[Newspoint] An obscene conspiracy

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An accused is tried, and, once found guilty, put in jail.

That’s the basic sense of law and justice. But trust our corrupt senators to recook it and, taking us for fools, try to ram their poisonous concoction down our throats.

And that was precisely what happened this week: By a vote of 18 to 5, the Senate, as an impeachment court, all but dismissed the case against Vice President Sara Duterte. Although not exactly a dismissal, the vote would have the same practical effect: Duterte remains untouched.

The spectacle was so revolting I could not let it pass unremarked upon one moment longer. This column being days yet before its next outing, an interval my conscience could not withstand, I decided to send out the following statement, buckshot-fashion, online promptly:

“The Senate vote…constitutes the most egregious and immoral form of official corruption: It junked the Constitution and robbed the people of justice!

“[It] also betrays a sense of impunity unobserved in our time, an arrogant confidence among those corrupt senators that they are untouchable, themselves exempt from the force of law and justice.

“[Those senators’] faces should be pasted on every wall, as only the most wanted criminals deserve, and let burn in the nation’s memory, lest their crime be lost on the next generations.”

Indeed, the obscene conspiracy ought to be revisited, again and again, for the same reason — historical memory. So, allow me to retell it here, with some background, annotations, and commentary for context and perspective.

It was a week during which the true color of the Senate became unmistakably revealed. And the self-revelation cannot but provoke one question the answer to which could only be guessed: At what price? At any rate, when you have a Senate aligning itself with a Ronald de la Rosa, even practically following his lead, it’s a deal that simply cannot be good for us.

Surely, the other senators’ gravitation toward De la Rosa had nothing to do with his charm or his claimed connection to some holy spirit that keeps him in a state of special favor; it could only have had to do with his connection to an earthly patron — Rodrigo Duterte, the immediate past president.

Before becoming senator, De la Rosa was national police chief in the first three years of Duterte’s presidency, as such supreme enforcer of its war on drugs. Duterte has been extradited to The Hague to stand trial in the International Criminal Court on charges of “crimes against humanity” for the tens of thousands killed summarily in his war. His regime was further marked by cronyism and treason, the latter crime consisting in the ceding of the  country’s mineral-rich and strategic western territorial waters to China. Still, despite all this notoriety, he continues to command a significant political following, which has benefited family and cronies. 

De la Rosa himself admits he owes his two successive elections to the Senate, the second one won only last month, in the  midterms, to Duterte. But with his old boss locked up 6,000-plus miles away, he is no use to him now. And being a co-accused with him, he is unable to hide his anxiety about a warrant of arrest coming down for him, too, from The Hague at any time.

Meanwhile, he has transferred his service to Duterte’s daughter Sara. And does he find himself in just the perfect scheme of things! He’s a judge on the impeachment court, and the majority of that court happens only too willing to go along with him. But before going further into the story of his serendipitous rise to power, let us review the way in which impeachment proceedings are supposed to go and the rationale behind it.

The equivalent of “impeached” in regular-court proceedings is “indicted,” “formally accused.” At this point, in both cases, if enough evidence has been collected to warrant it, a trial becomes unavoidable. The difference lies in the particular urgency for a verdict to be reached in an impeachment; on it depends whether or not the accused ought to be removed from office and also barred from taking office ever again, thus prevented doing further damage to the nation.

In Sara Duterte’s case, the danger is taxpayer money being misused, possibly stolen. Her impeachment came after four congressional committees, in a joint inquiry, had turned up evidence of hundreds of millions of pesos disbursed from her budget irregularly.

For a simplified yet fair rendering of the applicable legalities, I went to former Supreme Court Justice Adolfo Azcuna for help. He happens also to be one of framers of the constitution; in fact, he wrote its procedural section on impeachment. Here’s the paraphrase of mine that he has approved:

“The Senate will be risking a Supreme Court challenge if it neglects to start the impeachment trial of Sara Duterte before the next Congress convenes or if it dismisses the case outright at any time. At any rate, once either move [default or dismissal] is declared unconstitutional, [as likely it will] the Senate of the next Congress can itself proceed to hold the trial.” (The bracketed phrases are additions I have made only now, after my exchange with Azcuna, therefore not part of the paraphrase I presented to him for validation.)

But, as actually happened, the Constitution was disregarded and justice hijacked. And because the culprits doubtless knew that the whole spectacle was being broadcast live nationwide, it went out as a blatant conspiratorial act of national desecration.

The premonitory tone had been set by the Senate president himself. Once the Articles of Impeachment were transmitted to his office, in February, Chiz Escudero, should have, “forthwith,” as commanded by the constitution, proceeded to call the Senate to impeachment-trial duty by having it transform itself into a court. But no; he instead busied himself with rewriting Webster, inventing a meaning for the word forthwith that would justify his default, and second-guessing the framers of the Constitution.

The Senate did get around to it, but not until more than four months later, until just this week. Again, that was only to be able to get around the law, delay things further, yet not be seen as neglectful, and to set up De la Rosa for his line. He proceeded to open his mouth, but out came a wrong line, off-script — a motion for the dismissal of the case. 

A vote for the dismissal would set off a sequence of forced moves: The Supreme Court would step in, declare the dismissal unconstitutional, then order the impeachment court to get on with the trial, which could not be risked. It would reveal far more evidence than Congress turned up; it would reveal the whole Duterte family’s ugliest secrets, not only Sara’s, bank accounts and all.

Alan Cayetano sprang up to set De la Rosa straight: No dismissal; just a “remanding” of the Articles of Impeachment to the House of Representatives for it to sort “infirmities” in the document. “Remanding” cloaks the simpler word “return” in a judicial robe and “infirmities” does the same thing for mere deviations from a prescribed style, as Cayetano himself sheepishly admitted. 

Anyway, the remanding should serve the conspirators’ purpose enough: It would keep the proceedings going, making it look as if the trial had indeed begun, and hold the Supreme Court at bay. In the meantime, the conspirators would continue to control the game by dribbling around the constitution until July, when the next Senate takes over. – Rappler.com