Shameful.
That is the adjective the Philippine mass media use to describe Pres. Gloria Arroyo’s midnight and unconstitutional appointment of her former chief of staff, spokesman and lawyer as the next chief justice of the Philippine Supreme Court, effective today.
The credibility of the Supreme Court as an institution is at its lowest ebb at this time all because of the wrong (stupid is the better word) decisions it has recently made on controversial cases involving the vested political interests of the president and because of its weak vertebra and lack of an independent mind as a collegial body.
The recent editorial of the Philippine Daily Inquirer reflects the general attitude of the Filipinos on the matter.
True to form, Pres. Arroyo ignores the will and the voice of the people (the very same sovereign people she had fooled in 2001 during Edsa II to enable her to assume power in the Palace).
Political survival is her topmost priority -- damned be the future of the country, damned be the rule of law, damned be the fate of the justice system, and damned be the self-dignity of the Filipinos as a nation.
Editorial
Shameful
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 00:21:00 05/14/2010
THE NEWLY PROCLAIMED REPRESENTATIVE OF the second district of Pampanga, President Macapagal-Arroyo, has an urgent message for the nation: “Don’t get too excited over the election results; with me, it’s still politics as usual.” A mere two days after the country’s first, and generally successful, nationwide automated elections, and only five days before Chief Justice Reynato Puno retires from the Supreme Court, she created a new position: that of Chief-Justice-in-waiting. The timing, and the choice of her former aide, Justice Renato Corona, tell us the appointment was yet one more political act of the most politically partisan president since 1986.
We do not question Corona’s credentials, and do not think his record of voting with the administration position on crucial issues like the threshold Romulo Neri executive privilege case necessarily disqualifies him from the position of chief justice. (To insist on a record of voting against the administration position would be a form of partisanship in itself. Independence is the crucial thing.) We do, however, question Corona’s position, and those of the majority of the justices, that President Arroyo can name the next chief justice despite the clear constitutional ban, supported by the record of deliberations in the Constitutional Commission itself, on midnight appointments.
We question the Court’s deliberate misreading of the Constitution, and its upending of the traditional rules of statutory construction, that allowed it to decide that the appointments ban did not apply to the judiciary. We realize the basic truth of the lawyer’s dictum that the Constitution is what the Supreme Court says it is. But we also recognize that, like King Canute, the Court’s kingly prerogative cannot run counter to the natural laws. It cannot dictate that water must rise above its source, or that its interpretation of two key provisions must be favored over the actual, demonstrated intent of the Constitution’s framers.
Above all, we question President Arroyo’s insistence that making the appointment, even at this time, is in the national interest. It isn’t. The Constitution itself allows a hiatus in appointments; the Court can continue to function, and function well, with only an acting chief justice; the country can wait for the next chief justice to be appointed, as is both prudent and proper, by the next president.
Rushing the appointment, therefore, only means that political considerations are at stake. Either President Arroyo wants to complete her transformation of the highest tribunal into an Arroyo Court, favorably disposed to her in the many cases she will inevitably face after she leaves Malacañang, or she has already horse-traded the position to Corona, once her chief of staff, spokesman, and legal counsel. Either way, it is a shameful fiat, and disastrous for the Court.
Again, this is not to say that Corona cannot or ought not to be chief justice, only that he cannot and ought not to be chief justice under these circumstances.
Sen. Benigno Aquino III, the apparent victor of Monday’s polls, has called on the President to reconsider the appointment. (We think he should follow this up by putting the appeal in writing.) This may prove a useful tack, if President Arroyo listens.
If she continues to insist that she can and should appoint the next chief justice, however, perhaps the following compromise may be in order: Recall the appointment, return the short list of nominees to the Judicial and Bar Council, ask immediately for a new list, then appoint Justice Conchita Carpio-Morales. With only a year left before her retirement, Justice Carpio-Morales may offer the best hope of defusing a looming struggle between the Court and the incoming president. Her appointment will allow Corona and the other justices to “live down” the accusations of Arroyo bias, and give the next president a free hand to choose her successor.
At the same time, by appointing Carpio-Morales, Ms Arroyo will be able to maintain her stance that the appointment of an immediate replacement for Puno is necessary—and create a new title that the public will surely welcome: the first female chief justice in history.
Otherwise, everything is just politics as usual. Par for the crooked course.
See:
http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/editorial/view/20100514-269819/Shameful
Editorial
Judicial quarantine
Philippine Daily Inquirer
First Posted 22:53:00 05/15/2010
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.
see:
http://opinion.inquirer.net/inquireropinion/editorial/view/20100515-270219/Judicial-quarantine
