Balance of power, balance of terror
AMADO P. MACASAET
‘The body language of the President sends the signal to the House of Representatives that the Chief Justice must be tried in an impeachment court.’
THE Supreme Court’s right to make itself known as composed of men of the highest intellect, respectability, probity and honesty or prove that it also has the unquestionable power to abuse its rights and "disrespect" for the law are the good and evil sides of a democratic system.
In the present conflict between President Aquino and Chief Justice Renato Corona, legal scholars and experts on the interpretation of the Constitution including those with palpable and pronounced self interest, say that the dispute disturbs the balance of power and checks and balances.
The harsh words that President Aquino inflicts on the Chief Justice is variously interpreted as symptoms of dictatorship. Maybe they really are if wrongly interpreted.
They say the President or the Executive is the most powerful branch of government. That is not exactly so. The abuse or excesses of the President can always be checked by the Judiciary – in the present case a Supreme Court whose members were handpicked by President Arroyo for her own protection – by declaring them, invalid, illegal, unconstitutional or void ab initio.
Rulings like those as well as the most scholarly and the unassailably intelligent ones are lumped together as part of the laws of the land.
In this respect, the Judiciary can be accused of disturbing the balance of power and checks and balances.
There is no agency in government that has the right, although sometimes there is a duty, to check the excesses of the Supreme Court. That makes the Supreme Court the most powerful Branch of government.
Given the case of how Mrs. Arroyo influenced, in fact, pressured the tribunal to allow her to make an appointment to the Judiciary during a period clearly prohibited by the Constitution is a patent abuse that has become law.
Clearly, there is a need to check the abuses of the Judiciary precisely to maintain checks and balances, not to disturb it.
There is nothing in the Constitution and the laws that prevents or prohibits the President from assailing the integrity of the Chief Justice and his court and rulings they make which do not sit squarely with the tenets or practices of a democratic system.
On the contrary, the decision penned by Associate Justice Lucas Bersamin that resulted in the appointment of Corona to head the Court is unassailable following the doctrine that the Supreme Court is right even when it is wrong.
But when the wrong was purposely designed or calculated to save the scalp of a former President from heinous crimes such as plunder, the presumption of infallibility of the rulings must be cast aside, in fact destroyed or reversed.
There is only way one of doing it -- by impeachment. In publicly lambasting the Chief Justice, President Aquino obviously wants to feel the pulse of his people.
The survey shows the people are behind him. Removal from office of the Chief Justice is necessary to deny former President Arroyo the feeling that her court will protect her from the crimes she allegedly committed while in office.
An increasing number of Filipinos may have started feeling that the present court under Chief Justice Corona is a "curse" to democracy.
Therefore, having failed to make good his promise to recall the appointment of Mr. Corona as he rightly believes that the Tribunal protects its own particularly when it is the Chief himself whose head is on the chopping block, he must now move for impeachment as the only way to stop the Court from abusing its powers further, particularly in saving the scalp of Gloria Arroyo from charges of plunder.
It must be pointed out that President Aquino does not have the remotest desire that Gloria Arroyo must be convicted as charged.
What he clearly wants is a fair trial from a Court whose loyalty is to the law and not to Gloria Arroyo who appointed most of them, nine of whom will remain in office long after President Aquino’s term expires on June 30, 2016.
Mr. Aquino cannot expect a conviction of Gloria Arroyo from the Supreme Court headed by a Chief who got his appointment by the misinterpretation of the Constitution by his peers.
The body language of the President sends the signal to the House of Representatives that the Chief Justice must be tried in an impeachment court.
Gloria Arroyo cannot be allowed to walk by the present Court.
However, if the same good fortune befalls Mrs. Arroyo under a new Chief Justice, Mr. Aquino could very well feel that the accused was pronounced not guilty in a fair trial.
At the end of the day, we can see President Aquino "unlawfully" trying to restore balance of power and checks and balances and at the same time check the acts of "terrorism" by the Supreme Court committed in the wrong interpretation of the Constitution that facilitated the appointment of Mr. Corona whose loyalty to President Arroyo has never been - not even for one second - held in doubt.
This is what this war between the President and the Chief Justice is all about.
x x x."
