Calling on the rabble

CANBERRA—The decision of the Supreme Court striking down the Aquino administration’s Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP) as unconstitutional was so devastating to his regime that it sent the President on a warpath against the high court, provoking the worst showdown between the two independent organs of Philippine democracy since he took office in 2010.

The decision proved to be the catalyst of a potential constitutional crisis in more ways than one, flaring up as Mr. Aquino enters the twilight years of his six-year presidency marked by controversies not only between himself and his political enemies but, more so, between two coequal branches of government.

First, the decision is polarizing the nation along the lines demarcated not by social ideology but by self-righteous claims of Mr. Aquino, who has proclaimed fighting corruption as the hallmark of his governance. Under it, his regime has launched the criminal prosecution of officials and their private cohorts accused by the Department of Justice of plunder and corruption in the Sandiganbayan. So far, the Ombudsman has lodged a plunder complaint encapsulated in the lead cases against Senators Juan Ponce Enrile, Jinggoy Estrada and Bong Revilla, their staff members and others, and executive-branch cases. These cases have been held out by Malacañang as a demonstration of its resolve to stamp out corruption in government.

Second, the decision has been so marked by acrimony between the executive branch and the judiciary that it generated heated exchanges in legal and political circles. It prompted Mr. Aquino to hurl threats against the Supreme Court, saying the outlawing of the DAP has raised the danger of a possible clash between the executive branch and the judiciary, to a point where the third branch would have to mediate.

This is clearly a dire and blatant threat of congressional intervention, given that the President’s coalition in the House of Representatives holds an overwhelming majority to overturn the effects of the high court’s cancellation of the DAP as a mechanism to take control of the distribution of the congressional pork barrel to public improvement projects—the lifeblood of congressional largesse to enable lawmakers to stay in office on the strength of the vote of local electorates. Clearly at stake in this conflict for control of the DAP is a  power grab of public patronage resources at the expense of the independence of both Congress and the Supreme Court. The President applied coercive methods to the high court in his nationally televised message last week in defense of the DAP. It was clear that he was bullying the high court for its unanimous decision showing that it was not inclined to be reduced to being his lackey or rubber-stamp. It was also clear that he resented having been rebuffed by a high court that would not allow his redistribution of the pork barrel according to a scheme designed by the fiscal geniuses in the Department of Budget and Management.

The fallout from the high court’s July 1 decision on the DAP proved immediately disastrous to Mr. Aquino’s public opinion standing. On the heels of the decision, his trust and approval ratings plunged to their lowest levels since he took office in 2010. The plunge shocked the President that his popularity rating was vulnerable, not irreversible. The results of the surveys clearly told him that after an overextended honeymoon with the public, he was standing on a precarious perch and that the only way to go was downhill—a plunge helped by his arrogance of power in dealing with the two other branches in the tripartite system of checks and balances. Mr. Aquino does not seem to have understood the dynamics of this system during the past four years. It should have occurred to him that there’s a limit to the people’s patience toward the abuse of power.

Mr. Aquino has aggravated matters by calling on public opinion to put pressure on the Supreme Court in the course of the petition for the reconsideration of its decision. Malacañang has a right to appeal an adverse judicial decision. No one is arguing against its exercise of this right. What’s not right is that it has now tried to agitate public opinion to apply pressure on the high court to reverse the justices’ ruling. It is calling on the rabble to exercise mob rule, to make the high court overturn its own decision.

The extrajudicial pressures resorted to by Malacañang reveal a deep-seated disrespect, or even contempt, for the rule of law and judicial processes that underlie constitutional democracy. The actions of the President in response to the Supreme Court’s decision on the DAP betray a crude form of populism—a poorly disguised authoritarianism that this country experienced during the Marcos dictatorship. Mr. Aquino is resurrecting the vestiges of martial-law autocracy without the benefit of a declaration of a national emergency. He is attempting to install a dictatorship without a mandate to rule by decree or by impulse.