The delay in the impeachment trial of the Vice President seems to me developing into a hijacking of justice.
I hope the suspicion is aroused in me only out of habit, a habit developed over many years in a profession that holds skepticism as a virtue. For if I’m seeing right, God help us: Justice is being delayed for a self-serving purpose, and the travesty is happening at the highest levels of official power.
First, the President, who ought to know better than to meddle in the impeachment of his own second-in-command, discourages it, suggesting, not incidentally, I would think, an openness to a reconciliation between their dynastic camps — if that happens, justice is hijacked even more efficiently.
For its part, the House of Representatives, bending with the fickle winds of partisan politics, bides its time to impeach, although finally impeaches, in fact by double the required number of votes, and sends the case to the Senate for trial.
The Senate itself dilly-dallies, giving all manner of excuses in order to go around the constitutional command to try an impeached public officer “forthwith.” With that one word, the framers of the Constitution signaled in no uncertain terms the extraordinary urgency of such a trial; it is, after all, a trial intended to review the worthiness of officials entrusted with ultimate power, or positioned to succeed to it automatically, as in the Vice President’s case, and decide whether those officials still deserve to continue in public office after being found in a preliminary proceeding to have committed grievous wrongdoing.
One excuse the Senate has given is that the House, already tardy in impeaching, has yet picked a bad time to send the case to trial, the Senate being due for a break. Another excuse is that, according to the Senate president himself, there’s no clamor for a speedy trial, as if it were the temper of the public, not the Constitution, that decides when such a trial should be held.
Anyway, if the Senate president bothered seriously to pulse the public, instead of simply relying on the no more than three try-right-now letters he said he had received, he should have at least sent an observer to a forum on the issue at Adamson University last week. Packed by at least a thousand-strong audience, nearly all of them students of schools in the neighborhood, the whole auditorium gave those three letter writers a ringing approbation both by raised hands and with living voice in an impromptu poll instigated by Christian Monsod, a panelist at the forum.
A leading framer of the Constitution himself, Monsod could not conceal — not from me at least — the sense of scandal he feels at the mockery of his Constitution. He did not intend to make any constitutional point with his poll — he had made all the constitutional points needed to be made — but the poll would have wiped that perennially pasted smile off the Vice President’s face.
And now, the Supreme Court is brought into the picture by the Vice President herself, who sues alleging that “grave abuse of discretion” was committed in impeaching her.
Sara Duterte was found to have taken hundreds of millions of taxpayer pesos and covered up the malversation with fraudulent receipts. If any “abuse of discretion,” let alone a “grave” one, was committed in her case at all, I didn’t see it. I did watch, fairly religiously, as the House, in a rigorous inquiry broadcast live nationwide, turned up hard evidence despite her arrogant refusal to appear and answer questions at the hearings. But more obliging under pain of detention for contempt of Congress, some of her own confidential staff gave her away. Still they face charges of malversation in court.
In any case, with such delays occurring all around, Sara Duterte has emerged as the ultimate beneficiary. Not only is she able to buy time, her chances of being judged not guilty could also improve if, as appears the preference by the present Senate, her trial is held after the 12 senatorial winners in the May 12 elections are installed on July 1 to join the 12 holdovers.
Whatever you say, an impeachment trial is more a political process than a judicial one, conducted, after all, by politicians, not by regular judges in a regular courtroom. But that’s the law, and right now, Senate holdovers and reelectionists are mostly aligned with the majority; in fact, their number is probably enough to make the two-thirds to convict.
Meanwhile, a further delay occurs as the Supreme Court, acting on a petition from a citizen, prepares to rule on whether there’s anything wrong with carrying over the trial into the newly constituted Senate in case the present one is persuaded to open it but is unable to reach a verdict before the Senate can reopen with its newly elected members installed.
Thus, delay after delay after delay is accommodated supposedly in the name of the rule of law, yet leads to an unfair and unconstitutional consequence: Justice is delayed for everyone, whether they like it or not. And doubtless, Sara Duterte likes it, and we the people don’t deserve it. – Rappler.com