The presentation of evidence and the sharing of testimony in an investigation or trial are not mere exercises in establishing guilt or proving innocence, but the realization of justice. There is no hiding from – and there is no escaping – justice. The laws of the land, and the institutions that enforce and secure justice for all, exist without partiality to the accused and the accuser. Without regard to power, without partiality to wealth: “justice for all.”
Manny Villar has made it painfully clear (in more ways than one) that he has no intention of facing his accusers in the Senate. At the very root of this, Villar says, is politics: that ever since his survey numbers shot up, the C5 controversy is used against him to pull him down. For all intents and purposes, Villar is not being asked to face the chamber to shoot himself in the foot, but to establish and administer the very notion of justice and the system that ensures it: to prosecute the guilty, to uphold the rights of the innocent, and to keep society in harmony.
By boycotting the Senate hearings, Sen. Villar obstructs a lofty goal that is within the reach of citizens if they strive for it enough: justice. If anything, it is a most brazen, deliberate obstruction of justice, and an abandonment of the processes and institutions that make up a fair and just society. More importantly, it is the denial of the truth. It is injustice.