Post-mortem

There was no dancing in the streets last Tuesday after the Senate handed down a widely expected verdict.

If there was any emotion unanimously shared, it was relief. The protracted impeachment trial exhausted all of us. Only the perverse found any joy in the excruciating proceedings.

There is an aphorism often quoted among the pragmatic players of the political game: never fight city hall. Do not frontally challenge the powers-that-be. The entire arsenal of government will be deployed against you if you do.

Merceditas Gutierrez obeyed the aphorism. The former Ombudsman, in the face of impeachment, chose to simply walk away, live a quiet life and tend to her garden. She is likely in better health than the Chief Justice is today.

Renato C. Corona did not pay heed to pragmatic advice. He chose to stand his ground and face the impeachment court. He did not just lose his job. He landed in hospital.

Corona stood no chance. The trial was a form of entrapment. He was teased, cajoled, dared, challenged to disclose all his assets. He did, and was convicted as a consequence.

He was teased, cajoled, dared, challenged to make an appearance in court. That produced a disaster. He did not have the eloquence, the stage presence and the overwhelming charisma to successfully pull off an act like that.

There is a saying among those in the legal profession: anyone who chooses to lawyer for himself has a fool for a client. How valid that is.

By the letter of the law, he erred. To jurors who are politicians, it is tough to ignore the letter of the law. Contextual discussion cannot prosper against the letter of the law in a battle to win the conversations in the streets.

The respondent’s conviction was by overwhelming vote. That put a close to a very public trial that seemed to grow even more distasteful with each passing day, polluted by political posturing, ceaseless character assassination and crude propaganda.

The trial’s end, however, does not put to rest the many issues raised in the course of this episode.

We begin with a very technical question. The next Chief Justice will have to be chosen from a list drawn by the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC). The Chief Justice chairs the JBC.

The Senate thinks the conviction is immediately in effect, hence the Chief Justice loses his post as soon as the verdict is announced. If so, who will now convene the JBC? In our law, there is no such thing as an Acting Chief Justice.

Perhaps the most senior associate justice might assume the role. In the absence of precedence, however, that could be a contentious issue. There could be opposition to such substitution from within the Court itself.

After this traumatic impeachment trial, what happens to judicial independence?

Corona did warn that the assault against him weakens the fiber of judicial independence, sends a chill down the spine of all magistrates and opens the door to intimidation of constitutional officers. This is not a goblin present in Corona’s mind alone. The same view is shared by leaders of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines, spokesmen for the trial judges association, leading lights in the legal community and employees of the Supreme Court.

The specter of diminished judicial independence is drawn by statements made by the Justice Secretary about impeaching other members of the High Court and by an actual impeachment complaint lying in the House of Representatives against another associate justice. The concern is not at all assuaged by the absence of any hint of magnanimity in statements emanating from the Palace.

What happens now to the confidentiality of bank deposits? What repercussions will this trial have on the sense of security of depositors? Will this lead to a slackening of our people’s propensity to save?

The trial demonstrated that the guarantee of absolute confidentiality of bank deposits is almost fictional. Fairies and little ladies may casually photocopy bank documents and disseminate them under some fantastic cloak of anonymity. The Anti-money Laundering Council may now look into accounts without a proper court order stipulating a predicate crime.

What happens now to the attractiveness of the public service given the ruthlessness by which the Chief Justice was treated? Will there be a talent drain in the public sector and a repopulation of government service by mediocrities?

Recall that after Stalin’s show trials and purges, Soviet bureaucrats began behaving like an unthinking herd. No one was willing to express a dissenting expert opinion. No one dared make decisions, referring everything upwards. In the end, the Soviet Union collapsed because the state was populated by apparatchiks rather than by a self-confident bureaucracy. The intelligentsia avoided the public sector because there was no space there for independent thought.

It is bad enough that because of a glaring wage gap between the private and public sector, a gap that widens as one moves up the skills level, government service fails to attract the best and the brightest. It will be worse if government service implicitly requires the mentality of the herd, where contrary opinion courts political persecution.

I have learned, through many years of studying politics and history, that unintended consequences are always more prevalent than we might want to imagine at the onset. The road to hell, as one ancient Persian saying goes, is paved with good intentions.

Some unintended consequences might in fact be good. When Corona challenged his tormentors to waive their own right to confidentiality of deposits, he was really challenging those now in power to pay more than lip service to the higher standard of accountability they profess.