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).