BREAKING NEWS.. IS PRESIDENT NOYNOY INVOLVED IN THE HIGHLY-QUESTIONABLE PORK BARREL SYSTEM BEING MANAGED BY HIS FRIEND , PHILIPPINE SOCIETY CIVILIAN BIG-SHOT THIEVERY EXPERT BY THE NAME OF MS. JANET NAPOLES ? OUR VALUED READERS ARE ADVISED TO ANALYZE AND EVALUATE FOR THEMSELVES . Pity this poor liar By Francisco S. Tatad | Posted on September 20, 2013 at 12:01am | 7,302 views 169 I have been in politics all my life, and have fought, won and lost many battles. I have been called all sorts of names by total strangers, foes, family and friends alike. TIME magazine once called me “One of the 150 Faces of the Future,” and the Senate press once called me the “Moral Conscience of the Senate.” But never has anyone ever called me unjust, unfair, incompetent or corrupt. Yet a couple of days ago, the presidential spokesman Edwin Lacierda called me a “liar” during a news conference. By now everyone must know the reason for it. On Sept. 16, I wrote a piece for this paper, based on the most trustworthy pro-Aquino sources, that at 10:30 am of August 28 Janet Lim Napoles, the central figure in the alleged P10-billion pork barrel scam, was escorted by Lacierda to Malacanan, and had a luncheon meeting at the Music Room with President B. S. Aquino III and some Cabinet members. She was then still a fugitive from justice, having gone on the lam from August 14 after the Makati Regional Trial Court Branch 150 ordered her arrest for alleged illegal detention of her cousin and former employee-turned-whistle blower Benhur Luy. That same morning, Aquino had announced a P10-million bounty on her head. She would leave Malacañang with Lacierda at 4:30 pm, and then return at 9:27 pm, again with Lacierda, to formally “surrender” to the President. Lacierda told the press the story about the “surrender” but not about the lunch meeting earlier. He did not like the fact that I wrote about it at all. In his news conference, he dared me to name my sources and then proceeded to batter me with verbal abuse. Unable to stand it, veteran reporter Lilia Tolentino rose to put Lacierda in his place. “Setting the record straight,” she said, “he is not a liar. I know Mr. Tatad, he was my former classmate, so don’t call him a liar.” I have not seen Lilia in years, but I thank her heartily for it. Truth never fails. But obviously Lacierda had never understood the first thing about journalists—that they would rather go to jail than reveal the identity of their sources. He also showed no clue that he ever understood the distinction between a writer’s eyewitness account, and an interpretative article quoting an authoritative source. I wrote my story based on what I judged to be entirely credible information from highly credible sources. I did not write an eyewitness account. I was convinced about the veracity of their story and their integrity as news sources. They have since reassured me that nothing has changed. Still, I was ( and I am) prepared to be proved wrong. In fact, I would feel much better if, in the end, I were proved wrong rather than see the government unable to explain itself. Why so? Because, in case I were proved wrong, I alone and nobody else would suffer injury and infamy, whereas if the government failed to disprove my story, the entire nation, its present and its future, would be in utter jeopardy. But even if that were to happen, Lacierda would still have no basis for calling me a “liar.” I would have committed a serious lapse in judgment by accepting as credible information what ultimately turned out to be less than so; but I would not have misrepresented anything I had known to be utterly false as true. Indeed, I would have “lied” if I had said Aquino was going to Davos to keynote the World Economic Forum, knowing fully well he wasn’t even going to be a sideshow or a dog show. Lacierda must learn his job. And he has not. Instead of saying that Napoles never came to Malacañang on the morning of August 28, and that the President never had lunch with her, he has exerted every effort (even using films as backup) to show that even if Napoles was there, the President was not there for at least two, or three, of the six hours that she was. This is unforgivably incompetent. He seems to believe he could discredit my story by reminding people that I had worked as spokesman, speech writer, press secretary and secretary/minister of information for Marcos for 10 years. I am rather proud of that record. I entered the Cabinet at 29, the youngest Cabinet appointee in the country’s history (after the First Republic). I ran a department of several thousand people, without the help of a single undersecretary except for a couple of years. This wasn’t quite like Lacierda’s present agency that seems to be running like a headless chicken while supposedly having three heads. As Cabinet minister, I performed multiple jobs, which so many people are trying to perform under B. S. III. Because of martial law, I also had to face a hostile and unforgiving world press. Despite that, TIME magazine named me, along with Ninoy Aquino, one of the world’s rising young leaders in an international survey. I resigned my Cabinet post six years before the Edsa Revolt. Before all that, I worked as a journalist. At the Foreign Office, I scooped the competition almost at will, but not a single scoop I had written was ever refuted. That led me to the Cabinet and the Batasang Pambansa. I returned to journalism after that, and wrote for some of the best Philippine and international papers. I ultimately published and edited a political-economic daily, which Lewis Gleek unabashedly called the best newspaper in the Philippines. In 1992, I ran for the Senate. I won the senatorial elections in 1992 and 1995 without spending a single centavo to buy a single vote. I served as Majority Leader to five Senate presidents. I lost in two patently fraudulent elections, but never thought it a curse. I think it a blessing rather than a misfortune not to be part of the politics over which Aquino now presides, and which Lacierda and his ilk shamelessly celebrate. fstatad@gmail
Posted on: Fri, 20 Sep 2013 20:24:34 +0000