Beyond her political grave

by Lito Banayo
from MALAYA

The legal “holy of holies”, the Supreme Court, upon a vote of 9-1, with 3 inhibitions and 2 saying the case was premature for a decision, ruled that a dying regime’s illegitimate leader could yet appoint, in midnight precision, a new Chief Justice. The decision, announced last Wednesday morning, was the last straw that broke the proverbial camel’s back. It is the final proof that Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who usurped the presidency from Joseph Ejercito Estrada, and forthwith cheated the people of their choice of a leader in 2004, will never be the fat lady to sing the last aria of a tragic political opera that the people of this benighted land have been suffering in patience for the last nine years two months and three days.

The nine justices overturned more than half a century of jurisprudence against midnight postings by an outgoing President. They likewise overturned a fairly recent 1998 ponencia by then-CJ Andres Narvasa that a President may fill up court vacancies unless barred. That was a unanimous decision where the Court included three later Chiefs: Hilario Davide, Artemio Panganiban, and the incumbent Reynato Puno.

The ruling was rushed two months before the seat would become vacant with Puno’s retirement on May 17. Parenthetically, the ruling would allow their Dona Gloria to fill up the vacancy as associate justice of whomsoever among the present fourteen associates she decides to elevate to the post of Chief. Had the ruling come after May 17, there might already be a President-elect from the automated May 11 election. Dona Gloria would look even more evil if she persisted on naming a new CJ instead of letting her successor do so. But of course, neither Dona Gloria nor her nine toadies care about public opinion, neither the judgment of history.

Clearly, she wants to rule beyond the Constitutionally-mandated terminus, defined as noon of the 30th of June, 2010. By then she shall have abused her office for nine years, five months and ten days, political longevity out-spanned only by the authoritarian Ferdinand Marcos. Her misrule has been adjudged by many as the worst ever by any president, bar none. Using the shibboleth of a working democracy, unlike Marcos who bared brass knuckles and all under military rule, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has succeeded in destroying the credibility and stability of every political institution, and tarred even our religious institutions with her shameless use of money, not unlike the dark days when Church intercessions were bought by gold and estates.

She is the first incumbent president ever to run for lower office, as representative of the second district of Pampanga. Others before her sought the anonymity of retirement from public life, whether Cory or Fidel V. Ramos. Before them, every other president either died in office or was defeated for re-election. In the case of the authoritarian Marcos, he was forced to leave Malacanang and was flown by the Americans to Hawaii. GMA is taking along with her the cabinet that served her. Some are running as elective representatives of their districts; others have shamelessly inserted themselves as “marginalized” party-list nominees. She will be joining an “elite” lower House known for its rapacious capacity to transact law for favours, of which expectedly two of her sons and one brother-in-law will yet be members.

Speculation is rife that she will be chosen Speaker of the lower House by the power of her money, her residual influence (also a function of money and past favours), and the reluctant benediction of her “secret” chosen successor, Manuel B. Villar, otherwise called Money Villarroyo. Her ostensible candidate, Gilbert Teodoro, has nonchalantly resigned himself to this eventuality, stating that the issue of the speakership post June 30 will be decided by a party, their party, that she and not he controls. Whether or not he will be his own man (and I have confidence in his ability to rise above the handicap of present perceptions) is of no moment, because it is well nigh impossible for him yet to catch up, unable to shuck off the stigma of her political company. The matter would of course change if Noynoy Aquino wins the presidency, and/or is allowed to win the presidency and be peaceably proclaimed as such. He would not brook her elevation to the speakership, and nobody in the new Congress, not even her toadies, would dare defy a duly elected president’s rejection of their purchased “choice”.

Which is why she will try her damnedest best to elect someone else, and that will clearly be Money Villarroyo. Whether she would succeed or not would be the litmus test of our people’s political maturity, as much as it would require the Aquino camp to muster everything it could to warn the public, and foil this pre-conceived outrage. That is also the reason why Aquino’s numbers should be far higher than Villarroyo’s, so that only a naked and brutish last-ditch attempt can foil the people’s will. And for that, the evil-doers will have to face the wrath of the people. It happened in 1986, and Cory’s son just might be the one to do a reprise.

