Fairly judging the House investigations into banned POGOs and other issues, particularly by the Quad Committee in the past two months, shows that the cause of justice has moved significantly forward.
This is a noteworthy political development which is to the credit of the capable members of the Lower House, who by their pluck and initiative managed to impress us that they can handily reorder the common perceptions of our present moment in history.
This, despite an obviously orchestrated social media campaign demonizing them and vilifying their efforts as politically motivated, particularly after Vice President Sara Duterte’s face-off with Congress.
This is a noisy campaign which bears evident handprints of an unraveling political force which had entrenched itself in the country and enabled corrupt and murderous systems to prosper.
In a sense, the unraveling of this once-vaunted political force is characterized by the House’s uncovering of the involvement of mostly Chinese-run corporations — that emerged during the Duterte regime — in illegal drugs, offshore gaming and extrajudicial killings.
According to two leaders of the House, the central figure in this intricate web of Chinese outfits is former President Rodrigo Duterte’s economic adviser Michael Yang. And the same intricate web led to national security threats as in the sensational case of dismissed Bamban, Tarlac Mayor Alice L. Guo.
Guo again grabbed news headlines last week after she appeared to lose her cool when Davao Oriental 2nd District Rep. Cheeno Almario confronted her with a video from foreign news outlet Al Jazeera about admitted Chinese spy She Zhijang.
In the video, She Zhijang claimed Guo Hua Ping — believed to be Guo’s true Chinese identity — had asked him for funds for her election campaign, which he denied her. The documentary also showed Guo’s supposed address, which was the Chinese Communist Party office, and her family’s home in her supposed hometown of Fujian, China.
Meanwhile, some unravelling also backdropped the Quad Committee’s investigation into alleged crimes of murder and plunder in the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO).
Last week, a police lieutenant colonel testified that on the alleged orders of former PCSO general manager Royina Garma, he and his group killed a retired general they were made to believe was a high-value target of former president Duterte’s brutal war on drugs.
Garma, a former police official said to be close to Duterte, was also accused of unethically appointing several relatives to the PCSO.
After the sordid details about POGOs and the PCSO emerged, the lawmakers vowed to recommend the filing of criminal, civil and administrative cases against those involved, as well as to introduce legislative reforms, even as they promised more investigations.
Whatever the House does or does not do in the coming days, the lawmakers have made a favorable impression on sectors willing to give them a fair shake.
It was, however, an altogether different story for those still hopelessly enslaved by tribal regionalist politics and who couldn’t stomach the House’s effrontery to their tribal gods.
Nonetheless, broadly speaking politically, the lawmakers could not have gotten far in redeeming themselves if there wasn’t a seismic shift in the political landscape in the past few months.
As one respected political observer put it last week: “Never has the cause of justice depended more on a rift within the ruling class than on the strength of the political opposition.”
In bare political terms that means the pursuit of justice would not have been possible if there wasn’t the dramatic split between the Marcos and Duterte camps.
The split undoubtedly saw withering assaults on the Duterte camp that have weakened it to such an extent that some are even predicting its imminent collapse as a political force.
Appreciating such a present political reality, therefore, is a consideration in fairly determining why the House came to be acting as it is presently acting.
Nonetheless, despite this political game changer, the House investigations did allow us glimpses into what our much-maligned lawmakers are capable of doing when they truly exact justice, truth, transparency and accountability in government.
Being at their best lights striving for the greater political good then is perhaps the great challenge to members of the Lower Chamber.