Forthright

Interviewed on television the other night, former president Fidel V. Ramos asked President Aquino to be more forthright about his plans about seeking a second term in office.

This way, the merits of the proposition might be sanely debated in every available forum. The best arguments will shine and the weaker position will fade.

Because all the talk of an Aquino term extension come to the fore in the form of innuendos, a proper debate on the merits or demerits of the proposition could not happen. We are all in the dark. We are all consigned to the indignity of decoding utterances, groping for subtexts and interpreting the movement of shadows.

This is unfair to all citizens. Democracy rests on a civic culture of transparency and forthrightness. Political programs need to be explicit so that they may justly considered by citizens.

All the suggestive maneuvers and vague statements about amending the Constitution to enable Aquino to seek a second term is particularly unfair to legislators who have been working the past few years to introduce amendments to the restrictive economic provisions in the present Charter. That process of amendment is now in its advanced stages, with enough support in both chambers of Congress.

When the idea of introducing amendments covering presidential (and probably congressional) term limits suddenly materialized, a monkey wrench was thrown into the process of introducing amendments. Many of those who staunchly supported amendments to the restrictive economic provisions now have second thoughts about continuing the effort. Once the amendments process proceeds to plenary, the powerful Liberal Party bloc in the House, for instance, could introduce political amendments and hijack the whole process.

Many fear that the much-needed economic amendments could even be junked and the hastily introduced political amendments carried. Instead of constitutional reform, we end up with highway robbery.

There is some sort of dramatic political initiative in progress, but no one apparently directing it. There seems to be a conspiracy to keep Aquino in power beyond his term, but there is no one explicitly proposing it to the people, whatever its merits might be.

The whole nation is being thrown into a hall of mirrors.

The campaign to extend Aquino’s stay in power is being carried out by trolls in social media, delighting in their anonymity. This is not how mature democratic debate ought to be conducted.

President Aquino should come out of his shell and tell the people what he is up to. Statesmanship dictates that.

If he thinks he is messiah to the nation, God’s gift to all Filipinos, then he should say so — and be crucified if the citizens disagree.

If he is truly uninterested in staying in power, then he should come out and say that too -— so that this uncertainty may end and we could all go back to the business of grappling with the nation’s other immense problems.

Subterfuge

If Alan Peter Cayetano and Antonio Trillanes wanted to amplify the claims of petty Makati political players that a structure built by the local government is overpriced, they should have organized a political rally and presented their case to all and sundry.

They did not do that, of course. Instead they used the mechanism of a Senate hearing to achieve the same partisan goals. There is a bit of subterfuge here.

By doing so, as we saw yesterday, they had to work very hard keeping up the pretense of an objective inquiry exercising the chamber’s oversight functions. The two senators, through extensive editorializing, could not conceal the real objective of the exercise: to indict Binay the father and Binay the son in the court of public opinion, conduct a trial by publicity and convert the hearing into a kangaroo court.

The complaint against the Binays was submitted to the Ombudsman. Jurisdiction has been acquired by the anti-graft body. The case is well within the more disciplined procedures for determination of probable cause.

The Senate hearing, undisciplined and constantly partisan, is never the best forum for sober inquiry, much less for judicial determination. We have seen how this mechanism was politically prostituted in the past, which is why the Senate has become the agency with worst repute according to a recent survey of business opinion.

Before we even think about amending the Constitution to address the imagined problem of judicial over-reach, some ground rules must be set for the Senate public hearings.

For instance, if a complaint has already been filed with the Ombudsman, senators must respect its jurisdiction. They should not hijack a case already being reviewed by the Ombudsman by holding a parallel public orgy of muckraking and scandal-mongering.

Unless we begin from the assumption that the Ombudsman is thoroughly incompetent, its prerogative to determine criminal culpability in graft cases ought not to be transgressed by senators — especially since they are prone to attributing guilt by imputation.  Otherwise, there will be forum-shopping galore.

Cayetano wants to run for the presidency with Trillanes as his running mate. Vice-President Jejomar Binay, with his impressive survey numbers, stands in their way. It is hard to imagine yesterday’s exercise was not driven by serious conflicts-of-interest.

Too, no adverse findings were observed by the COA as regards the Makati building in question. By contrast, numerous COA red flags were raised in the audit of the use of Cayetano’s pork in Taguig, where his wife is mayor.

If we really needed a Senate hearing to entertain us, shouldn’t the case of Taguig take precedence over the case in Makati?