Already Dona Gloria has her loyalists ensconced in the echelons of the military and the police, institutions legally allowed to use violence and force to protect the State. Whether they define State as Gloria Macapagal Arroyo in the manner of Louis XIV’s infamous pomposity —“L’etat, c’est moi” or decide upon hors de combat to protect the people instead, remains to be seen. Would they allow themselves to be used, as they had been in that dark chapter in our history better known as “Hello Garci?” or would they redeem their institution from the pits, as Enrile and Ramos, Honasan and Sotelo, and many others in 1986 did? Vamos a ver.

Last Friday, her deputy spokesperson speculated openly that if there should be a failure of elections, a military junta shall come in to fill the political vacuum. Now the question is: did Charito Planas overhear that somewhere in the bowels of the palace beside the stinking river? And did she, naïve as she has always been, blabbered it as fair warning against the enemies of her Dona? Or, in more sinister fashion, did Malacanang’s snakes really pose a trial balloon, the better to test reaction, or to condition minds, and deliberately used the naïve Planas, whose takes on a lot of issues most observers would consider a joke?

Whereupon her other spokesperson, Ricardo Saludo, clarifies the morning after. There won’t be a military junta because in the first place there won’t be a failure of elections, he reasons. Cold logic perhaps, but Saludo dispenses with the verity that his Dona’s Comelec is fumbling all over the place with their Venezuelan experts running the automated show. Saludo himself talks of a “worst case scenario” where “only” 30% of the precincts will resort to manual voting. He, he, he — 30% lang. They succeeded in garcifying the results of the 2004 elections with just over a million votes, which at the time represented less than 3% of the voters.

Meanwhile too, GMA has packed the civil service with her toadies and courtiers, most especially in positions with fixed terms of office. She has recycled her health secretary to become the chair of the Civil Service Commission for a post of seven years, outlasting the term of the newly-elected president in May. She has added one more loyalist to the Monetary Board, there to partake of largesse and participate in deciding monetary policy for the duration of the new president’s term. She has a subservient Ombudsman who claims she will be there for two more years. In the recently-invented Mindanao Development Authority, she has recycled her ineffective press secretary and even more ineffective peace adviser as its head for the next six years. And many others, all signs of loading her bases because whatever the outcome, or whether or not there is any outcome after May 10, she has levers of power to pull.

Sin delicadeza y ningun propriedad. The antigos would ascribe it to a “falta de urbanidad”. Even her father Diosdado would have recoiled at such gall. When his predecessor Carlos P. Garcia appointed the brilliant Dominador Aytona to become governor of the Central Bank, Macapagal got a truly fair and impartial Supreme Court to declare Garcia’s “midnight appointment” constitutionally infirm.

But not the present Court, packed with those she appointed despite checkered careers in the public service, or mediocre legal acumen. Theirs to pander to her wishes. Theirs to follow every command. Theirs to twist interpretation of the law according to her best lights.

And so, the Judicial and Bar Council would have to submit to her a list of nominees a week or so before May 17 (why not make it on Monday, May 10, or the day after?). Dona Gloria would forthwith appoint “her” chief magistrate, and his would be the task to give legal imprimatur, as head of a Court filled completely by her assigns (with the exception of two who seem to understand that the oath they took is to the Constitution and inferentially to the sovereign people, and not to the appointing authority), to whatever designs she may have beyond her political grave. That Court headed by her Chief Toady would be expected to protect her from prosecution for the unspeakable plunder her misrule has effected. It would likely sustain all the controversial midnight deals that her government has been cutting with every money launderer and every carpetbagger in town, selling off the few remaining jewels of the Republic with stealth. Worse, that Court headed by her Chief Toady would be expected to declare “nihil obstat” to whatever she, as “Speaker” of the lower House would want them to sustain.

And so shall impunity reign, forever and ever. So shall the rule of law be mocked once again, as it had been mockery for the past nine years and more, save for a few brilliant episodes.

This shameless woman wants to live beyond her political grave. And unless the people stop her overwhelmingly, on May 10, 2010 and thereafter — by whatever it takes — she and her acolytes in the coven of evil just might succeed. And the Court shall be reduced to a hallelujah chorus, endlessly croaking the strains of Handel’s Messiah … “Hallelujaaaah”, as in a dirge to democracy.

The fat and squat lady will finally get to sing her aria, to the melancholic cadence of Chopin’s “Funevre”.

(banayo_at@yahoo.com)

(atbanayo.blogspot.com)