At least, their system works

I don’t know if it could have happened in the Philippines. There may be many things wrong with America today particularly how the religious right appears to have captured Washington and is making society less tolerant of individual differences. But when they say they have a government of laws, not men, they do seem to mean it.

I cannot imagine a similar situation happening in our country. I find it hard to imagine (but willing to be surprised) Nani Perez being made to face the music on Impsa. Or Iggy Pidal made to explain why he paid so little taxes yet living like a king. No one close to Ate Glue has ever been made to account for misdeeds the way Scooter Libby is now going to have to. And who knows, maybe even Karl Rove, known as the brains of Dubya himself, may end up sharing Libby’s predicament. It didn’t come easy, or cheaply, but the American system of justice somehow, eventually delivers on the promise.

Of course it is still a long way to conviction. As Dubya observed, Libby should still be assumed innocent. But to have gone this far is already amazing for those of us who can’t get the wheels of justice turning on many high profile cases of people identified with Malacañang. Even the Ombudsman with a constitutionally guaranteed term of office is quitting, officially for health reasons, but most likely for undue pressure on those high profile cases pending in his office.

Our politicians have barraged us with calls for cha cha, focusing on the form of government. Personally, I dread the thought of a unicameral legislature that is a mirror image of the same House of Representatives that voted on strictly partisan lines, to block a constitutional means of finding out the truth behind the legitimacy of Ate Glue’s hold on power. More than a new form of government, what we need is a means of assuring swift and impartial dispensation of justice to keep the faith of people in their government.

How do we make sure our officials do not abuse their authority? We have the Supreme Court and the Ombudsman. But experience tells us that a strong Executive with a mind for mayhem can easily subvert these institutions. This is why, we can only sit back and admire what just happened in Washington. A career official of the justice department was allowed to do his job, was allowed to let the chips fall where they may.

We first heard of America’s system of having special federal prosecutors during the Watergate investigations. There was even a test of wills between the special prosecutor investigating Watergate and President Nixon on the release of the notorious tapes. The Attorney General and his assistant resigned rather than follow Nixon’s order to fire the special prosecutor. It took a new Attorney General to fire the prosecutor, but it was downhill for Nixon from that point.

Ever since Watergate, The Los Angeles Times noted, special federal investigations of political scandals have often ended with detailed accounts of the inner workings of government. The probes might take years; they might cost millions; but at the end, they often provided a rich, detailed story of episodes in question. This is all thanks to the independent counsel law, created by Congress in 1978, possibly as a result of the Watergate experience.

The Independent Counsel was created because it was felt the executive branch could not be trusted to investigate itself in cases of alleged abuse and corruption. Our experience with Ate Glue’s dispensation, specially with the current head of our justice department, shows how true this is. Even the traditionally independent and professional NBI has been politicized under Ate Glue’s watch. At least in the US, independent counsels gave the nation book-length – even multi-volume examinations of the Iran-Contra affair, among other scandals.

Unfortunately, the system was abused. During the Clinton presidency, an independent counsel was named to investigate the failed Arkansas real estate deal known as Whitewater. But the investigation went astray, yielding a 445-page account that included substantial information about the president’s sexual relations with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. That was probably why Congress in 1999 chose not to renew the law authorizing them, out of concern that they had been used to pursue partisan witch hunts.

So, Patrick Fitzgerald is not an independent counsel but a special prosecutor, charged with bringing violations of the law to court, rather than information to the court of public opinion. Because his job is more narrowly defined to violations of the law, this means government bureaucrats can get away with conduct that may be questionable but does not violate the law.

This is why there is validity to the observation that even if this limited legal perspective is something to behold for guys like us, this strictly legal view is too narrow. Public officials should be held to a higher standard of conduct than ordinary citizens. They should not complain when the public demands a full and open accounting of their actions. But if this wider accountability cannot easily be brought to judicial attention, the burden of enforcement falls on other institutions like mass media and the "court of public opinion."

That’s not easy, though. As we are experiencing now in this country, the executive can block any avenue of redress, including the constitutionally guaranteed right to assemble and express grievance. That brings us back to the judicial branch and hope and pray it would rise to the occasion and assure good governance and justice are delivered to the citizens.

Below the line

Having worked in the field of marketing communications once upon a time, I can appreciate the changes I have noticed in the way sellers reach out to buyers these days. I suppose it is true what I have been hearing about the difficulties marketing people are now having in moving their products because of weak buying power out there. Not only are they forced to introduce ever smaller packs of everything from shampoo to snacks, they also have to practically hassle to sell.

It is my habit to do the weekend grocery with my wife or by myself to relax and keep tabs of the market. Lately, I have noticed a sharp increase in point-of-sale selling activities. Last Saturday, you could hardly move from one shelf to another without being harassed by promo attendants to buy their products or try their samples. They also sing, dance (some in full costume) to the point that shopping in a supermarket is no longer any different from the wet market.

I do my grocery shopping at Shopwise Libis and I would have expected the Tantocos of Rustans to protect their consumers a bit more from an excess of commercial abuse. Given that they also constantly repeat commercial jingles in the public address system, Shopwise, has become a high pressure selling environment that’s no longer conducive to leisurely shopping.

I realize margins are razor thin and grocers do have to make some extra money like what marketers pay for the privilege of doing on site promotions. But there has to be a limit. No matter how polite the promo people are, it is simply too much to have to be offered a product every which way you turn. It is like having insistent vendors follow you in the public market, which is one reason people like me go to a supermarket in the first place.

Then again, these are hard times. The fact that the big marketing guys have chosen to spend a lot more than usual on so called "below the line" activities only means they are not getting the usual response from just media advertising. Cheap labor makes it easy to abuse these point-of-sale activities. But someone must remind them selling is one thing. Harassment is another. That’s not below the line. That’s below the belt.

The hammer

This one was sent in by Jack Gesner.

The judge says to a double-homicide defendant, "You’re charged with beating your wife to death with a hammer."

A voice at the back of the courtroom yells out, "You bastard!"

The judge says, "You’re also charged with beating your mother-in-law to death with a hammer."

The voice in the back of the courtroom yells out, "You bastard!"

The judge stops and says to the guy in the back of the courtroom, "Sir, I can understand your anger and frustration at this crime. But no more outbursts from you, or I’ll charge you with contempt. Is that understood?"

The guy in the back of the court stands up and says, "I’m sorry, Your Honor, but for fifteen years, I’ve lived next door to that bastard, and every time I asked to borrow a hammer, he said he didn’t have one.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]