VICE President Noli de Castro may yet become the pivot in the crisis besieging the presidency of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. If the President is booted out of office, the constitutional mantle will pass on to him. This seems to be the consensus of some influential players, such as former President Corazon Aquino, who have called for the President's resignation. And if an earlier Pulse Asia survey is to be believed, 60 percent of Filipinos are ready to accept De Castro as president, acting or real.
The prospect may be discomfiting to thinking Filipinos. To some people, even as vice president, De Castro has merely been "acting." Such is the distaste and repugnance for media personalities engendered by the presidency of Joseph Estrada and the candidacy of Fernando Poe Jr. that many remain in denial that, indeed, De Castro, is a heartbeat away from the presidency. The prospect is too "real" as to be surreal for some. Perhaps this is what the poets mean when they write about the "harshness of reality."
But isn't De Castro a broadcast personality, a journalist? Alas, if in other countries journalists are considered intellectuals whose opinions and positions are eagerly awaited to resolve social problems and crises, in the Philippines they are mere carnival sideshows. For how else would one explain the broadcast media's description of their programs as "infotainment"?
This same distrust for entertainers is the reason there seems to be few takers for the call of former Sen. Loren Legarda that De Castro step down because the election results were allegedly rigged in his favor. If she indeed won the vice-presidency, would she be any different from him? At ABS-CBN Broadcasting Corp., they were both newsreaders. They made the news believable. In short, they were actors. Entertainers.
But the fact that a big majority of Filipinos are willing to have De Castro take over the reins of government only shows that they are committed to resolving the crisis within the bounds of the Constitution. It shows that people are repelled by calls to resolve the crisis by means that undermine our constitutional foundations.
The calls are diverse, but they amount to the same thing: extra-constitutional jabs that could only worsen rather than remedy the problem. Pangasinan Archbishop Oscar Cruz, retired Bishop Julio Labayen and a few Metro Manila bishops have called for a "transition" government, while leftist forces have either proposed a "junta" or a "council of state" that would take over the government once Ms Arroyo resigns or is ousted. What all of these calls presuppose is a constitutional order that is a shambles.
The Left cannot exactly be accused of revisionism. It really looks at the liberal democratic order as a failure, an artifice of governance. It does not recognize such an order because it derides its basis-popular elections-as an exercise in bourgeois boredom. In short, it does not recognize the Constitution. It does not recognize the democracy that forms and informs the expression of constitutionalism. It does not recognize this because democracy is popular, people-centered. The Left's calls for De Castro to step down and the establishment of a state council to govern the nation (presumably, the Left forms the majority in the council) show its bias for statism, for centralized authority, for single-party fixes.
As for the so-called "progressive" bishops, there's a quixotic dimension in their initiative to form a group consisting of a number of academics, intellectuals and other leaders of society who would manage the transition. Since the group is envisioned to screen applicants for the highest government positions, it is nothing more than a talent search committee. Which may be well and good, but from where will the committee derive its authority? Do clerics have to be involved in the minutiae of personnel management? Is it within the competence of bishops and priests to run government or dictate how it is run?
All of these questions crop up because denying the succession and transition provided by the Constitution creates a black hole of ifs and buts, of trial and error, of hits and misses. It's a power vacuum that adventurists and interlopers will be eager to fill. The majority of our people apparently crave certainty. They want the Constitution, with all its flaws, to be respected and followed.
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