The president's wrong Easter message

On Easter Sunday, Her Excellency, President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo committed another blunder. Her publicists may claim that her latest mistake, if at all, may not fall within the context of impeachable "high crimes", but, certainly, it smacks of grave abuse of authority. I am referring to the mass commutation of the death sentences of felons into incarceration for life.

At the outset, let me clarify that I do not wish to dwell on whether or not death sentence should be imposed upon certain criminal offenders. My attention is focused on the abusive manner by which our president has exercised her power of executive clemency.

There are two presidential powers, both enshrined in our constitution, which we may try to examine briefly in order to grasp a little understanding of their nature. We explore these concepts, by analogy, hoping that we can either support the president or condemn her. These are her powers of appointment and pardon (which should include commutation of death sentences to life terms).

In the 1961 presidential election, then incumbent Carlos P. Garcia, lost to his challenger, Diosdado Macapagal. Following Garcia's defeat but shortly before the inauguration of Macapagal as the new president, the former filled some 350 vacant government positions with his men. Garcia's act was called "midnight appointments" figuratively because they came before the dawn of a Macapagal administration. One such appointment named Dominador Aytona as ad interim governor of Central Bank.

Then, newly installed Pres. Macapagal recalled Aytona's appointment and in his place, he appointed Andres V. Castillo. The Supreme Court in the case that ensued had, in nullifying the appointment of Aytona, these words: "the filling up of vacancies in important positions, if few and so spaced as to afford some assurance of deliberate action and careful consideration of the need for the appointment and the appointee's qualifications may be undoubtedly permitted. But the issuance of 350 appointments in one night and the planned induction of almost all of them a few hours before the inauguration of the new President may, with some reason, be regarded by the latter as an abuse of presidential prerogative".

What is clear from that ruling of the Supreme Court was that while the presidential power of appointment flows from the constitution, lumping up of many appointments without benefit of careful study, showed abuse of such prerogative.

Edward S. Corwin, an eminent American constitutionalist wrote on the matter of another presidential prerogative, the Pardoning Power. He said "individual acts of clemency inherently call for discriminating choices because no two cases are the same".

From the work of Corwin, we discern that like the exercise of the appointing power, the president needs time to examine each case of a criminal. This power is available to the president as a social counter force. If, for instance, all evidence points to a conviction of a person with the imposition of death sentence as the inevitable penalty, the courts have other recourse but to apply the law by imposing the ultimate penalty. It's up to the president if, considering other matters, pardon or commutation or parole is called for. That is why the need to study each criminal record.

When Pres. Arroyo commuted the affirmed death sentences of all criminals in the death row to life terms, in one sweeping executive fiat, I am sure she never had the opportunity to study each record. Without really knowing whether such a convict deserved that his death sentence be changed to a life imprisonment, the act of our beloved president was a patent display of abuse of power.

Undoubtedly, those criminals must have committed heinous crimes. That's why the imposition of the capital penalty. The high court's affirmation of the death sentences must have, somehow, appeased the minds of their victims and their victims' survivors. Conversely, the latter too must have felt a double wrong done unto them when the president, diminished the highest imposable punishment.

What was worse though was that the president brusquely disregarded the Supreme Court which carefully scrutinized the individual records of the criminals before affirming the death sentence. With her cavalier order, Pres. Arroyo, in effect, not only has abused her constitutional authority, she has wasted the work of our justices. Whew!