Arroyo Court making Noynoy a lame duck

Critics blame President Noynoy Aquino’s lawyers for his Supreme Court debacle on the Truth Commission. Executive Order-1 allegedly is so infirm that ten of 15 justices found cause to declare it unconstitutional. Like, the Commission would probe only sleaze under immediate-past President Gloria Arroyo, and so violates her right to equal protection.

Aquino allies, on the other hand, see politics in the SC verdict. Its unusual announcement even before the drafting of the majority opinion betrays so. Purportedly the ruling aims to cover up crimes of Arroyo, who appointed the ten sympathetic justices. While it’s true that four of the five dissenters also were Arroyo picks, two of them consistently defy her narrow legal interests. But the ten, from records, consistently vote for her cases.

Though coming from opposite directions, Aquino critics and allies still deduce the same. Likely for them the SC in similar vote pattern also will nullify EO-2, by which he dismisses Arroyo’s midnight appointees. This would let the ex-President reign on. Her sway would be complete: in the legislature as congresswoman, in the executive through the very midnight appointees and military and police generals she promoted, and in the judiciary as appointer of 14 of 15 justices. Aquino will be unable to govern.

Back to EO-1, critics say the Commission is toothless anyway, and Aquino can form instead a multi-agency task force. Supposedly his legal advisers blindly had aped Arroyo’s fondness for coining commissions. Aquino failed, the critics add, to anticipate that overwhelming majority of justices would stay loyal to their appointer because still in power. He should have reviewed how the ten justices had closed ranks before. Said to be of note are six cases. One, their upholding of Romy Neri’s flimsy claim of executive privilege to cover up NBN-ZTE crime in high places. Two, their reversal of jurisprudence in order to let Arroyo name a Chief Justice during the constitutional ban. Three and four, their restraining the House of Reps from hearing impeachment raps against Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez, and Malacañang from replacing one of Arroyo’s midnight appointees. Five and six, their inclusion of malicious intent to make plagiarism by a justice punishable, and consequent threat to cite detractors for contempt.

Allies justify EO-1 by recalling the six commissions Arroyo had invented during her tenure and which the SC never stopped. As for the supposed breach of Arroyo’s right, they say she is no ordinary President, having sat for nearly two terms then moving unprecedented to Congress. That supposedly makes the equal protection clause more applicable to the citizenry she had abused.

At any rate, in voiding EO-1 the ten justices imply that Aquino rely on the Ombudsman to investigate and perhaps prosecute Arroyo. Yet, the same justices estop Aquino from touching Gutierrez if as usual she sits on the cases against Arroyo and husband Mike, her law school chum. Aquino’s allies could only watch as Gutierrez’s staff mangled the probes of the $330-million NBN-ZTE and P782-million fertilizer scams, and the 2004 election rigging under Arroyo. Now the SC wants them to watch some more as it turns Aquino into a lame duck. Gutierrez’s term does not end till December 2012; most of the justices of the Arroyo Court are scheduled to retire way beyond Aquino’s step-down in June 2016.

Understandably, Malacañang lawyers are to fight back the only way they know: file a motion for the ten justices to reconsider. But from history, a reversal by such huge majority is unlikely. And that’s just with EO-1, but one of the battlegrounds against corruption that Aquino had promised during the campaign to end. To avoid being a lame duck when his six-year term has yet to run six months, Aquino needs to wriggle out of the corner he has been boxed into. This may entail taking off his gloves and wielding the awesome powers of the Presidency for the greatest good, which is the opposite way his predecessor did.

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“It is easy to spill blood, provided it is not your own.” Shafts of Light, Fr. Guido Arguelles, SJ

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