Editorial : Gloria's day
It would have been more fitting to call it Gloria's day. For only the President and her loyal allies seemed in the mood to celebrate the results of the vote last Tuesday, much less toast the mindless loyalty that her congressional allies put on display.
The Constitution gives the House all of 60 session days to discuss and decide impeachment complaints. The justice committee finished its work in 14 days, 12 of which were wasted on debating anything and everything but the very serious charges made against the President, including cheating in and stealing the last presidential elections. When it buckled down to real business, the committee set aside the stronger amended complaint put together by the opposition, and chose to consider the poorly prepared complaint filed by lawyer Oliver Lozano, saying it was the first to be filed.
Some legal luminaries had pointed out that what was barred by the Constitution was not the filing of other complaints but a second impeachment proceeding within one year. But pro-administration members of the committee insisted they were one and the same. Then they threw out the original Lozano complaint for "insufficiency of substance."
The House as a whole could have overturned that funny committee decision by a vote of one-third of its members, but Malacañang saw to it that the opposition couldn't gather the 79 votes they needed. Calls were reportedly made to congressmen, pork barrel funds increased, high positions offered or actually given to relatives and friends of lawmakers and other promises made to ensure that they voted against impeachment. And but for one party-list congressman (who would later withdraw his signature from the impeachment complaint), no one found anything wrong with such blatant attempts to influence and corrupt the members of a supposedly co-equal body as well as the impeachment process.
When it was time for the entire House to vote, the reasons most often cited by administration lawmakers for trashing the impeachment was that it was what their constituents wanted. How did they come to that conclusion when surveys have shown that a big majority of Filipinos want Ms Arroyo impeached?
Another reason given was that the impeachment is a political process and so they must toe the party line. If this were so, then impeachment is a toothless and useless process. A president, who has a firm hold on the majority in Congress, can commit any crime without fear of losing his position. Conversely, a president that doesn't have a majority can be removed for the flimsiest of reasons.
Strangely, this notion that impeachment is nothing more than a numbers game has gained currency. And that is how the administration allies in the House played it. And they call such slavish, mindless loyalty a "grand display of political maturity"? What the House vote last Tuesday showed was not democracy in action but the failure to function of the one institutional process to redress wrongdoing in the highest office.
When the President challenged her political foes to "bring their grievance to Congress," many welcomed it, assuming she was willing to submit to the process (laid down by the Constitution) of determining wrongdoing at the highest levels of government. But it looks like she and her allies quickly moved to subvert it.
Now the process of ascertaining the truth and seeking justice is back to where it was before she hurled that challenge—in the streets. And many among those who thought our laws and institutions should be given the chance to work are starting to link hands with those who had declared from the start that such avenue was closed. Ms Arroyo may think the worst is over, but very few others see a "brighter tomorrow" of peace and stability in the days or even months ahead.
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