The shoe is on the other foot

Never mind the impeachment of Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez because it is already up for trial at the Senate. But Malacañang firing one of her deputies, Emilio Gonzalez, for essentially the same thing — inordinate delays in resolving cases?

At least in the case of Gutierrez, the Noynoy Aquino government has found a euphemism for political revenge: Betrayal of public trust. But as far as Gonzalez is concerned, he is being sacked for an animal that does not even have a real name.

Inordinate delay? What in heaven is that? Does it involve a day, a week, a month, a year, a decade beyond which cases are normally resolved? And who precisely determines that a case is proceeding normally or is being inordinately delayed?

The reason why there is no precise definition of inordinate delay is because it cannot be defined. There is no statute in any civilized country in the world that demands cases to be solved in a month or a year, or 10 years.

The search for either truth or justice proceeds according to its own pace. Placing such a quest within the confines of a definite time parameter runs the risk of legal shortcuts being taken and the right to due process getting hijacked.

 Of course, the opposite is also true. Litigants can abuse the lack of time parameters to, yes indeed, prolong the resolution of a case. But ask any lawyer, or politician for that matter, if they do not find this an essential part of the game they themselves play at one time or other.

 On the other hand, there are internal rules within the judiciary that can be resorted to address concerns pertaining to the issue, without the president of the land having to get directly involved for the simple expediency that the appointing power is his.

Believe me, if Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who is the real object of all this, had done what Noynoy just did, no words would have been sufficiently cruel and foul to describe such an evil deed. But the shoe is now on the other foot and the new paragons of morality have the only say.

Nevertheless, to allow the use of “inordinate delay” as basis to sack a deputy Ombudsman is to open the floodgates to wanton abuse of the power to define anything by any emerging despot whose only claim to that power is the willingness to abuse it.

Imagine the chaos that can descend upon the land if that emerging despot is allowed to fire anyone who, by the despot’s personal definition, has already incurred an “inordinate delay” in the resolution of cases, or any other vested duty for that matter.

 If Noynoy must go after Arroyo and all other officials simply because she happened to appoint them, let him do so without resorting to justifications and rationalizations that do not exist, and whose unabashed use only serves to insult public intelligence.

Just look at how Aquino and his minions have cast aspersions on the integrity of the Supreme Court simply because all the justices happened to have been appointed by Arroyo during her time.

They have taken to branding the Supreme Court as an Arroyo court, maliciously refusing to put things into context and perspective by mentioning the fact that the appointments she made all came as a matter of duty and not design.

As president, Arroyo had to fill up vacancies when they occur. For Aquino and his minions to gloss over this fact speaks volumes of their own hypocrisy. How can Aquino expect to lead us through the straight and narrow path when he cannot even tell the truth without twisting it.