I’d like to believe you but Cruz has a lot of explaining to do.

If he’s that good and virtuous, why did he, how could he have joined Gloria’s cabinet of the corrupt, by the corrupt and for the corrupt in the first place.

1. As Acting Executive Secretary in 2002, he sent a copy of a memo that Malacanang was about to officialy send to the PCGG, directing the Haydee Yorac-led PCGG to have Ernesto Maceda — who was then head of Eduardo Cojuangco’s NPC political party — sit in the San Miguel Corporation (SMC) Board AS ONE OF THE PCGG’S REPRESENTATIVE-DIRECTORS. This was Nonong’s way of alerting the PCGG to what would have been a mockery of the PCGG’s mandate to recover coco-levy funds invested in SMC. The maneuver worked: Yorac got up from her sick bed and denounced the would-be appointment of Maceda.

2. Nonong, together with then ES Bert Romulo, also consistently blocked various attempts at compromising the coconut levy cases that the PCGG under Yorac was already winning in court.

3. As Chief Presidential Legal Counsel (CPLC), Nonong Cruz also provided the crucial voice that led to the drafting of what is now about to be the law that would provide reparations to the victims of human rights violations during the Marcos dictatorship. He also proposed that $200 M be set aside (or $50 M more than what Robert Swift, the American lawyer representing one faction of the victims in the US litigation, was willing to accept for his clients in a compromise that would have judicially declared the Marcoses as not having committed those HR violations). As SND, Nonong would have also been willing to support the truth-seeking process mandated in the proposed law by opening up the AFP’s records showing the pattern of illegal detention, torture and forced disappearances during the dictatorship.

4. As a civilian SND (much like SND Orly Mercado before him, Nonong inherited a military that has never recovered from its role as enforcer and beneficiary of Martial Law. The patterns of massive corruption in the military, including those found to have been committed through the Marcos Presidential Decree-created RSBS, is a legacy of a dictator who had to share the spoils with his favored generals. Some of those who were then junior officers under Marcos saw how their seniors enjoyed impunity from being held accountable for both human rights abuse and corruption. In a country where former torturers can become Senators, being a reform-minded civilian SND in an unrepentant military institution only raises false expectations. Given that context, Nonong has done exceptionally well as SND.

5. Nonong’s resignation — like that of Sonny Marcelo’s earlier resignation as Ombudsman — should be seen for what it is. These are decent Filipinos resigned to the limitations that personal decency can bring to institutions that have been damaged so irreparably by unredressed legacies of human rights abuse or corruption or both.

““What the President needs now is muscle not brains,” the first Malacañang executive told the Inquirer, referring to Ms Arroyo’s declared policy of subduing the communist insurgency by the end of her term in 2010.”

Ugh! Geez, Ermita is growing old in the reverse.

Ebdane’s name has cropped up too. (And he’s close to Max!)

You still in Manila?

I, too, wonder why Max S. alluded to Tom A.

Atty. LAcierda is good in explaining his points on Conass regarding the PLebiscatory Democracy.