Prelude to impeachment

Among all branches of government, the Supreme Court comes off as “sacred” and impregnable. People have no qualms railing against members of the executive, the national legislature and military officials accused of graft and corruption, but are rather inhibited when it comes to members of the Supreme Court.

An angry SC Justice getting back at an ordinary citizen or even a legal luminary is a forceful deterrent but the general deference could be the legacy of a time in our history when men of honor occupied the highest court of the land.

We remember the country’s fifth chief justice, Jose Abad Santos, who became the government caretaker during Japanese Occupation of the Philippines in 1941. Despite threats to his life, Abad Santos did not shirk from the responsibility after then president Manuel L. Quezon transferred the seat of government to the United States to avoid advancing Japanese forces. When forced by the Japanese military to pledge allegiance to a foreign country, Abad Santos refused and was summarily executed.

Threats to personal safety stalked the SC justices during martial law, but gritty men like Claudio Teehankee, Vicente Abad Santos and Cecilia Muñoz-Palma refused to be bowed down. Court activists all, they refused to play ball with the dictator Ferdinand Marcos even if he appointed them to the High Court. Their heroic deeds imbued the High Court with a shade of sacredness so that when we said Korte Suprema, these principled men and woman who sacrificed and risked their lives defending honor and justice came to mind.

Nowadays, derision floods the SC with people calling it “Coronarroyo.”

The SC and Arroyo don’t lack for defenders who called President Benigno S. Aquino III names like “way batasan” (uncouth), unpresidential and arrogant for criticizing the Supreme Court and Chief Justice Renato Corona but in my view, P-Noy couldn’t have done it any other way.

The opportunity to unmask the real standing of the High Court and the Chief Justice was well-timed, during a national justice summit that, for all its lofty aims, would still amount to pretense given the SC’s past performance. Corona’s midnight appointment and the SC’s untarnished record of defending Arroyo in all 19 cases lodged before the High Court speaks volumes about its character.

Political analyst Ramon Casiple hints that P-Noy’s broadsides against the SC are nothing but pasakalye or prelude to the impeachment of the Chief Justice.
Casiple, who is executive director of the Institute for Political and Electoral Reform, said P-Noy’s criticism effectively “laid the groundwork for an impeachment case” against Corona.

An impeachment is a political process that depends on key factors, one of which is the backing of Congress. P-Noy’s Liberal Party is not the dominant party, but many Arroyo allies in the Lower House have thrown their support to Aquino after the 2010 elections, in true weather-weather politics fashion.

Another factor is the President’s high approval rating, 72 percent according to Pulse Asia’s November polling. This can only mean that if P-Noy sends the signal for impeachment, he would do so while the iron is hot.

In the meantime, the Aquino administration cemented its ties with local government officials with the visit here of Interior and Local Government Sec. Jesse Robredo. At the general assembly of the League of Municipalities, Robredo announced that P6.5 billion in support funds will be made available to local government units. That should quiet many local officials who earlier expressed disenchantment over the national government’s decision to slash the LGUs’ Internal Revenue Allotment (IRA) owing to poor tax collection.

Casiple offered a word of caution to the administration saying the impeachment route is “fraught with grave peril, both political and legal.” On second thought, he conceded that in the end, “Impeachment is a process whose ultimate dispenser of justice will be the people.”

I take it to mean that once people decide to mete out justice against those who betray their trust, there is no stopping them.