New year of skepticism over Aquino intentions

The New Year portends threateningly significant events for most Filipinos. By mid-January, the Senate ignites the fireworks of a potentially tumultuous year with the start of the impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona.

The year 2011 came to a politically turbulent close with the controversies over the corruption-ridden legacy of the previous Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo administration. If the past year was a year of high expectations for political reform and transparency by the crusading Benigno Aquino III administration, it was also one of public disappointment over the results in the campaign to root out all vestiges of corruption, and even more over the revitalization of the faltering national economy.

The New Year promises to be the beginning of a season of skepticism over the good intentions of the Aquino government, with the virtuous slogans driving the administration’s “daang matuwid” in the past one-and-a-half years as the sole justification of the President’s mandate following his landslide election victory in May 2010.

After more than a year of nonperformance and failure to deliver concrete results on election promises, including the reduction of poverty, people are now less inclined to swallow hook, line and sinker pious protestions from the administration propaganda organs. They are beginning to demand, “where’s the beef?”

Many are now asking, is the jailing of Arroyo, the impeachment of the alleged pro-Arroyo Chief Justice and the revamp of a Supreme Court packed by Arroyo appointees enough of a claim of achievement for a results-deficit nearly two-year-old Aquino government? More and more people are asking, are the poor any less poor than before May 2010? Where are the jobs that give incomes to the poor and enable them to buy more food for their families and to send their children to school?

More of these questions will be asked as the administration pursues its anticorruption crusade with deadly earnestness.

These questions will continue to be asked even during the Corona impeachment trial that is certain to provide entertainment for the public and divert attention from the issues of poverty that afflict the majority of Filipinos. They cannot be ignored by the Aquino government without eroding its popularity in the opinion surveys.

Defining images

The events during the past two months—the administration’s efforts to stop Arroyo from attempting to escape prosecution for alleged electoral sabotage and the rush to impeach Corona by the House of Representatives—have projected the defining images of the democratically elected almost two-year-old Aquino government.

These are the images that have defined the character of the democratically elected Aquino government: First, that it is vindictive; second, it is intolerant of dissent; third, it is willing to drag the country into a witchhunt of demons by which it has tagged personages of the past regime it deems as  “obstructing” its all-consuming campaign to hold them accountable for past wrongdoing and abuse of office; and fourth, it is uninclined to respect due process in bringing cases against its targets.

Disturbing questions

With these haunting images, legal circles have started to raise disturbing questions, such as the toll inflicted on independent constitutional institutions (such as Congress and the judiciary) in the pursuit of the clearly evident political objective of making the legislature and the judiciary subservient to the President.

Of course, there are the disclaimers made by the presidential mouthpieces, that the President’s actions in impeaching Corona and in seeking to purge the Supreme Court of some of the Arroyo appointees are intended not to erode the independence of the high court but to restore its integrity and public confidence in its fairness and impartiality in the administration of justice.

We are told that the strike on Corona is not an attack on the independence of the Supreme Court but is aimed at removing its head whose decisions, since he accepted the midnight appointment as Chief Justice just weeks before Mr. Aquino was to take office, are alleged to have been antagonistic to the Aquino government and biased for his supposed patron, Arroyo.

Without going into the details or the merits of the impeachment article alleging bias on the part of Corona, let me say that the determination of this issue is now in the hands of the Senate impeachment tribunal, which is the most competent body mandated to do this function.

Sophist claims

What I wish to point out is that there’s a lot of sophistry in the claim that the attack on Corona is not an attack on the high court as an institution. There are reasons to be cynical about this claim.

When and if Corona is removed, there will be a vacancy in the Supreme Court. There are reports that two or more justices, all Arroyo appointees, are also being eyed for impeachment. Should these planned impeachments come to pass, there will be two more vacancies created. Added to that of Corona’s—if he were to be found guilty and removed—there would be three vacancies and three new justices that the President can appoint to reduce the number of Arroyo appointees in the high court. This will create an Aquino-dominated Supreme Court that can be made to toe the line under the already proven method of browbeating by the President, as has been done on the House of Representatives and Corona.

The more vacancies, the more aspirants for Supreme Court justiceships, the more people salivating for appointments to the high court, including those media commentators whose applications had been rejected and who are now displaying their legal expertise, calling attention to their eligibility as candidates for associate justice.

An undemocratic gov’t

In assessing the accomplishments of the Aquino regime, it is difficult for journalists to turn a blind eye on the defining character of an administration in its first one and a half years—which is that it is an undemocratic government.

This is not the Aquino who mesmerized the people to vote for him in 2010 with promises of a caring and honest government. The basis for his continuing popularity requires closer examination.

The media cannot be, and should not be, party to propagating a momentary fad in the shifting sands of public opinion. To do so would be to abdicate their duty as sentinels warning against the deployment of the superior powers of the state against the weak and disadvantaged—no matter how popular that regime is.