WHOSE SECURITY?: The trips of Justice Secretary (on leave) Hernando Perez to Hong Kong and elsewhere are a thing of the past. Disclosing details about them will not pose a danger to him or to the republic — unless they involved some activity that could put Perez in legal jeopardy.

If we stretch the meanings of terrorism and security, maybe we can tie future trips of Perez and other officials to national security and justify his gag order. For future trips yes, but not for past trips.

The invoking of national security by Perez when he ordered the Immigration bureau not to divulge details of his and other officials’ trips is silly. No wonder Dario Rama, head of the Presidential Anti-Graft Commission, felt compelled to slap down Perez for his order.

A complication is that there is suspicion among some Palace insiders that a Makati law firm is behind the troubles of Perez. So now some of those who felt they were also victims of that influential law firm are helping Perez fight back even if they really do not sympathize with the secretary.

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PANDORA’S BOX: Perez and President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo are skirting the issues on the alleged extortion by Perez of $2 million from Manila Rep. Mark Jimenez.

What they should do, if they are really innocent, is throw open with the help of the Hong Kong government the Pandora’s Box of the Coutts Bank account where Jimenez claimed to have wired the $2 million for Perez.

Focusing on the extortion angle would even help President Arroyo distance herself from insinuations that the $2 million was part of a $14-million bribery related to the Impsa power contract given the green flag by Perez with a favorable legal opinion.

By their apparent fear of opening that Hong Kong account, the President and Perez only fanned public suspicion that dark secrets lie hidden in it.

* * *

BELATED DISCOVERY: As the Arroyo Cabinet has just realized after an emergency meeting this week, the problems of Perez — and also of his President — are not legal in nature but political. They revolve around perception.

The justice secretary is defending himself like a lawyer before a court of justice, not as a public servant before the bar of public opinion. He is trotting out documents marked as exhibits before a cynical mass audience transfixed by perception and not by legal mumbo-jumbo.

It’s unfortunate that the Arroyo Cabinet realized only at this late hour that they and the President have been suffering from a failure to communicate.

They finally saw the neglected second of the two parts of public relations, which are (1) doing something good, and (2) letting the world learn about it.

* * *

BUT IT WILL FAIL: It took Local Government Secretary Joey Lina, and not Press Secretary Toting Bunye or presidential spokesman Rigoberto Tiglao, to discover the obvious — that the whole caboodle has been suffering from a failure to communicate.

The papers reported that, as corrective measure, the Cabinet has agreed to embark on a massive TV/radio and print campaign in the coming year. We suppose they will use taxpayer’s money, and that some people will earn some fat commissions.

We’re warning them this early that flooding the prostrate country with radio-TV infomercials and the print media with tons of press releases will not work.

You want proof? The overdose of Gloria film clips inserted in prime TV slots did not work. The ploy may have saved electricity (people usually turn off their TV when they see one of those Gloria clips), but it did not salvage the plummeting rating of the President.

* * *

NO BIG DEAL, BUT…: A friend from the Press Office asked us to cite samples of their lapses.

Not wanting to offend anybody, we simply recounted how we once asked Secretary Toting Bunye in Malacanang for action photographs of the President that we intended to use in our ManilaMail website. He said yes, and jotted our email address in his notebook.

After one month of waiting, we asked one of his more alert undersecretaries to follow up our request. We were assured this time that the pictures will be sent to us starting that week. That was several months ago.

Those pictures were no big deal really, but such little details speak volumes about how things spin in the Palace. Maybe we will have to wait for the next administration to be able to get pictures of the president, the next president.

* * *

GANGING UP ON MJ: In an earlier Postscript, we mentioned miscalculations resulting in king-sized headaches for the President.

The day before a haggard Mark Jimenez showed three checks for P8 million he had given to First Gentleman Mike Arroyo, we were locked in a private discussion with the congressman for several hours deep into the night.

He kept trying to convince us that President Arroyo and former President Erap Estrada saw him as a common problem and had connived to rush his departure from the Philippines. It sounded logical, but we were not sure how accurate was his reading.

The Supreme Court, he added, was to provide the legal basis for his early extradition. He even knew the exact date the tribunal (which he said was padded with Arroyo appointees) was to hand down its rejection of his motion for reconsideration.

* * *

GROWING PARANOID: Jimenez also kept asking us what we thought was the possibility of his being assassinated! We noticed earlier that he had security men lurking just outside his suite and at key points down the hall to the elevator.

We gave our honest opinion that such a dire development was always a possibility in this topsy-turvy world. Some people sometimes resort to the physical elimination of their problems.

Do you think they can get me? he asked. How would we know? But we told him that if anybody is dead set on eliminating him and has the means and the motivation, he can always carry it out.

Do you think they will do it? he asked anxiously. It’s not likely that they would, we said. Why? He asked. We ended up explaining that it would be a big blunder for his enemies, whoever they are, to murder him.

The dialogue went on without us mentioning who might just want to do him in.

* * *

WOUNDED, CORNERED: Looking back with the benefit of hindsight, we think Jimenez that night and on to the next day felt like a wounded, cornered tiger who would snarl at anything that came near. He impressed us that night as having grown paranoid, but we did not tell him.

We think he made a miscalculation when he trotted out the next day those checks in a desperate bid to hit back at forces who he must have imagined were closing in on him.

The problem with revealing those incriminating checks was that the bold move was irreversible. Having made the payoffs public, he forced the First Gentleman — who after all was also his friend, sort of — to stiffen and shun any attempt to fix things.

* * *

CARELESS REMARK: That was followed by another miscalculation, this time in the Palace.

The presidential spokesman speaking in defense of the husband of the President said, rather carelessly we think, that the P8 million were actually solicited by Bulacan Rep. Willy Villarama when he was still chief of staff of Mrs. Arroyo (then still vice president).

That remark stung Villarama, who was in the sidelines but who knew much more than what the Arroyo couple presumably had revealed to the presidential spokesman sent to defend them before media.

That miscalculation of the presidential spokesman forced Villarama, in self-defense, to reveal that there were actually other checks, that in fact Mr. Arroyo regularly received checks from Jimenez that added up to P18 million. (We ourselves knew all along about those other checks, but kept quiet about them.)

While Mr. Arroyo admitted having received the P8 million, although he said they went to a foundation, the other checks making up the P10-million balance in Villarama’s reckoning were not acknowledged.

* * *

STRANGE, BUT SAD: It should be easy to dig up the permanent files — those of Jimenez, the banks and the Arroyo foundation — to find out what happened to the remaining P10 million and other funds.

But until yesterday, we have not heard of anybody demanding the opening of the records. Nobody seemed scandalized with allegations that a top lady official or her husband would be receiving money regularly from Jimenez.

Maybe the Yuletide spirit has, mercifully, overtaken the protagonists?

That’s the strange, and sad, thing about this town. We come face to face with what looks like a seething scandal and we do not care enough to look deeper. That may be one reason why we never get things done, or get things cleaned.