Today’s emerging surge to draft Sen. Benigno Aquino III for president has tap roots in an administration that dug its heels against reforms. The clearance of the President and First Gentleman in the botched ZTE broadband scam by what once was a graft-busting Office of the Ombudsman demonstrates how it sowed the wind. The whirlwind is just ahead.

The Palace was “elated but not surprised” with the Ombudsman’s absolution, Press Secretary Cerge Remonde exulted. Sleaze allegations never leeched on to Mike Arroyo, he stressed.

Arroyo has de-facto immunity. He ignored a blue ribbon committee invitation for a final ZTE session. That would rehash already-answered questions, the Palace scoffed.

But unanswered questions dog this regime, from the overpriced Macapagal Boulevard, travel splurges to desparecidos and widespread hunger. A hostaged Ombudsman cannot hand out credible “fig leafs.” And its checkered history shows why.

Marcos’ kleptocracy stunned drafters of the 1987 Constitution. To bar a repeat, they adopted the Scandinavian innovation of a public-interest defender. An ombudsman’s work and life must radiate moral authority. Corazon Aquino and King Bhumibol of Thailand wielded such force. People are desperate to see that force in Noynoy Aquino.

The scandal-marred tenure of Ombudsman Aniano Desierto mashed hopes. As military prosecutor, Desierto hounded former Senators Benigno Aquino Jr. and Jose Diokno and others. Up to his death, former Sen. Lorenzo Tañada refused to address Desierto directly.

The Commission on Appointments ignored Desierto’s messy record in its April 1996 hearings. We paid dearly for that dereliction. Desierto, for example, ignored “vital evidence” and dismissed the multi-billion Bataan Nuclear Power Plant graft case, the solicitor general found.

“Ombudsman Desierto will devote a considerable amount of official time protecting his hide,” Ateneo de Manila University’s Joaquin Bernas, SJ predicted. “His image is shattered ... and it is impossible for him to function effectively… How the controversy … plays out will say a lot about the future of corruption.”

Thirteen years after Father Bernas’ forecast, Desierto’s legacy roils the country. The Aug. 31 Inquirer editorial “Ombudscam 2” shows how.

Desierto in 2002 crafted charges in the Chingkoe tax credit scam. They were booby-trapped to fail. Then Misamis Oriental Rep. Oscar Moreno said the charges were “destined for dismissal by design.”

The Ombudsman could fake the same dive in the ZTE scam. It charged former Comelec Chair Benjamin Abalos and former NEDA Director-General Romulo Neri. But the indictments are “curiously weak,” the Inquirer notes.

“A fine reading [of the resolution] shows the decision … was more on impropriety of playing golf and dinner,” Remonde explained. At worst, you face minor legal inconveniences, the Ombudsman tells two fall guys. “Golf and dinner with crooks—when, under this administration, was that ever a crime?”

It is not a felony to be the First Gentleman’s school mate. But is Merceditas Gutierrez an Aniano Desierto in skirts?

“In an Ombudsman overseen by Merceditas Gutierrez, cases just lie there,” says Philippine Human Development Report 2009. “And they die there.”

There were 9,826 criminal cases lodged with the Ombudsman over 12 years. Over half (58 percent) were unresolved. Out of 9,033 administrative cases, over 61 percent moldered. The World Bank completed a two-year investigation into rigged road bids and blackballed erring firms. The Ombudsman hasn’t moved beyond preliminary investigation.

It froze major cases from the P1.4-billion Mega-Pacific election computer scam to the P728-million fertilizer scandal. Gutierrez dismantled reforms instituted by her predecessor, Simeon Marcelo, the study says. She shut out the Commissions on Audit and Civil Service.

Ombudsman conviction rates plummeted from 55 percent in 2007 to zero in June 2008, PHDR notes. For the first half of 2009, conviction rates inched up to less than 12 percent. If Abalos and Neri were tried today, they would “have exactly 88 percent chance of beating the rap,” ABS-CBN estimates.

Public perception of the Ombudsman’s sincerity in battling corruption last year nosedived from the high of +24 percent under Marcelo to +4 percent, Social Weather Stations found.

“Be the change you want to see in the world,” Mahatma Ghandi counseled. That cuts no ice with an administration that believes it is doing fine, thank you. It scoffed at signs of demand for radical reforms, from the surge of people at Cory Aquino’s funeral to resistance against Charter change. The Ombudsman’s ZTE clearance buttresses that delusion.

“The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor,” George Bernard Shaw once mused. “He takes my measurement anew each time he sees me. The rest keep their old measurements and expect me to fit them.”

The danger is heightened by the gutting of constitutional agencies like the Ombudsman or the Civil Service Commission. Once these served as windbreaks against official abuse. Now, they are crippled.

The ultimate issue in the ZTE controversy is not the “impropriety of playing golf and dinner.” Sen. Mar Roxas’ decision to back Noynoy Aquino underscores it is change for national survival. “The only institution that rejects change is the cemetery.”

(E-mail: johnnylmercado@gmail.com)