There's The Rub : A modest proposal
Conrado de Quiros dequiros@info.com.ph
Inquirer News Service
IT'S the most infuriating thing in the world to have to look for an alternative just to get rid of someone who has no right to be in Malacañang. To repeat an analogy, it's like having to explain to the officer on duty in a police precinct why you deserve to get your stolen cell phone back. Indeed, why the thief who has been caught red-handed with it deserves to be jailed and not be allowed to keep your cell phone as punishment for his misdeed. One would imagine it is common sense. But these are uncommon times ruled by uncommon sense. You now have to argue even for things like that.
If President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo has survived this long, it is only because the people who want her out, who are eight out of 10 inhabitants of these islands, cannot agree on a common agenda. It is the only thing that has kept her from being pried loose from her chair. The longer it takes for that common cause to be forged, the longer the one person who stole the presidency will be able to keep it. This country has become that weird police precinct.
I have a proposal. But before I propose it, and advance my reasons for it, let me just look at the other alternatives on the table.
The first, which is what Cory Aquino and the resigned Cabinet members have been pushing, is that Vice President Noli de Castro becomes president. (Which should result, among other things, in the firing of the current secretaries and the rehiring of the resigned ones.) That is problematic on several grounds. At the very least, it is just as divisive as keeping Ms Arroyo in power. Indeed, if we are to go by the lack of enthusiasm for it, it is probably worse. It is the one single thing that is keeping an outraged citizenry at bay, the thought that De Castro would replace Ms Arroyo, which is not unlike Ms Arroyo replacing Joseph Estrada. Like I said before, Ms Arroyo's greatest weakness is also her greatest strength: People are afraid to oust her out of fear of creating another her, a cure worse than the disease.
There are moral and legal arguments against that option. One is that while there is no evidence De Castro cheated in the elections, there is reason to believe he was at most an accessory to it and, at least, a beneficiary of it. Certainly, he cannot escape suspicion, and the Office of the President may only be above it. You may not remove De Castro as vice president for lack of a prima facie case of cheating -- there is one in Ms Arroyo's case -- but you may not promote him either as president.
More importantly, unlike Estrada's, this is not a case where the presidency has been vacated, the President having been found to betray the public trust. This is a case where the presidency was never occupied, the non-President having been found to have cheated the public will. The normal rules of succession do not apply here.
The second alternative is impeachment. Impeachment does have its upside. At the very least, it does remind the public Ms Arroyo has done a humongous wrong. Even if she has the numbers in Congress, there is no telling how an impeachment will go. Estrada, too, had the numbers in Congress, and was moreover the most popular President ever to have blessed, or cursed, this country. Yet ere the trial was over, he was fighting for his life. Not the least of the reasons for it being that the trial took a life of its own, no small thanks to the media, which turned it into the most powerful soap opera this side of the Pacific. It became more popular than the PBA professional basketball games and the Mexican "telenovelas" [TV soaps] and Japanese animés combined. The public became positively addicted to it. Like any riveting soap opera, it told a story of heroes and villains, good and evil, the "api" [maltreated] daughter and the evil "madrasta" [stepmother]. Guess who more easily conforms to the role of evil madrasta?
My problem with impeachment, however, is two things. One is that, as I said above, this is not a case of removing a president for betrayal of public trust, which impeachments are for and which appropriately pertained to Estrada. This is a simple case of removing a non-President or a usurper. You do not need an impeachment for that. Two is that, an impeachment falls into the same category as a Truth Commission, and is equally redundant. What more truth do you want to ferret out that Ms Arroyo has not already revealed? Ms Arroyo has confessed to being the voice on the "Hello Garci" tape. That is a crime punishable by the comfort of jail, not by the cross of the presidency. It is not for Ms Arroyo to assess the weight of her crime and prescribe her own punishment, it is for the people.
The third alternative is a transitional government or council, revolutionary or not. Dodong Nemenzo, the proponent of the first, cautions people about a knee-jerk reaction to the word, "revolutionary." Cory's government after Ferdinand Marcos was a revolutionary, transitional one. She was never elected president -- the results of the "snap election" are arguable even now -- and she wielded extra-constitutional power at least until 1987, when a new constitution was ratified. She did not abuse those powers. She ushered in a liberal democratic order, however some argue that she just restored the pre-martial law one with all its infirmities.
My beef with a transitional government, revolutionary or not, quite apart from its intrinsic problems, is that however lofty its purposes and well meaning its proponents, it will probably not get off the ground. It is probably the second thing that is keeping an outraged citizenry at bay, no small thanks to an elite that has put the fear of God and radicalism on it.
More intrinsically, a transitional government, or council, will have the same problem as Ms Arroyo right now, which is legitimacy. Where does its mandate come from? How can it presume to speak for the people?
