Crown of Thorns

Corona of Thorns

I find today's editorial of the Philippine Daily Inquirer cogent and incisive:

LET US BE CLEAR: IF THERE IS A POLITICAL storm gathering over the designation of Renato Corona as the new chief justice, it is not the fault, or even the doing, of presumptive president-elect Benigno Aquino III. If you slap a man in the face, he might strike back or turn the other cheek, but in either case, he is merely reacting to the provocation.

Now that President Macapagal-Arroyo has provoked the crisis-in-the-making, what should Aquino do?

He should follow the law. He should be careful not to fall into the many legal traps laid cunningly by the departing administration. He should be bold, but if faced with a choice err on the side of circumspection.

But none of this means he cannot show his displeasure, or the public’s, at the Arroyo administration’s brazen manipulation of the levers of power, at the way the choice of new chief justice has been rammed down the people’s throat.

Thus, Aquino may want to make good on his promise, and take his oath of office before the captain of his barangay in Tarlac. The latest victims of President Arroyo’s alternative Midas touch—everyone she appoints as spokesman eventually shrinks before our eyes, his or her reputation greatly diminished—cannot be listened to when they suddenly preach about republican courtesies. The Arroyo administration, especially in its last five years in power, ran roughshod over these very niceties, such as due deference between co-equal branches of government. (Where was the administration Charito Planas now tries to defend when the Senate fought for the right to limit the scope of executive privilege?)

While it is true that tradition dictates the presence and the participation of the chief justice at a new president’s oath-taking, this tradition is not a matter of law; a new president is not legally bound to take his or her oath before the head of the judiciary. And there is a glorious precedent: Aquino’s own mother took her oath of office in 1986 before a person other than the chief justice at the time. Cory Aquino’s choice of Associate Justice Claudio Teehankee was deliberate; it reflected public disappointment over a Supreme Court co-opted by the Marcos regime, and recognized the courage of Teehankee’s often solitary dissents.

We do not suggest that Senator Aquino choose an associate justice to administer his oath; that would further politicize an already politicized Court. But he should choose someone other than Corona, to express his conviction, a conviction we share, that while the appointment of the new chief justice can be argued as legal, it is deeply unethical, and serves only President Arroyo’s narrow self-interest.

There are other ways to express this conviction: Aquino can refrain from acknowledging Corona during his first State of the Nation Address, on July 26. Of course, the defenders of the Arroyo administration will immediately jump on this as a petty act—when in fact it is the Arroyo administration which has shown the most breathtaking pettiness. No, a deliberate snub during the Sona, like the choice of a barangay captain to administer the presidential oath, is a principled political statement.

Planas’ vapid advice about statesmanship and standing “10 feet taller,” on the other hand, is an example of a political statement without principle. It grates not only because it uses an argument the Arroyo administration was quite happy to ignore at the peak of its power—who needs statesmanship when you can rely on the so-called presumption of regularity?—but also because it is simply ignorant. A lawyer herself, Planas should have known from the American jurisprudence that shapes Philippine law practice that outright hostility had sometimes marked the relationship between president and chief justice—and yet democracy’s purposes continued to be served.

We suspect Planas and others like her know that there is, in fact, a Philippine difference, and it lies in the weakness of our political institutions. Unfortunately for them, they cannot say, at least not out loud, what greatly weakened those same institutions in the last decade. But we can: It was an administration which, among other failures, made unjustifiable or unethical appointments, and coerced or coaxed the appointees into accepting them.

"Judicial quarantine"

I could not have said it better:

Judicial quarantine

 

WHILE IT WILL REQUIRE A CONGRESSIONAL resolution for the country to start referring to Sen. Benigno Aquino III as the president-elect, the country as a whole has accepted that he has been conferred the most remarkable mandate since the present Constitution’s ratification in 1987. The conferment of this mandate was such a long-anticipated event that when it became clear the people had spoken, it sparked an epidemic of statesmanship among many (though not all) of Aquino’s major opponents in the presidential race.

Instead of allowing the country to savor the end of the long crisis of legitimacy that began—and deepened— from 2001-2005, the present administration chose to pursue its strategy of manufacturing crises so as to maximize its opportunities for aggrandizing power. The latest manifestation of this pathological approach to political power is President Macapagal-Arroyo’s maneuvering to appoint the next chief justice.

We should never forget that “disempowering” the president from making appointments on the eve of elections, and from election day until he or she turns over the reins of government to a duly-elected successor, is a sensible democratic principle. We should never forget that it is a principle that has been supported for close to two generations—both by jurisprudence and by the intent of the framers of the present Constitution. It is a principle of democratic self-control and executive responsibility—a legacy of the President’s own father, and respected on the whole by every successor of Diosdado Macapagal until his own daughter reached the terminal stage of her own presidency. And we should never forget that the only reason this wholesome and responsible principle has been abandoned is that President Arroyo had wanted it changed and found obliging accomplices.

Thus, during the campaign, when Senator Aquino drew a line in the sand, saying he would not recognize any chief justice appointed by Ms Arroyo, the Palace seized on it to accuse him of recklessness and contempt for the law. A smokescreen to disguise its own relentless assault on well-established ethical and legal principles. In a similar vein, media and the political class knew the administration was viewing the anticipated results of the 2010 elections with dread. Informed circles weren’t surprised when it made a last-minute gambit to postpone the elections; and in the context of this scheme of the administration, Aquino’s warning that the public wouldn’t tolerate postponing the elections was both timely and necessary. As Gaudencio Cardinal Rosales, initially (and naively) critical of the warning, belatedly realized.

Recklessness and irresponsibility, therefore, are characteristics of the administration and its Constitution-related experiments. Aquino has properly refused to concede logic or legitimacy to the administration’s efforts. He has properly called attention to the reality that the President’s experimentation would have failed if she hadn’t found willing accomplices, including Associate Justice Renato Corona who shows every sign of being eager to grab the poisoned chalice of a controversial chief magistracy offered by the President.

It is a chalice a former chief justice, Manuel Moran, viewed as simply unethical to accept as far back as 1953. It is a cup that—Corona must be made to recognize—will contain, if not legal, then certainly, ethical hemlock as far as his standing before the next president and the country is concerned. When Aquino said he would prefer to take his oath of office before a humble barangay official, he was anticipating the contents of the oath to be administered on June 30: to uphold both the spirit and letter of the Constitution and to do justice to every man.

Corona must be quarantined until our institutions resolve his legitimacy. What Ms Arroyo and Justice Corona are expecting the country to do is to surrender to tradition when it is tradition—and the law—that they have both flouted. Aquino need not dignify this travesty by extending any kind of official courtesy.

(Phil. Daily Inquirer Editorial, May 15, 2010)

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