Chrizo

If I were that Jose Justiniano, I’d hide in a cave and never show my face again. My goodness, he got lectured left and right. He effing got lectured about what laying the predicate means, for goodness’ sakes. Pati ba naman yun?

The thing is, with people like Cuevas who does not need more laurels, he knows exactly whose interests he has to protect when he signed on as defense counsel.

The thing is, with lawyers who see the impeachment trial as a means to further their careers, there is always the temptation to put their interests ahead of the client’s. Ergo, the obvious attitude that it is more important to be seen and heard on national (and international) media and have their names remembered.

Question is: how will they be remembered? Because based on the performance of two private prosecutors yesterday and today, the legal profession of the Philippines may be a laughing stock in global legal circles.

It has to do with achievements in defiling institutions upon which our democracy stands. Of our tripartite system, because the judiciary is not periodically answerable to an electorate and is thus insulated from such self-cleansing mechanisms as elections, it enjoys a relative degree of perpetuity. Defile the judiciary and you perpetually defile democracy.

Fortunately, the Constitution affords us a singular remedy—impeachment.

You can’t call a President-King on one day, ranting and raving that we shouldn’t have a king, and on the next day, demand that he be king and see his subjects, as if he was some personality-cult that the people need him to be seen to gain strength. We are not North Korea.

We don’t need the president to handhold people and to show, “Empathy”. He has phones. He has computers. He has minions. I want him to do his job. His job is to command, not to be a social worker, or to have a photo op. His job is to make sure government resources’ full might descends upon the people in need. It is our job— we the people, too to help those in need as well, in however way we can. Donate, pack, spread information, whatever. That’s how we change the Philippines. That’s how we get real. That’s how nation building begins. That’s when we stop being provincial, and leveling up.

The face-off we now see re-calibrates our separation of powers and restores the executive’s proper place as the source of leadership. Since 1986, the fall of the dictatorship has fostered a knee-jerk bias against executive power and in favor of judicial checks and balances. But this has led to government by stalemate, the primacy of procedure over results, where due process is misunderstood as endless process.
This is the best time to correct that. Cory didn’t want to; it was too soon after Marcos. Fidel Ramos preferred to do it behind-the-scenes, efficiently but not institutionally. Erap took to rhetoric, called them “hoodlums in robes” but didn’t stay long enough to disrobe them. Gloria Arroyo alone had the gumption to flex executive muscle upfront; alas she possessed Machiavellian virtù but not true virtue. And comes now Noynoy, riding the crest of popularity for his anti-corruption campaign.