Somebody out there is saying “I told you so.”

When the Supreme Court decided that Executive Order 464, some portions of it at least, were unconstitutional, the heckling can be heard from the gallery. That it was a curtailment of freedom at least to access to information, there is no doubt about it. One need not be a lawyer to know that the obvious intent of EO 4646 was to hide the painful truth. Like unrepentant brats however, Secretaries Ignacio Bunye and Michael Defensor refused to accept defeat graciously. Bunye said Congress should put its time to better use like approving the budget and other urgent legislation while Defensor said the executive branch was able to deliver the message to the Senate and the people that it will not be “pilloried, embarrassed and insulted”.

Famous last words.

Bunye should address his advice to his boss who is more preoccupied with the squid tactic that is the Charter Change than ferreting the truth about the “Hello Garci” scandal and the fertilizer scam, among other things. As for Defensor, he should be the last person to talk about being “pilloried, embarrassed and insulted”. If he is honest enough, he should recall how noisy he was when he was still a member of the so-called Spice Boys in Congress. Back then, anything Erap said was “pilloried, embarrassed and insulted” by his gang. Of course, what should be at issue here is the fact that the Arroyo administration refuses to be accountable for its actions, even more so for the shenanigans which are being attributed to it.

If they are indeed subjected to indignities in the course of the investigations, it is simply because Cabinet secretaries refuse to report directly to the people as they are supposed to do because they are acting out of canine loyalty. So what do we expect people to do when faced with such stubborn resistance? Give them a trophy?

When millions of pesos go down the drain because funds intended for fertilizers are instead being fed to political allies to ensure the victory of their patron, when a Cabinet secretary refuses to reveal the financier of a controversial project he is pushing for, when government officials decline invitations intended to unearth the truth not only on how elections are rigged but on who won what election, people have every right to lose their tempers. What the Supreme Court did simply was to remove the blinders so the light can go in. Is that too difficult to understand? But then again, that may be too much to expect from people whose sense of propriety has long evaporated into thin air.