Recall

There is an instrument introduced in the 1987 Constitution that is, at least in principle, supposed to enhance the capacity of ordinary citizens to enforce accountability on those elected to public office. That is the instrument of recall, where citizens may take out an elected official by mustering the numbers to do so.

Recall, as an instrument of popular sovereignty, is one of several mechanisms in the present constitutional framework intended to make our democracy more robust. All those mechanisms are, when used irresponsibly, prone to abuse. They are instruments that could, in fact, be corrupted for anti-democratic ends, completely contrary to constitutional intentions.

We have seen how, in our experience under the present constitutional framework, all the instruments for enforcing accountability could possibly be corrupted for narrow partisan ends or to maintain the hegemony of the elite.

Take party-list representation as an example. By design, party-list representation is supposed to make the political system more inclusionary. The Supreme Court, in a ruling, refined the concept of party-list representation as a means to include “marginalized” social sectors, independent of the standard political party system that is prone to monopolization by the elite.

Despite that ruling, the party-list system has eventually been colonized by the provincial ruling clans, ideological groupings, faith-based institutions, lobby groups and other sources of elite dominance, all paying lip-service to the “marginalized.” Any quick scan of the composition of party-list groups in the present Congress should reveal that.

In addition, the party-list system served to undermine the stability and integrity of our standard political system. With even weaker political parties now, it is easier for traditional elite groups and families to dominate government. The trend runs fundamentally contrary to the intentions of the framers of the Constitution.

Impeachment, as we have seen of late, is another instrument prone to corruption by populist hysteria and partisan zealotry. It has become the rope wielded by lynch mobs driven to frenzy by banal demagoguery.

From being a solemn political instrument of last resort to defend a sublime understanding of public good, impeachment has become a handy device for taking out those who stand in the way of the politically dominant faction or who dissent from whatever is transiently fashionable. In this case, impeachment has become a means for enforcing conformity, suppressing dissent and weakening checks-and-balances — all subverting the democratic order in the end.

One political theorist, Selwyn Ryan, averred to the possibly deleterious long-term effects of abusive use of the instrument of recall. He said: “The recall concept…has its problems and one might merely substitute instability and discontinuity for order. Political systems should provide for order and continuity as well as representativeness and popular legitimacy and accountability.”

The abuse of the recall process is very real. It could be used by sore losers in an election to overturn a valid election return.

The Supreme Court, ruling in the landmark Angobung vs. Comelec case, pointed out that “recall must be pursued by the people, not just by one disgruntled loser in the elections or a small percentage of disenchanted electors. Otherwise, its purpose as a direct remedy of the people shall be defeated by the ill motives of a few among them whose selfish resort to recall would destabilize the community and seriously disrupt the running of government.”

In a separate opinion on another case, the wise Justice Reynato Puno noted that “the right of recall is a double-edged sword. Rightly used, in can promote the greater good. Wrongly used, it can result in greater evil.”

Justice Puno recommends introducing two means to safeguard the powerful instrument of recall from possible abuse. The first is the setting of a waiting period before a petition for recall can be initiated. The second is the fixing of a minimum number of voters’ signatures to kick-start a petition for recall.

The Comelec has, so far, not acted to implement these two means to help ensure recall will not be abused. Nonetheless, the Comelec has shown haste in entertaining recall petitions.

All these issues now come to the fore once more in the case of the recall petition filed against Palawan Gov. Abraham Kahlil B. Mitra.

The recall petition was filed against Mitra just weeks after the 2010 elections. The Comelec panel, without giving the Palawan governor the opportunity to argue against the petition, gave the recall due course. Mitra, the other day, filed an omnibus motion for reconsideration before the poll body.

The motion for reconsideration raises precisely the issues about the vulnerability of the recall procedures that were carefully considered in previous Supreme Court rulings. Unless these issues are fully addressed at the level of the Comelec, the case is likely to be elevated to the High Tribunal.

These are issues worthy of broader public consideration as they touch precisely on the corruption of instruments originally intended to enrich democratic processes into instruments that weaken democratic institutions.

In a democracy, the right of citizens to elect those who will govern them is cardinal. It is not to be taken lightly. It is not to be so easily overturned by cynical use of the instrument of recall, even as this instrument was installed as a means for exacting accountability.

Ironically, these issues will be revisited by a Supreme Court that is itself under siege by the farcical use of impeachment as an instrument for enforcing accountability. The Chief Justice has been impeached by way of a burlesque version of this instrument and brutally vilified by the regime’s immense propaganda apparatus for decisions arrived at collectively by the whole Court.