President Benigno Aquino III ends the first 18 months of his administration marked by the most turbulent transition from one regime to another since the 1986 Edsa People Power Revolution.
No Filipino leader has entered Malacañang with more overwhelming euphoria than Mr. Aquino, who swept the May 2010 presidential election by a landslide, a balloting widely acclaimed as the freest and cleanest the country ever had since the bloodless revolution that toppled the Marcos dictatorship.
The election results should have established a climate of political stability and a smooth transition from the corruption scandal-ridden administration of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. It did not. On the contrary, it opened the door to a tumultuous transition.
Less than a year into Mr. Aquino’s inauguration in June 2010, the euphoria has evaporated swiftly, dissipated by the turmoil of the internecine political warfare stemming from the anticorruption campaign of the new reformist administration directed at holding accountable officials of its predecessor for alleged corrupt practices and abuses in office.
In such a brief transition, the President, who has made the cleanup of corruption the centerpiece of his program of government to the exclusion of the economy, has plunged his administration into a nasty conflict with the Supreme Court whose independence is protected from interference by the two coequal political branches (i.e., the executive and the legislature) by the 1987 Constitution.
Ironically, the 1987 Constitution was framed by the people power-driven administration of his late mother, President Cory Aquino.
No blanket mandate
Interpreting the source of his mandate, Mr. Aquino declared the mandate flowed from his inaugural speech which enunciated the theme, “Daang Matuwid” as the article of faith of his administration. This slogan is also interpreted as the end justifies the means.
President Aquino appears to be departing from the democratic culture left by his mother.
He now leads the charge to attack the independence of the Supreme Court by conspiring with his Liberal Party allies in the House of Representatives to impeach Chief Justice Renato Corona in a record-shattering time of three hours and rushing the impeachment complaint the following day to the Senate for trial, mainly because the President perceives the decisions emanating from the Corona Court during the past 18 months were obstructing his overzealous campaign to make past administration officials accountable for their alleged misdeeds.
The landslide election of Mr. Aquino did not give him a blanket mandate to attack and dismantle constitutional institutions already in place governing the distribution of powers and jurisdictions of the three branches of our political system because he wants to purge the court packed with appointees, in particular the Chief Justice, of the intensely reviled Arroyo.
A number of lawyers, recognized as experts in constitutional law, concede the right of the executive department to initiate impeachment proceedings against the Chief Justice, impeachment being the only legal way to remove Corona from office.
But it is in the way, or method, through which he is being impeached, where a lot of contentious legal issues has arisen.
The method, which rides roughshod over procedures governing the principle of rule of law, is at the root of the showdown between the Supreme Court and the President who seems impatient with the cumbersome procedures on the impeachment of Corona.
Shortcuts
Based on the eight articles of impeachment, Corona has plenty to account for on charges that he is being impeached in accordance with the provisions of Section 2, Article XI of the 1987 Constitution, on the grounds of (a) betrayal of public trust; (b) culpable violation of the Constitution; and (c) graft and corruption.
In the course of the push by the President to impeach Corona by the House, several quarters in civil society, have started to be alarmed by the shortcuts in the rule of law as a precondition to attaining justice.
The rush to impeach Corona has uncovered certain dangerous tendencies that threw doubt on Mr. Aquino’s commitment to democratic methods and that indicated he is less than scrupulous in adhering to the rule of law.
It appears to herald the emergence of an embryonic tyranny disguised as a regime seeking to root out corruption and proclaiming its honesty.
Among the first to express alarm over the dangers of this emergent self-righteous autocracy is Sen. Joker Arroyo, Cory Aquino’s executive secretary in her post-Edsa administration.
The senator warned Mr. Aquino should take a leaf from his mother’s style of rule of law.
Senator Arroyo was at the same time spiteful of Mr. Aquino, saying that he ran and handily won the 2010 presidential election “on the strength of his political pedigree.”
He said Mr. Aquino should use as a “model” his late mother, amid his war with the judiciary.
Picture of restraint
“The model is the mother,” Senator Arroyo said. “She was a picture of restraint. She never abused her power despite the powers she possessed.”
He criticized the son’s policies, particularly his effort to control the two other coequal branches of government. “Oh, what crimes are being committed in the name of transparency and the fight against corruption,” he said.
Joker Arroyo said Cory Aquino held immense power soon after taking office following the Edsa People Power Revolution. He warned against the possibility of the President succeeding in taking control of the Supreme Court, not a remote possibility if the Senate impeachment trial decides to remove Corona.
The Aquino administration has revealed it is eyeing the impeachment of three other justices.
On Friday, Mr. Aquino said in a TV interview he would move to impeach other justices if the decisions of the Supreme Court continued to rule against his government.
“If they have violations of the Constitution, if there is an impeachable offense,” the President said in reply to the question if he would move to impeach other justices in the wake of the impeachment trial of Corona.
Who will decide what violations had been committed against the Constitution? A dictator?