will rise even further with the eVAT), and steady demands from his girlfriend that they “go out more often”. I’m sorry but I cannot take a more rational view of this.

Bad Advice

As the case may be, I’m expecting Mr. Gonzales’ resignation any day now, or GMA may just fire him after the Senate’s through with him. If on the off chance he did this by himself, and GMA actually followed his advice, I wouldn’t be surprised if there really is an Al-Quaeda stronghold somewhere in them there hills, along with thousands of NPA soldiers, the massive fleet China is mobilizing against us and the new species ornithologists just discovered in Palawan (the white blackbird - puting tagak), since he’s doing such a bad job with our national security. I have to hand it to Gonzales though. He’s playing the role of scapegoat rather well; I just wonder what GMA offered him so he’d do this to himself. Then again, given our propensity to forget, he might just run for Senator one of these days.

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