MANILA, Philippines - In his blog (www.marocharim.com), Marck Ronald Rimorin, a blogger co-intervenor, wrote the following on Nov. 12 to explain why he signed the intervention we filed before the House: “I think that when you blog about political issues and social issues, you cannot treat citizenship, political participation, and social obligation [as separate] from your blogging. When we say something or write about something, we should be able to act on it when the situation calls for it. Our words shouldn’t be empty; we should be able to stand by our principles. It’s not a matter of winning or losing, revolution or insurrection, cost or benefit.” He then quotes this line from “V for Vendetta”: “Fairness, justice and freedom are more than just words; they are perspectives.”
And from that line, Rimorin penned these lines, addressing the members of the lower house: “I think it’s time for our honorable Members of the House to do the right thing. It is not right to wait for the President to finish her term; what is right is, whether she has two years left or two days left, she should be held accountable. The Members of the House should know that justice is not about numbers or pluralities, but about morals and sensibilities. It is about fairness, justice and freedom: words and perspectives that Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo no longer represents, at least in my eyes.”
The challenge he—and we, all of us who signed—issued is one with antecedents in antiquity. As Tom Paine famously put it, “The summer soldier and the sunshine patriot will, in this crisis, shrink from the service of their country; but he that stands it now, deserves the love and thanks of man and woman.”
As of this writing, the only minority response to our intervention came from Representatives Satur Ocampo and Teddy Casiño, both of whom declined to support it, on the basis of their existing party position which is supportive of the BJE-MOA. At least they spoke immediately, without mental reservation or equivocation. They expressed, along the way, a legal opinion echoed enthusiastically by Matias Defensor speaking for the House majority.
The Warrior Lawyer (www.warriorlawyer.com) saw it coming. In support of our intervention he had written on Nov. 11, “the plea to intervene is grounded on principles of accountability of public officers and the constitutional right of the complainants-petitioners to petition the government, through their duly authorized representatives, for redress of grievances. On this ground alone it should be allowed.”
He added, “Complainants likewise have a legal interest in the impeachment issue. As citizens, they have a vested right to ensure, by whatever lawful means, that the laws of the land are upheld and violators held accountable,” adding that “Neither will it delay the consideration of the original grounds for impeachment or impair the impeachment complaint itself since, as emphasized in the pleading, no referral to the proper committee has yet been done,” and closing by saying “Personally, I see no legal, procedural or equitable grounds to dismiss the intervention outright.”
But, he pointed out, “The danger, as the intervenors are aware, is that the complaint-in-intervention would be considered as a separate suit involving a distinct cause of action and consequently dismissed on the basis of the constitutional restriction that only one impeachment complaint can be filed in a year. Wait for next year, the congressmen loyal to Malacañang will say.” This was precisely Simeon Datumanong’s loyal advice.
I am glad Warrior Lawyer saw the point we raised: “But precisely, the rationale behind allowing intervention is to submit all possible issues for proper consideration and thereby avoid repetition or multiplicity of suits.”
As the House Committee on Justice embarks on its mission to disembowel and bury the impeachment complaint between tomorrow and Friday, the least the minority should be expected to do is to make up for their initial reluctance to even consider impeachment and fight for the complaint endorsed by the party-list representatives and our intervention. Going through the motions is not enough, for it would send the message that when the President recently released their 2007 pork barrel, she also bought their cooperation.
For our part our appeal was for them not to forget the great national convulsion that took place when the President tried to foist an agreement on a people without a prior consensus to back it up, and who dealt faithlessly with the peace process.
Neither can the 60 congressmen who comprise the Mindanao bloc be allowed to get away with being silent, not least because one of the intervenors, Ria Jose, is from Davao; but also because some of the most fire-breathing rhetoric against the BJE-MOA came from its ranks. All the other congressmen who thundered and shrilled about the agreement have been silent, too. Were they merely going through the motions, whipping up public sentiment to provide the President with a pretext to unleash a war in Mindanao, and by so doing open up opportunities for imposing emergency rule and to push forward the Charter change agenda?
If all these things be true, then at least the public deserves to know who’s in the pocket of the Palace, whether from the minority or majority, and were her co-conspirators in the BJE-MOA scheme.
* * *
NEITHER the Philippine Daily Inquirer or ANC or the Philippines Free Press knew of, much less endorsed, the BJE-MOA Intervention. Going to the House or Senate or even appealing to the chief executive to petition for the redress of grievances is never wrong, because exercising one’s citizenship is never incorrect. Columnists have done so before, going to the Supreme Court, for example, on various questions.
