The aftermath is more troubling

The Corona impeachment hearing has become a spectator sport, no different from basketball, even if the players are in solemn red robes. It is clearly partisan with sides betting on who will lose and who will win based on the points they score each day.

The measure for giving points in the courtroom drama has less to do with the basic intent of law and justice than the biases of the audience. Some of these you have read in the papers, the prosecutors not being ready, should the articles of impeachment be taken up sequentially, or even trivialities like a seasoned lawyer was once teacher of a bumbling lawyer, whether senators allied to the President are helping the prosecutors etc. etc.

The intramurals have become a show in itself. You need to be reminded that this is an impeachment hearing brought by the President (even if he denies it) to remove the Chief Justice from office because of a unanimous decision of the Supreme Court on Hacienda Luisita.

Therefore it is ominous. The aftermath of the hearing is more troubling than keeping a daily score. There is cheering taking place at the bleachers but that will soon be silenced on judgment day. Because there will be no cheering for all of us. Only more trouble. If it is true that the President is using the impeachment hearing to bend the Supreme Court through Corona to his will then it is sad. But the judiciary is not helpless. It can also fast track the decision on the motion for reconsideration regarding the way the 188 congressmen fast tracked the impeachment. The Hacienda Luisita case has been in court far too long anyway why should it not be implemented immediately once and for all. The impeachment hearing can continue. My own instincts tell me that pre-emption in this struggle could be the wild card.

The Cojuangcos purchased Hacienda Luisita in 1958. Five years later, Raul Manglapus, then a senator was sponsoring the historic Land Reform Code in Congress. He gave his stirring speech — “Appointment with history” — at the floor of the Senate on May 1, 1963. Some Filipinos still remember how he successfully defended the “revolutionary measure” against a battery of seasoned legislators. The debates lasted for two months. The Land Reform Code was approved by the Senate and became law shortly after.

As co-chairman of the Special Committee on Land Reform he took charge in getting the controversial bill approved knowing only too well that he would make enemies among his landlord friends and relatives. Manglapus steered the controversial bill of 173 sections through “obstacles that would either emaciate or block it altogether to the dismay of his many landlord friends.”

A collection of his speeches was compiled into a book entitled “Revolt Against Tradition.”

Some radical quarters ridiculed his calls for land reform as chasing after windmills because landlords do not give up land without challenge, they said. The extreme left then as now teach that only a violent revolution could do so. 

The debate between evolution and revolution among Filipinos seeking social reform heated up when the bill was debated in Congress.

“Mr. President, mine is no brief against landowners. Heaven knows most landowners have contributed to the economic and industrial development of this land.

“This is a brief against a system that retards, that kills initiative and makes bondsmen of them who should be free,” Manglapus said.

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While reviewing his speeches and how land reform came about to become law I was surprised yet again on how the world goes around. President Aquino has said many times that his fight is not against the judiciary or even because of Hacienda Luisita. His fight was against corruption and specifically the corruption in the previous administration of then President GMA. Irony of ironies. It was also a Macapagal, the former president’s father who had brought the issue on the legislative table. Raul Manglapus might have articulated and fought for it but he acknowledges that the impetus came from the former president’s father.

“In presenting it before you, I would like to exercise a salute to the man who, whatever faults some here may find in him, has had the courage and the vision to insist that it be presented — President Diosdado Macapagal.

“I would also add that I am proud to be a co-sponsor with such men as the distinguished gentleman from Tarlac, Senator Roy, whose devotion to the cause of the farmer has moved him to be intimately associated with most worthy bills in tenancy in this Congress for the past 15 years and the distinguished gentleman from Zambales Senator Magsaysay who has shared with his immortal brother a consuming love for the millions who till the soil.”

There you are, some reading of history for background.

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MISCELLANY: While it is good to be following up the impeachment hearing don’t neglect to live and make life better for others. Recently I met with a group of women among them — Chit Juan, Jeannie Javelosa, and Reena Francisco to help other women set up markets for their products. They now have ECHOstore in Fort Bonifacio where women can bring products from their organic markets to sell. They started their pitch for a sustainable lifestyle three years ago, but they have grown by leaps and bounds in what they call “countrywide development efforts.” To learn more about them, e-mail [email protected] or visit www. echosi.org.ph.

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For those into cultural matters, here’s word from Instituto Cervantes and UST (yes the university that gave a doctorate to the embattled Renato Corona) that they will present a translated edition of Gabriel Miró’s masterpiece, “Nuestro Padre San Daniel (Our Father San Daniel)” on Jan. 24, 6 p.m., at the Miguel de Benavides Library in UST.

It is being published by the UST Publishing House as part of the university’s “400 years, 400 books” program. It is the first time that this two-volume novel is translated into English.

In 1910, Miro published “Las Cerezas del Cementerio (The Cherries of the Cemetery)”, a title in which Miró introduced a theme that runs through his later work and which is central in the Oleza novels: the conflict between the quest for happiness and a fundamentalist religion marked by guilt and intolerance. The English translator is Filipino scholar Marlon James Sales. He received a grant in the Translation School of Toledo of the University of Castilla-La Mancha in Toledo, Spain. Instituto de Cervantes says “this piece of literature also discusses themes that remain relevant to Philippine society at present.”