Political, and fair

THE LOOMING impeachment trial of Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez has caught some senators in a bind. Even those who have campaigned most vigorously on an anti-corruption platform are being forced to make neutral noises about, well, neutrality. We can expect to hear more of them pledge themselves to the virtues of objectivity as the trial approaches, to “keeping an open mind,” “judging by the evidence,” “conducting one’s self impartially.”

This is an understandable impulse. The senators are only too keenly aware that if the trial takes place, it will only be for the second time in our history. For all the ink and saliva that have been spent on the many failed impeachment cases in the House of Representatives, the impeachment process in the Senate will be, for many Filipinos, unfamiliar territory. Wrong perceptions may color the people’s appreciation of the trial, and diminish public support for its outcome (whatever that will be).

The theory is that, while no one can seriously dispute that impeachment is essentially a political process, it is best that the senators who will sit in judgment minimize the politics and highlight the quasi-judicial aspects of the impeachment trial. After President Benigno Aquino III rallied Liberal Party members around the banner of Gutierrez’s impeachment, Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile thought it was incumbent on him to emphasize that, in case of a trial, each senator would make up his or her own mind, not follow any party line, on Gutierrez’s culpability. It would be a conscience vote, he said.

Even LP senators such as Franklin Drilon and Teofisto Guingona III have given assurances about a “fair trial”—despite Drilon’s leading role in the recent blue ribbon committee hearings on the controversial plea bargain agreement Gutierrez struck with Carlos F. Garcia, and despite Guingona’s release on Friday of the committee’s preliminary report, recommending Gutierrez’s impeachment.

That report was signed by 14 senators, many of whom said a vote for the preliminary findings (including the recommendation to impeach Gutierrez) was not necessarily a vote for Gutierrez’s conviction at the impeachment trial. It’s the “lutong macaw” syndrome. Nobody wants a rigged trial or a preordained vote, not even when what is at stake is the fate of the country’s worst ombudsman.

The public certainly doesn’t want a return to the Arroyo era, when brute political force (plus not a few incentives, such as cash inside paper bags) was brought to bear on Congress to help it resolve impeachment issues. (Rep. Edcel Lagman’s recollection the other day, that during their time in the majority they had both the numbers and the superior arguments, is just plain delusional.)

But the public wants less hypocrisy in government too. Should those senators who got elected on an anti-corruption platform (incredibly, that includes Sen. Joker Arroyo too, who once upon a time criticized Gutierrez for her lack of resolve in the Mega Pacific case he had investigated) now simply soft-pedal their outrage at Gutierrez’s pattern of criminal inaction?

We think not. It is precisely for this reason that we urge the members of the Senate to take the opposite tack: to be forthcoming with their political considerations. We do not mean Gutierrez should be judged guilty (or, as in the case of Sen. Miriam Defensor-Santiago’s recent remark after the presentation of evidence before the House justice committee, not guilty) even before the impeachment court opens. We mean the senators should come down on the side of the fight against corruption.

A commitment to fight corruption (symbolized by the scandalous excesses of the NBN-ZTE deal, the fertilizer scam, the Mega Pacific perfect crime and so on, all cases in which Gutierrez betrayed the public trust) is perfectly compatible with a commitment to fairness. Only Gutierrez or other officials pining for the return of the Arroyo era would even think that the two are opposed.

In other words, the conviction of Gutierrez is in truth a conscience vote: it will reveal how the senators, and the parties they represent, really stand in the war on corruption.