President’s order a side issue in trial of Gutierrez

THE TRIGGER-HAPPY Aquino administration has provoked an early showdown ahead of the trial in the Senate in May of Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez, who has been impeached by the House of Representatives.

The provocation came on Friday when President Benigno Aquino III sacked Deputy Ombudsman Emilio Gonzalez III after a Palace investigation found him to have “committed serious and inexcusable negligence and gross violation” of the Office of the Ombudsman’s own rules of procedure by allowing former Senior Insp. Rolando Mendoza’s motion for reconsideration “to languish for nine months without justification.”

Mendoza seized at gunpoint a group of tourists from Hong Kong in Manila on Aug. 23, 2010, resulting in a bungled attempt by the government to free the hostages. The rescue led to the deaths of eight hostages, an effort for which the Aquino administration was heavily criticized for its ineptness.

The resurrection of the hostage episode comes in the midst of the administration’s frenzied and hysterical public opinion campaign to remove Gutierrez from office on impeachment charges of “betrayal of public trust” as the Senate prepares for her trial in May.

Unable to bulldoze Gutierrez to step down through all sorts of pressures, including blackening her name in its publicity campaign in the media in an attempt to influence the Senate in its impeachment trial, the administration has now opened a new front to attack not only Gutierrez but also the Office of the Ombudsman itself.

In what appears to be reckless exercise of presidential power, the President sacked Gonzalez for his action or inaction on the Mendoza hostage case. The dismissal order pushed Malacañang to the edge of a potential constitutional confrontation over the issue of the President’s powers relative to a constitutionally protected organ, such as the Office of the Ombudsman.

No pushover

Unfortunately, the Office of the Ombudsman didn’t want to be pushed around easily.

On Friday, Assistant Ombudsman Jose de Jesus defied the presidential order. He said the Office of the Ombudsman would not sack Gonzalez for his delayed resolution of the review of the Mendoza case. The delay was being blamed for pushing Mendoza to commandeer the busload of Hong Kong tourists.

In a 15-page decision “approved by authority of the President,” the Palace sacked Gonzalez, blaming him for the hostage crisis.

An incident investigation and review committee found Gonzalez to have committed an inexcusable and gross violation of the Ombudsman’s rules of procedure. The rules require motions for reconsideration in administrative cases, such as Mendoza’s, to be resolved in five days upon submission.

The committee report said that Gonzalez did not act soon enough on the appeal of Mendoza for a review of his case.

The Palace inquiry also found “substantial evidence” to support the allegation that Gonzalez had demanded P150,000 for a review of the Mendoza case. Gonzalez denied the allegation that he tried to extort money from Mendoza.

Betrayal of public trust

The committee found Gonzalez “guilty of gross neglect and grave misconduct constituting betrayal of public trust, and hereby meted out the penalty of dismissal from service,” said the dismissal order. The order was signed by Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa Jr.

De Jesus, speaking for the Office of the Ombudsman, said it could not implement immediately the President’s dismissal order because “this is not yet final and executory.” He said it was still subject to appeal.

In an effort to put pressure on the Office of the Ombudsman to obtain immediate compliance with the dismissal order, the President’s spokesperson, Abigail Valte, insisted that the Office of the Ombudsman “is not a coequal branch of the government, had no option but to implement the dismissal order, theirs is just (to execute the order).”

The Office of the Ombudsman never claimed that it was a coequal branch of government. The office’s spokesperson said, “We are an independent agency of government and free from political interference in the performance of our functions.”

More popish than Pope

Reacting to the Office of the Ombudsman press statement, Valte was more popish than the Pope when she said, “A deputy, or special prosecutor, may be removed from office by the President for any of the grounds provided for the removal of the Ombudsman and after due process.”

But it is also part of due process that there’s a period of appeal before a decision becomes executory.

This Palace spokesperson displays the impatient hangman’s mentality that underlies the drive of the administration to demonize Gutierrez with public opinion to exert pressure on the Senate to find Gutierrez guilty of the impeachment charges.

The public does not need to be nagged and reminded all the time of the vast powers of the presidency, including those to remove officials deemed as stumbling blocks to his campaign against corruption.

The public is beginning to be alarmed at the thuggish exercise of presidential power in the Ombudsman impeachment on the theme, “I’m the boss here, I can remove even constitutionally protected officials who stand on the way of my drive to stamp out corruption in the government. No one can stop me from using the powers.”

This theme is the creed of King Kong.

Double-edged blade

In dismissing Gonzalez over the hostage fiasco, Mr. Aquino has opened a side issue leading up to the impeachment trial of Gutierrez.

This peripheral issue is a double-edged blade that can only damage the President’s attempt to get Gutierrez convicted in the Senate trial.

The issue can divert public attention in the interim to the incompetence of the administration in crisis management. It tells us that in the attempt to dismiss Gonzalez, the President is not above using rough tactics to demonize Gutierrez before public opinion in the sense that she is linked to the hostage fiasco through the actions of her deputies in the case of the hostage-taker.

The President may get rid of Gonzalez, but he is not central to the Gutierrez impeachment case. Mr. Aquino is wasting political resources on the Gonzalez case.

The dismissal seeks to blame Gonzalez for the hostage fiasco. The move against Gonzalez cannot wash the hands of the President of responsibility for the bungled rescue. It is a scapegoating exercise.

The decision to reintroduce that failed hostage crisis nightmare in the public agenda in the run-up to the Senate trial is a self-destructive public opinion strategy.