The long game

Are the anti-corruption forces ready to play the long game?

- ANA MARIE PAMINTUAN

They have to be, because their foes are. With billions at stake, with their political and family fortunes and the inheritance of their children and great-great-grandchildren at stake, the crooks play to win. And many have a proven track record of success.

These days it might look like the thieves are being drowned in the Great Flood of public opprobrium, but these creatures thrive in dirty water, and their swimming skills can win them an Olympic gold.

Their assets may be frozen and their fleets of luxury vehicles impounded, but these are the ones under their names. There must be other accounts, other fixed assets under other names, in the Philippines and overseas, that they can access outside the radar of the anti-graft and anti-money laundering police.

And a number of them are so well-connected that they can muddle or divert probes, discredit critics and investigators or sue them — and win.

Or else realpolitik can get in the way, and put an end to high-profile probes. We've seen this in the Blue Ribbon committee, where Sen. Panfilo Lacson’s resignation as chairman is seen as a way to save his former running mate Vicente Sotto III from losing the Senate presidency.

The Independent Commission for Infrastructure (ICI), which people had thought would pick up where the Blue Ribbon and House infra comm left off, has instead gone out of its way to protect the presumed innocence of the big shots implicated in the grand looting of national coffers.