Always innocent, never guilty

Always innocent, never guilty | Daily Tribune

With the holidays over, the politicking is back in full swing. And the quest for accountability from the so-called “big fish” continues.

TV, radio and social media have been abuzz with lawyers granting interviews on behalf of high-profile officials who have been dragged into the flood control controversy.

We see legal big shots back in the limelight and some unfamiliar names representing incumbent and former senators under investigation. And it’s no surprise the lawyers have been professing the innocence of their clients — that’s what they are paid for.

The common narrative of those caught in the web of scandal has been that the allegations are baseless, with no sufficient evidence to back them, other than hearsay testimonies made in the course of the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee hearings on the ghost projects and flood control corruption scheme in the beleaguered Department of Public Works and Highways.

One of the most incredulous interviews I’ve heard so far was that of the lawyer of former DPWH Undersecretary Cathy Cabral, whose recent passing shocked many and left more wondering what could have pushed her to end her life in that manner.

Cabral’s lawyer was interviewed by Karen Davila, where the former claimed the late Cabral did not receive any kickbacks from any of the alleged insertions she facilitated during her tenure at DPWH.

Cabral’s lawyer, in the hopes of convincing the public of her innocence, detailed the “frugal lifestyle” of the late undersecretary and her family, going as far as explaining that her two children lived modest lives. She denied rumors of properties in swanky Forbes Park and Corinthian Gardens, including the allegation of a beneficial interest in a hotel in Tuba, Benguet.

Meanwhile, the allegation that Cabral received somewhere between 1.5 to 3 percent of every contract coursed through her remains unresolved given the “open secret” that kickbacks were divided and distributed high up in the department. Cabral’s lawyer’s claim is almost as incredible as Zaldy Co’s claim that he didn’t get “ni isang singkong duling” (a single cross-eyed five-centavo coin).

In many ways, the fact that we deem it unbelievable and impossible that Cabral did not receive a percentage from the kickbacks is actually sad — and unfortunate for the country and all of us.

This is how bad governance is today. We just tolerate and accept that corruption is part of government, so much so that it’s as if it’s almost expected that they are always in on it. And somehow they are always innocent when they are about to be prosecuted and held to account for their greed.

Before her death, Cabral was expected to divulge the involvement of many high-ranking and powerful government officials in the flood control corruption scandal, which ran into the billions, putting to shame the PDAF scam that sent several then-sitting senators to detention pending the resolution of their cases.

The lawyers are in a race to paint the most believable and plausible scenarios to make the public believe their clients are innocent and cleared of any involvement in this unsavory business of plundering the nation’s coffers. After all, politics is their clients’ bread and butter. If they are ruined before the voting public, they can say goodbye to their “unrestricted” dipping into the public coffers to satisfy their greed.

We can also expect many of those who have (dis)honorably owned up to their part in the scheme to be demonized to save the high and mighty — the untouchables.