Do they think we're stupid?

THE ADMISSION by the Department of Foreign Affairs on Wednesday that Comelec commissioner Virgilio Garcillano had left the country to Singapore and then onto some allegedly unknown country, was too little and too late. In fact it was a joke.

Any person in the Philippines who had been following the news could have told us that Garcillano had long fled the country following the scandal of the "Hello Garci" tapes in which President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was heard conniving with the commissioner to fix the results of the presidential election last year.

Those tapes surfaced last June, but his name was only placed on a Bureau of Immigration watchlist at airports and seaports on August 4, nearly two whole months after no one could find him anywhere in the Philippines, and more than two weeks after he left Manila for Singapore on a private Learjet on July 14.

I remember watching "The Correspondents" on television in June and their interview with Garcillano's wife in the province.

She adamantly denied knowing where her husband was, while allowing the program to film around her house, yard and cars. Anyone watching that show could see that she was lying through her teeth. She knew damn well where her hubby was, and she wasn't going to tell us, come hell or high water.

At that time I remember reading a news story that basically said that the Philippine National Police were not going to actively try and find Garcillano, obviously because they were under orders emanating from Malacañang Palace to look the other way and allow the commissioner to slip out from the country.

The fact that the itinerary of the flight on which he fled was originally to Cebu and not Singapore, and that the plane's crew were never told that Garcillano was to be their passenger, is undeniable evidence that there was a conspiracy of silence from President Arroyo down to other officials in order to aid in the escape of a key witness in the impeachment case against the president.

Congress should now demand that Philippine police and intelligence services track the commissioner down and demand that whatever country he is in extradite him back to the Philippines. Unfortunately, those who are conniving to pervert the course of justice have most likely made sure that he is hiding in a country that does not have an extradition treaty with the Philippines.

How convenient for President Arroyo and her cronies who are propping her up! She can now continue to try and divert the public's attention from the extremely serious charges of electoral fraud and corruption against her, by banging the drum of charter change and the need to conserve energy because of the sky-high prices of crude oil. What a farce!

Much of the Philippine public seems resigned to just keep riding along the bumpy road of constant political upheaval, but for how much longer can they take it?

If President Arroyo really had the country's best interests at heart she would admit that anomalies took place during the election in May 2004, and would announce a snap election for the presidency next May.

International observers could be invited en masse to monitor the whole process and to ensure that no cheating takes place. The Commission on Elections would be completely revamped and restaffed. After last year's election they have proven themselves to be both incompetent and incapable of running clean elections.

But I must be hallucinating to suggest that President Arroyo would ever agree to any of this. After projecting herself as an incorruptible and sincere leader, the president has managed to destroy most of her good attributes by the sleazy corruption that she has allowed herself to be mired in. And why has she allowed herself to sink into such a mess, one might ask? Because she wants to cling onto power no matter what the consequences, either to herself or the nation. She is the perfect example of a person so thoroughly corrupted by power and the lure of it, that the original person she was is barely recognizable beneath the layers of greed, nastiness and self-righteousness that have enveloped her. What a pity for us all!

Comments or questions? E-mail me at rasheed@arabnews.com.