On the offensive

Like any respondent in a court case, the government has the right to seek a reconsideration of an adverse Supreme Court (SC) ruling.

And it’s a free country, so President Aquino can openly question the SC decision on the Disbursement Acceleration Program (DAP). Being the President, he can use television as his bully pulpit, bringing his case directly to his “bosses” the people.

If his approval ratings were still at dizzying heights, anyone who became a target of P-Noy’s ire should see the approach of Apocalypse.

But P-Noy made his nationally televised “address to the bosses” on the same day that his latest survey ratings came out, with the two top pollsters reporting a precipitous drop in his numbers. Against that backdrop, P-Noy came off belligerent and tone-deaf in his defense of the DAP.

He is also taking a gamble in warning that he would take his case to the people by urging them to wear yellow in his defense. Wear yellow for DAP?

Yesterday P-Noy received a not unexpected shot in the arm from visiting World Bank President Jim Yong Kim, who gave unstinting praise for Aquino, his government and reform agenda. The WB is the principal partner of the government in the conditional cash transfer and several other anti-poverty programs.

The praise was not unfounded. Detractors, however, sniffed that a senior economist of the World Bank in the Philippines is Budget Secretary Florencio Abad’s British son-in-law Andrew Parker, husband of Julia Abad, P-Noy’s assistant from his Senate days who now heads the Presidential Management Staff.

In lashing out at the SC for declaring salient portions of the DAP unconstitutional, P-Noy is also upsetting the balance of power wherein the three branches of government provide checks and balances to each other.

P-Noy can suspect personal vendetta in the SC ruling if only appointees of the Arroyo administration led by Senior Associate Justice Antonio Carpio, who was bypassed for chief justice in favor of someone many years his junior, had voted to strike down DAP.

But even P-Noy’s appointees – notably Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno and former chief peace negotiator Marvic Leonen – agreed with the rest.

Did 13 of the nation’s best legal minds make a mistake? And will the SC overturn a unanimous ruling?

Maybe it’s P-Noy who should take a closer look at the SC decision. Why did even his own appointees vote against his stimulus program?

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Even the SC acknowledged in its ruling that the DAP was behind several useful development projects. P-Noy’s case for the end justifying the means, however, was weakened by the long wait for the release of the list of DAP-funded projects. The list, when finally released after his address to the bosses the other night, contained several vague entries.

Anyone who champions the straight path must also tread carefully when applying Machiavellian principles. Imelda Marcos can also point to the many useful projects that were built during her husband’s 20-year watch, a number of which were known to be her pet projects such as the Light Rail Transit and the Cultural Center of the Philippines. Special government health centers – for heart, lung and kidney ailments – were also built during the Marcos regime.

Imeldific as first lady was lampooned for her “edifice complex.” But to this day many of her pet projects remain useful. Do these justify the way public funds were handled by the conjugal dictatorship?

P-Noy has also skirted the issue that led to a scandal blowing up in the face of daang matuwid: the apparent use of the DAP as a reward to several senators after Renato Corona was ousted as chief justice.

Sen. Jinggoy Estrada, now detained without bail for plunder for the second time in his life, has gleefully offered to turn state witness in the DAP case.

Yesterday the lead prosecutor in Corona’s impeachment trial, Iloilo Rep. Niel Tupas Jr., filed a bill to scrap the Judiciary Development Fund. Lawmakers are also preparing to conduct a probe on over P1 billion in special allowances reportedly received by justices and judges, which the administration reportedly plans to present as the judicial pork barrel. But even if judicial dirt is uncovered, will the reasoning that everyone is doing it anyway legitimize the DAP?

Those who have encountered magistrates famously described by Joseph Estrada as “hoodlums in robes” will understand P-Noy’s frustration over the DAP ruling. But his open disdain – usually reserved for his former congressional colleagues who are pushing for Charter change – is now directed at the entire Supreme Court, including certain members who do not deserve to have their independence and integrity subjected to presidential suspicion.

P-Noy reassured those worried about DAP-funded projects that are now in limbo due to the SC ruling that he would simply ask Congress for a supplemental budget. So the nation can survive without the DAP?

When a president refuses to bow to a unanimous ruling of the nation’s court of last resort, it comes off as arrogance. In the case of a relatively young president, whose inner circle is described by detractors as the student council, it can come off as bratty behavior.

Arrogance usually afflicts those who have been in power for too long. But P-Noy is only entering his fifth year.

In taking the offensive on the DAP, he’s risking public support for his reform initiatives. He’s not looking aggrieved or a victim of a personal vendetta; he’s just coming off bullheaded.

It may be good for him to consider that in life, you win some, lose some. And a president must avoid behaving like he’s above the law.