The significance of a fair impeachment trial

The Aquino administration  charges toward the impeachment trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona, still enjoying high—but waning—popularity ratings, as an opinion survey taken in the last quarter of 2011 showed. Administration supporters expect the results of the survey to give the government a head start in pushing its effort to oust Chief Justice Corona when the impeachment trial at the Senate opens Monday. But there are cracks in the government’s armor.

According to the survey, President Aquino gained only two points for a continued “very good” net satisfaction rating score of +58 (71 percent satisfied minus 13 percent dissatisfied), during the period under review.

From SWS’ interpretations of its own results,  the figures meant that the President would still end 2011 on a high mark after the rating dipped to a trough of +46 (described as “good”). SWS points out that the latest rating is still under the record +64 (very good) posted in November 2010, five months into Mr. Aquino’s  presidency following a landslide victory in the May 2010 elections.

However, it is far from certain that the ratings would ensure the successful prosecution of Corona at the impeachment trial, although the last quarter rating appeared to be good news for the government. It did grab the newspaper headlines and overshadowed the mounting criticism over the excessive effort of the prosecution to swamp the  news media with derogatory information on the much-maligned Corona ahead of the trial, outside the impeachment tribunal. Critics of the government’s tactics in legal circles have assailed the prosecution panel for preempting the impeachment process by dumping evidence to back the government’s case against Corona in the news media in an attempt to blacken the name of Corona through trial by publicity. SWS went out of its way to reduce the impeachment trial into a popularity contest between President Aquino and Corona.

In its survey, SWS took pains to emphasize the contrast of ratings between those of the President and Corona, who was depicted as the villain of the piece in the impeachment vilification drama. According to the survey results of the fourth quarter, Corona’s ratings suffered a sharp slump, in contrast to the continuing high satisfaction rating of the President. The survey showed that from a zero net satisfaction rating in September, Corona’s rating dropped to -14, with 21 percent of respondents saying they were satisfied with his performance and 35 percent saying otherwise.

Since the controversial “midnight appointment” of Corona as chief justice by the exiting President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo in May 2010, Corona’s net satisfaction rating has not entered the positive column. Corona got his lowest rating of -18 in June 2010, while his highest rating so far is zero, which he got in June and September last year. These results appear to show that, first,  the midnight appointment issue has damaged him severely; and, second, the government ’s campaign to demonize Corona has been eminently successful. But it is far from clear whether Corona’s rock-bottom rating would translate into a successful prosecution of Corona at the Senate impeachment trial.

What the survey results tell us is that the prosecution enjoys an enormous advantage in a trial by publicity, in which arena the administration can deploy its resources  to influence public opinion and the decision of the judges. The government enjoys the advantages of incumbency, including a near monopoly of the bully pulpit which is available only to the President, in setting the agenda of the impeachment, not to mention the patronage resources, with which to browbeat to submission those who resist Palace blandishments or to reward the compliant.

Whether we like it or not, the President is the most important newsmaker in our democracy, in which an independent press is claimed, or  believed, to play a pivotal role in checking the powers of the presidency. What the President says and does is not only news but affects all of us. No other official, elected or appointed, holds a candle to the powers of the President who, above all, is commander in chief of the state monopoly of the means of violence, as well as the bureaucratic machinery of the government. The news media is the platform through which the President sets the agenda. And he can use the news media to get public support behind his policies and decisions, and annihilate those opposing his political objectives. Let us be aware that an imbalance of distribution of power is emerging among the three independent branches of Philippine constitutional democracy in the wake of the concerted attack on the Chief Justice—as well as on the Judiciary—by the other two political branches.

According to some legal experts, impeachment is not a popularity contest between the maligned and his accusers. Which is why senator-judges insist that the trial procedures should be guided by those applied in criminal cases. If the trial turns out to adhere to the desired norms of a fair trial—i.e., it is conducted according to due process under the rule of law, which protects the rights to a fair trial of the accused—then that’s the only way through which Corona can hope for an acquittal. Otherwise, he appears to have only a ghost of a chance to be acquitted. That’s why an independent and fair impeachment trial is acutely important to the maintenance of our system of institutional checks and balances.