By
PRESIDENT B. S. Aquino III’s call for charter change to allow him to run for a non-existent second term, and to clip the Supreme Court’s power of judicial review betrays a profound contempt for the Constitution, and a fundamental principle of lawmaking, which could fuel a broader call in the opposite direction----a call for his outright removal. The next few days or weeks could tell.
It is a canon universally observed that no legislation is ever enacted primarily for the benefit of its author. In the present instance, the two things being proposed will have Aquino, and no other, as the immediate and principal beneficiary. For that reason alone, the proposal cannot stand.
But Aquino’s spokesmen invoke the need for political “reform.” Lifting term limits is said to be one such reform. What is forgotten is the fact that the term limit for all elective officials was written into the 1987 Constitution as a “political reform.” This did not exist in the previous constitutions.
But even before the term limit was introduced for congressmen, senators, and local government officials, there was already a term limit for the President. Under the 1935 Constitution, when the term was limited to four years, the President was eligible for one reelection. The “reform” in the Cory Aquino Constitution rewrote this into a single term of six years.
Is Aquino now thinking of “reforming” the “reform”?
As to the Supreme Court’s power of judicial review, which Aquino now sees as an “overreach,” this is nothing but the Court’s exercise of its right and duty, to interpret the Constitution, pursuant to the doctrine of separation of powers. Under this doctrine, the Legislature legislates, the Executive executes, and the Judiciary interprets the law.
In the US landmark decision in Marbury v. Madison of 1803, Chief Justice John Marshall said: “It is emphatically the province and duty of the Judicial Department to say what the law is.”
Did the Court overreach when it declared Aquino’s Executive Order No. 1, creating the so-called Truth Commission, unconstitutional? Or when it declared the Priority Development Assistance Fund and the Disbursement Acceleration Program both unconstitutional? By no means. It merely exercised its right and its duty.
In fact, the Court did not reach long enough when it failed to strike down State-imposed contraception and instead declared the Reproductive Health Law “not unconstitutional”—a clear political offering to Aquino.
But if there has been any overreach, it was when the Executive Department used the PDAF and the DAP to pay off members of Congress to impeach and remove Chief Justice Renato Corona and to impose population control through the RH Law.
Now, apart from its intrinsic lack of merit, Aquino’s proposed second term provokes a number of deeply troubling questions.
One, did he really win the 2010 presidential elections?
Two, has he done anything worthwhile to deserve his position?
Three, is he not unduly polarizing the nation?
Four, is he not courting removal by direct popular action?
We shall try to address these questions now.
I - Was Aquino legitimately elected by the Filipinos?
The popular spin is that Aquino won the 2010 elections because of “overwhelming public sympathy,” upon the death of his mother, former president Cory Aquino.
In 1983, his father, former Senator Benigno Aquino Jr., was assassinated at the international airport that now bears his name. In 1986, Cory became president after Marcos fell. On August 1, 2009, Cory died of colorectal cancer.
This was so hyped up in the media that as the mother was being buried, the son who had been congressman for nine years, senator for three, but who had never been mentioned for higher office because of his zero performance, suddenly emerged as the Liberal Party standard bearer.
Manuel Araneta Roxas II, who had, among other things, married news anchor Korina Sanchez to prepare for the presidency, had to slide down as vice presidential candidate to give way to Aquino.
During the campaign, Aquino’s camp claimed he should lead his closest rival by five million votes, but that he would be cheated during the count by President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo’s Lakas party, so he would have to resort to “people power” to claim his “rightful office.”
The propaganda surveys, controlled by people close to Aquino, tended to support this claim. This became more pronounced after the early survey leader, Nacionalista Party’s Manuel Villar, was vilified as “Villaroyo” (a contraction of “Villar” and “Arroyo”), and his promising campaign quickly collapsed.
This caused Arroyo’s camp to panic and its financial backers to shift their support to Aquino. According to the best informed sources, Arroyo’s camp assured Aquino he would get his 5 million-plurality without his having to wage “people power”, on the condition that he would not go after Arroyo for any of her “sins,” after he becomes president. The secret “concord” was reportedly brokered by powerful campaign contributors who were close to both parties.
Then the Commission on Elections under Chairman Jose Melo went to work, removed all safety features and accuracy mechanisms of the precinct count optical scan (PCOS) machines operated by Smartmatic, the Argentine company which effectively conducted the elections for the Comelec, in derogation of its exclusive and non-transferrable constitutional mandate.
The rest is history.
A criminal complaint in the Ombudsman against Melo and company for rigging the PCOS, and a petition before the Supreme Court to invalidate the electoral results have both slept the sleep of death.
In the beginning, Aquino did nothing to Arroyo, in apparent compliance with the “modus vivendi” reportedly agreed to by the parties. But when critics started needling Aquino on his apparent lack of program, he responded by filing the first case against Arroyo and paying off the members of Congress to impeach Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona.
In the 2013 senatorial elections, which again used the same PCOS machines, Aquino managed to swing a 60-30-10 win for all his senatorial candidates in all places in the country, even in known opposition bailiwicks. This confirmed, in the view of a number of university-based computer experts and professors of mathematics and the sciences, the extent of Aquino’s control of the electoral system.
Now, he wants the Constitution amended so he could run for a second term? Both the amendment process and the subsequent election would use the PCOS machines all over again. So if he was machine-elected in 2010, he would be machine-elected all over again.
II – What has Aquino done in office?
Plenty, but not according to how his propagandists would like us to see things. He has corrupted the Congress, destabilized and intimidated the Judiciary, debauched the Treasury, weakened the police, demoralized the military, trivialized the bureaucracy, and promoted unnecessary conflicts, factionalism and political enmity among our religious, ethnic and tribal communities.
He has not solved a single problem he has created on his own, or inherited from his predecessors, and he has not initiated any meaningful program or project, which he could pass on to his successor by 2016. He appears to have reduced corruption in the Department of Public Works, but he has actually just transferred it, by several multiples higher, to the Department of Budget and Management, where the corruption is now in the hundreds of billions.
Fairly or unfairly, he is known to have spent more of his waking hours playing video games with his favorite nephew than studying any of the nation’s serious ills. How then could anyone think of extending such a wasted term?
III—Is Aquino not unduly polarizing the nation?
Without doubt. He apparently sees governance as a video game, where one side must always score, so he tends to create adversaries and conflicts where there are none, confident that in the end he would prevail. His bid for a second term is certain to create unnecessary divisions even within his own party; but if he could get away with an anti-Catholic RH Law in a predominantly Catholic country, why can’t he get away with an immoral proposal in an increasingly amoral country? The nation is already polarized, can it not stand a little more polarization?
IV –Is Aquino not courting removal by direct popular action?
No doubt. After the House leadership decided to throw out the fourth impeachment complaint even without finding out whether it is sufficient in form or in substance, while the three others appear to be in limbo now, there seems no other way of getting Aquino out except by direct people’s action. Not only has he become the biggest single threat to the Constitution, by his latest statements he has removed every legal obstacle to such direct popular action.
fstatad@gmail.com
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