Arroyo must be laughing hard

ON DISTANT SHORE

By Val G. Abelgas

Just five months after she stepped out of Malacanang, it is becoming clear that Gloria Macapagal Arroyo has outsmarted all her critics, including her successor, President Benigno S. Aquino III. After naming Aquino’s mother, the late President Cory Aquino, one of the 25 most powerful women of the century, Time should seriously consider Arroyo as one of the shrewdest women of the century.

Arroyo has not only survived all moves to impeach or oust her in her nine years at the helm, she is now also successfully dodging all moves to prosecute her for graft and corruption during her term. Arroyo outmaneuvered the political opposition and the street parliamentarians every step of the way during her term and, in fact, nearly succeeded in remaining in power through proposed amendments to the Constitution until she ran out of time.

If she had completed her Arroyo Court, otherwise known as the Philippine Supreme Court, and named Renato Corona as chief justice earlier, who can say she would not have succeeded in going on with the cha-cha, change the presidential form of government to a parliamentary one, and with the help of her rah-rah boys in Congress, have herself elected as prime minister?

And now that same Supreme Court, with all 15 justices appointed by her, including the chief justice, has declared Aquino’s Executive Order No. 1 creating the Truth Commission as unconstitutional, scuttling Aquino’s vow to go after Arroyo for graft and corruption.

I will not argue the Supreme Court’s reasons for voiding the Executive Order on the Truth Commission, not being a lawyer, but the names of those who voted in declaring it unconstitutional and those who dissented should give us an idea on how Arroyo continues to manipulate this government.

The five justices who dissented were mostly the same justices who have consistently dissented against the majority decision: Antonio Carpio, Conchita Carpio-Morales, Antonio Eduardo Nachura, Ma. Lourdes Sereno, and Roberto Abad.

Among those who concurred with the majority decision were Chief Justice Renato Corona, Associate Justices Presbitero Velasco, Teresita Leonardo De Castro, Arturo Brion, Diosdado Peralta, Lucas Bersamin, Mariano Del Castillo, Martin Villarama and Jose Perez – all appointed by former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.

The same Supreme Court has struck down other executive orders by Aquino, including one that cancelled all midnight appointments made by Arroyo, and issued a temporary restraining order (TRO) on Congress in its moves to impeach Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez, another Arroyo appointee and perceived Arroyo loyalist.

In issuing the TRO against the House committee on justice, which was hearing the impeachment complaint against Gutierrez, the high court clearly stepped out of bounds. Impeachment proceedings are political in character and should have been left to Congress to decide. Former Akbayan party-list Rep. Rita Hontiveros, in reaction to the SC ruling, stressed that the Court should respect the “constitutionally mandated independence and authority of the House of Representatives” to determine the sufficiency and the validity of the impeachment complaint against Gutierrez.

With the impeachment moves stopped, Gutierrez remains the highest authority to decide whether to file graft or plunder charges against Arroyo, being the Ombudsman and head of Tanodbayan, the constitutional agency tasked with prosecuting anomalies perpetrated by government officials.

With the Truth Commission out and Gutierrez staying as Ombudsman, the Aquino administration will have difficulty going after Arroyo and other officials of the previous administration, a pledge he made during the campaign and during his inaugural speech. Aquino rode on his anti-corruption battle cry to victory, and he now has to carry on his quest virtually without a sword.

The House of Representatives, from which impeachment proceedings are initiated, has remained quiet about the TRO after an initial outburst that threatened to put the country in constitutional crisis, and has gone back to “business as usual” with nary a word about defending its constitutional mandate on impeachment.

The Supreme Court has encroached on Legislative territory and now has breached Executive powers. Both the Legislative and Executive branches seem to have quietly surrendered their powers to the now powerful Supreme Court, which raises an alarm because of the perception that Arroyo controls two major arms of the Judicial branch – the Supreme Court and the Ombudsman, meaning even from her lowly loft in the House of Representatives,  Arroyo is able to wield power through the Judicial Branch.

Aquino’s mother, the late President Cory Aquino, had an easier time going after Marcos and other martial law officials because the constitution was not in place, the Cory government having taken a revolutionary character. Arroyo herself had an easy time convicting her predecessor, President Joseph Estrada, because the latter had just been ousted by a coup cum People Power.

So now, while Marcos had to live in disgrace and in exile in a faraway land and Estrada had to spend lonely days in a concentration camp and later in his rest house in Tanay, Arroyo and his two children Mikey and Dato and brother-in-law Ignacio Arroyo, all of whom have also been implicated in other graft scandals, now sit with “distinguished ladies and gentlemen of the House” as if everything is alright with the world.

Arroyo must be laughing hard.

(valabelgas@aol.com)