Scared of numbers
In relation to the Veep’s impeachment trial, her defense lawyers, too, suffered from dyscalculia when they sought to stop AMLC Secretariat executive director Ronel Buenaventura from testifying.
Judging from the political noise surrounding the Veep’s impeachment trial in the past few days, there seem to be sinister attempts to make sure many are afflicted with the political equivalent of dyscalculia.
Scientifically, dyscalculia is a learning disorder that disrupts areas of the brain that handle math and number-related skills and understanding. Dyscalculia is like its twin, dyslexia, which disrupts areas of the brain related to reading.
Both dyscalculia and dyslexia are probably common learning disorders among many Filipinos, and they have yet to be seriously attended to.
Similarly, in our polarized politics, the political equivalents of dyscalculia and dyslexia are also largely unattended. However, their use in exploiting people and in maintaining political power is immense.
It couldn’t be otherwise. If it weren’t, there wouldn’t be the derisively labeled “bobotante” (ignorant voter) or the tricks to make sure many emotionally partisan voters will still be willfully blind.
Anyway, in relation to the Veep’s impeachment trial, her defense lawyers, too, suffered from dyscalculia when they sought to stop Anti-Money Laundering Council (AMLC) Secretariat executive director Ronel Buenaventura from testifying.
In their objections to Buenaventura’s testimony, the defense team invoked the confidentiality provisions of the Anti-Money Laundering Act and questioned the public disclosure of shady financial information the agency investigated.
If the defense had gotten its way, as one commentator said, “It could have prevented the country’s financial intelligence agency from explaining to the constitutional court the very information it is legally mandated to collect and analyze.”
Aside from legalities, there were also obvious attempts to attack the messengers bearing bad news, to “portray the AMLC as politically motivated, as though the financial intelligence it presented were merely another partisan accusation against the Veep,” as another commentator said.
In fact, the same could be said about Senator-judge Alan Peter Cayetano insidiously comparing the AMLC’s unverified suspicious transaction reports involving the Veep to “chismis (gossip).”
But as it happened, the impeachment court allowed Buenaventura’s testimony, after painstakingly ruling on a distinction that had been deliberately blurred in recent times: confidentiality is not the same as immunity from lawful inquiries.
With its ruling, the court essentially recognized the fact that the AMLC and the bank witnesses were on the stand solely to confirm that the financial records they held were real and unedited. The witnesses were there as “custodians of data, not eyewitnesses to crimes,” as a lawyer pointed out.
And, with the witnesses confirming the documents were genuine, “the spotlight shifts 100 percent from the witnesses to the authenticated documents,” said a noted lawyer.
After admitting the certified AMLC and bank records, the impeachment court could subsequently proceed to its laborious task of finding what those financial figures mean.
In other words, the senator-judges could now confront the difficult questions which a commentator said needed substantial answers: “What do these transactions represent? Where did the money come from, where did it go, who were the counterparties, what legitimate economic activities explain the movements, and can the financial flows be reconciled with the lawful income, declared assets, and known sources of wealth of the persons involved?”
And, in echoing our initial whimsical theme, the impeachment court obviously cannot now avoid numbers, leaving senator-judges with no other task than to responsibly read the numbers if they are to have a justifiable and equitable final judgment on the Veep’s fitness to continue holding office.