Distressing is the news that Juan Ponce Enrile and 34 others had been cleared of graft charges in connection with the ₱10-billion pork barrel scam exposed by the Inquirer in 2013. It aggravates Filipinos’ growing impatience with ongoing official inquiries into the raging trillion-peso corruption scandal involving flood control and other infra projects. It seems ominous, as though it were a sign of things to come.

Disheartening, too, but not a total surprise in this neck of the woods where power and accountability are at constant odds. It again raises the question of whether the justice system is only for the powerful. Of course, it calls to mind the acquittal in 2018 of ex-senator Bong Revilla in connection with the same scam that Janet Lim Napoles ran in 2004–2010, and that involved the funneling of certain lawmakers’ Priority Development Assistance Fund (PDAF) to her bogus foundations in exchange for kickbacks. Sen. Jinggoy Estrada is out on bail on similar charges. 

From witness testimonies in court records, Enrile, Revilla and Estrada, code-named “Tanda,” “Pogi” and “Sexy,” respectively, were among the many clients of Napoles who, in her prime, rubbed elbows with the rich and powerful and—in a life hack common among political operators—also served as the mother of perpetual largesse for favored parishes and men of the cloth. 

Tears

Napoles and the lawyer Gigi Reyes are among those acquitted along with Enrile according to the Sandiganbayan Special Third Division’s finding that “the evidence for the prosecution does not pass the test of moral certainty and is insufficient to rebut the constitutional presumption of innocence.” (But Napoles will remain detained, having been earlier convicted of assorted charges in connection with her operations.)

Reyes was present at the promulgation hearing last Friday, was reported to have shed tears at the outcome, and was quoted as saying that she was “grateful” for it. 

Who wouldn’t be? She was the chief of staff of then Senate President Enrile and, by accounts, was so powerful that she was referred to as the “25th senator.” For this case, she spent almost nine years in detention, her petitions for bail rejected even as her principal was released on bail by virtue of his advanced age.

But in November 2023, Reyes’ temporary release from “vexatious restraint” was ordered by the Supreme Court in response to her petition for habeas corpus; it ruled that her continued detention at the Taguig City Jail’s Female Dormitory was in violation of her constitutional rights. Estelito Mendoza, famously described as “the lawyer of last resort,” represented her in that petition.

Mendoza counted among his clients in his storied career political heavyweights in conflict with the law, such as Enrile himself, Revilla, the Estrada father and son, and also Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and Marcos family members. (He served as solicitor general during Ferdinand Marcos Sr.’s dictatorship, honing his lawyerly expertise in crafting the legal framework of martial rule.) He was also reported as representing Vice President Sara Duterte in cases filed against her at the Supreme Court in connection with her alleged misuse of confidential funds. He died at 95 last March.

The pork barrel scam once represented the depths to which government service had fallen. Now it’s the flood-control corruption scandal that carries the distinction, with nonexistent or substandard projects coming to light almost by the day in various points nationwide. How, it may be asked, could Filipinos have been so thoroughly shafted? The “Business and Labor Leaders United Against Corruption” are the latest to go public with a sense of urgency, calling on President Ferdinand Marcos Jr. to take “bold” steps to address the situation “before the people’s patience finally runs out.”

Lessons

Before that patience does run out, the twists and turns of  the pork barrel scam bear remembering and, along with Sen. Joel Villanueva’s surprise rescue from political extinction by then Ombudsman Samuel Martires, offer certain lessons. 

In Revilla’s case, the buck stopped with the lawyer Richard Cambe, his former chief of staff. Cambe was convicted of plunder along with Napoles by the Sandiganbayan Special First Division on a vote of 3-2 in December 2018, on the same day that his ex-boss was acquitted. He was held at the national penitentiary in Muntinlupa City.

Cambe’s participation in the crime was “clear,” per the ruling written by Associate Justice Geraldine Faith Econg, “but whether Cambe carried out the tasks Revilla chose not to do by himself or he did it for Revilla was not clearly established.” In his dissenting opinion, Associate Justice Efren de la Cruz pointed out that Cambe was “designated” by Revilla, a “seasoned senator,” to “represent him in the transaction.” Cambe died in prison from a stroke in April 2021. 

Senator Estrada’s graft cases related to his alleged misuse of over ₱200 million in PDAF still stand, with the Sandiganbayan Special Fifth Division’s rejection early this month of his plea for the dismissal of the charges. But his former deputy chief of staff, Pauline Labayen, was found by the antigraft court to have “primarily benefited” from the pork barrel scam by virtue of her transactions with Napoles and her signature on pertinent documents. 

Labayen was ordered dismissed from public service by the Office of the Ombudsman in 2017. She is now disqualified from ever holding public office, and there is an active warrant for her arrest. She was last reported seen in the United States. 

With the antigraft court’s verdict, Gigi Reyes is now in the clear along with her ex-boss, now more than a century old and apparently in poor health. She can put the unpleasant details behind her, such as the accusation that she had received in Enrile’s behalf kickbacks amounting to ₱172.8 million for the allocation of his discretionary funds to Napoles’ fake foundations. (A rather inelegant detail, per witness testimony in court records, includes Reyes’ alleged complaint that a particular kickback delivery was lacking ₱500,000.)

According to witness testimony in court records, the money for the kickbacks, in ₱500 and ₱1,000 bills, was packed in boxes by Napoles’ staff in her office, for delivery on demand. In Inquirer reports, the story is that the cash lying around was so voluminous that some of it had to be stashed in Napoles’ bathtub.

Years from then, the perverse scenario laid out in sworn statements is not much different: scads of kickback cash packed in suitcases for delivery to state enablers of large-scale thievery.