IS the Philippines now going through what Malaysia went through when the then sitting lord president of the Federal Court, Tun Salleh Abbas, ran afoul of the government led by Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad in the late 1980s?
The chief justice of the Philippine Supreme Court has just been impeached by the lower House of the Congress controlled by representatives loyal to President Benigno Aquino III. The chief justice will soon go on trial in the Philippine Senate for his post.
Renato Corona was appointed chief justice just before Aquino assumed the presidency by former president Gloria Arroyo whom Corona served in various capacities before being made a judge. Not only is he thus widely perceived to be a political partisan but his tenure as chief justice will have outlasted the Aquino presidency because of his relative youth.
Bad blood between president and chief justice began right from the start. Aquino refused to follow the tradition of having the chief justice swear him in as president. The new president's first edict -- to set up a truth commission to unearth the alleged misdeeds of Arroyo -- was promptly struck down by the Supreme Court.
What apparently became the last straw for Aquino was when the court issued a restraining order against an executive decision to prevent the ailing Arroyo from going abroad pending charges against her. The court was on solid footing in deciding for the case that Arroyo's freedom could not be curbed before charges were actually brought against her.
But perception is everything and the court's decision betrayed a clear division between a majority of judges known to be loyal to Arroyo and a minority of Aquino loyalists.
What followed was an unprecedented defiance by the executive of the court order as Arroyo made a desperate and futile attempt to board a flight and an unseemly rush was made by the government for her to be subsequently charged for electoral cheating.
Corona has since come out decrying Aquino as a dictator in the making with the political act of impeachment. Which is where the parallel with the Mahathir-Salleh tussle becomes apparent.
Dr Mahathir had also regularly faced charges as a dictator in his day, which he apparently held up with his defiant admission that he was an "elected dictator", thus implying popular approval as Aquino now also claims.
But where the parallel with contemporary Philippines diverges is the relative extent of Dr Mahathir's political support base in his day and Aquino's today.
Aquino still enjoys wide popular support owing largely to his campaign against corruption although the fight is less against the structural impediments that allow corruption to thrive in Philippine society and obsessively personalised against Arroyo who, conveniently, has turned hugely unpopular after nearly a decade leading a scandal-plagued administration.
Dr Mahathir's problems had always been more political, with serious opposition even within Umno to his schemes to economically transform Malaysia. His problems with the judiciary were incidental to the overarching political problems he faced when certain court decisions were perceived to favour his political opponents.
It could be said Dr Mahathir did not choose to fight the judiciary but felt he was left with no choice when he faced judicial interventions he perceived to be detrimental to his ambitious economic programmes.
Aquino would likely not have to confront his own judiciary in this high-stakes gamble to dismiss the chief justice had he chosen a different and more low-key approach to make good his election pledge to attack corruption.
Even if he were to succeed in ridding his supreme court of its chief and appointing a replacement more disposed to do his bidding and sending Arroyo ultimately to jail as he had promised, the Philippines' deep-seated corruption is likely to outlast his six-year presidency.
Aquino may be able to secure a place in history as a president who battled heroically to clean up his country's reputation for corruption.
But one suspects Dr Mahathir's approach to be more pragmatic and sustainable. Transform the country economically or at least put in place the foundations for that transformation. Corruption will likely persist or even increase in the meantime but surely a well-fed, well-educated, better-informed and gainfully-employed general citizenry should prove a firmer bulwark against pernicious corruption in the long run.
Read more: In Manila, it is executive versus judiciary - Columnist - New Straits Times http://www.nst.com.my/opinion/columnist/in-manila-it-is-executive-versus-judiciary-1.23026#ixzz1hRsv3PkS"
