Aquino’s single-issue presidency

No event in the first 20 months of the Benigno Aquino III presidency defines his single-issue administration more sharply than the  impeachment trial of Chief Justice  Renato  Corona.

Mr. Aquino has poured all his scorn, rage and the vast powers of the presidency into the effort to impeach Corona, as the surrogate of the intensely reviled former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, and to remove him from the Supreme Court for allegedly biased decisions in favor of Arroyo and for graft and corruption.

The obsession with sending Arroyo to jail on charges of election sabotage and collaterally ousting Corona from the leadership of the Court has now crystallized into the impeachment trial. It is the Aquino government’s main claim of accomplishment, to the exclusion of the other tasks of the presidency, especially revitalizing the economy as a means of creating jobs, bringing income to the poor, and reducing the incidence of poverty. The trial, now on its second week, has riveted public attention to the drama, which has not produced an iota of wealth to enhance growth.

The first week of the trial has also crystallized two developments:  First, it has galvanized the  impeachment court’s leadership and the senator-judges  into asserting their independence to  ensure that the trial is conducted fairly and according to the rule of  evidence and of law. The authoritative manner and legal expertise of the  presiding officer,  Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile, in conducting the trial and in  preventing it  from getting entangled in a thicket of  procedures or legal technicalities have signaled an  auspicious beginning for the trial.  This development has inspired some confidence that the senator-judges,  by and large, mean  business and are serious in their pledge to  conduct a fair trial and to resist intervention from either the executive branch or pressure groups, especially the  rabble  that is  being agitated to  take to the streets to form  a howling lynch mob and intimidate the senators to  convict Corona with their unruly form of public opinion.

The mob is  what the administration calls the  “bosses” of  public officials, including the  President, members of  Congress, and justices of the Supreme Court.  The people are thus being recognized as the source of the sovereign power  delegated to officials to discharge their respective duties under the tripartite system of  Philippine constitutional democracy.

The opening statement of Enrile has  won wide praise for  setting the standards by which  to decide the case. He said that  while the trial is  political in nature,  the jurors as a  body cannot escape the responsibility of  seeing to it that “the Bill of Rights are observed and  that justice is served, and to conduct the trial with impartiality and fairness and to hear the case with a clear and open mind, to weigh carefully in the scale the evidence against the respondent in an impeachment case, and to render him a just verdict based on no other consideration than our Constitution and laws, the  facts presented to us, and our  individual moral conviction.”

These standards have also found resonance in  the minds of the senators,  and have set the tone in the public debate that  the overarching issue is a  fair trial,  and this is  more important than whether or not Corona is convicted or  acquitted.

These standards have also put the administration and the prosecutors  on the spot. They are being watched if they  would prosecute their case without resort to dirty tricks or mobilize their legions in civil society to put pressure on the tribunal to convict Corona.

With the focus on the trial as the single issue consuming  its efforts on good governance, it has increasingly become clear  that the economy has been sidelined  by the administration as  an important area of governance. The administration is proclaiming its honesty at every turn, while insisting that there is a connection between a robust economy and  good government able to deliver  material benefits to the people.  The first 18 months  of the  administration  have  been defined by the production of slogans, such as “Kung walang corrupt, walang mahirap” and “Daang matuwid,”  even as economic growth contracted. It has been shown that good governance and good economics are not mutually exclusive.

In October last year,   Benjamin Diokno a professor at the  University of the Philippines  School of Economics,  pointed out that the November Pulse Asia survey found that 18 percent of respondents disapproved of the administration’s performance with regard to poverty reduction.

In a November survey, more people disapproved (36 percent)  than approved (32 percent) of the way the administration was implementing its poverty reduction program.

Poverty reduction is related to other national issues like  job creation, improving the pay of workers, moderating inflation, and, in the long run controlling fast population growth, Diokno pointed out.

With respect to other gut issues, the dissatisfaction with the administration’s has been increasing:  controlling inflation (from 21 to 37 percent, or an increase by 16 percentage points) and increasing the pay of workers (from 14 percent to 25 percent, or up by 11 percentage points).