Deterioration from republicanism

“Old habits die hard,” an idiom that was acknowledged to have been first cited in the United States in an article by Benjamin Franklin printed in the London Chronicle in December 1758, should be used to characterize my Off Tangent column last Sunday entitled “A Government Not Of Laws But Of Men.” Having taught Political Law for about four decades, I consider writing something on principles of government as academic discussion, an old habit of a retired teacher. As events unfurled, however, I realized that my article was not just an attempt at simplistic discourse of a principle of political law. Indeed, I was caught in the middle of a raging storm of criticisms against President Rodrigo Duterte. My goodness, did I speak too soon when I opined that ours has become a government of men and not of laws?

On the television set in our bedroom, it was about 11:11 in the evening of January 5, 2021. President Duterte told us, his people, the profound reason why his Presidential Security Group had to violate perceived laws on the importation and use of COVID-19 vaccines. According to the president, it was matter of self-preservation of his men and his protection that the PSG had themselves inoculated against the coronavirus. But, as earlier reported, the vaccine used did not carry the seal of approval by the Food and Drug Administration. In the words of Secretary Delfin Lorenzana of the Department of National Defense, the agency where the PSG is known to be a part of, the vaccine was “smuggled.” Since, in ordinary parlance, a smuggled item is illegal, I surmised then that the security group committed a series of illegal acts right under the nose of the country’s chief executive.

In the January 5 press briefing, President Duterte referred to a possible legislative investigation on the Gen Durante caper. As the noise about the inquiry got louder, the president made it clear that he was not threatening the Senate from whose corner the news of a hearing came. I heard Duterte saying something like “I am not threatening,” and words to that effect. He was not threatening the legislators when he said that he would not allow his guards to appear before Congress (it was not clear to me if he meant either the lower or the upper house) to answer certain questions.

The president, towards the tail end of the press briefing, ordered Durante “not to obey the summons of Congress.” His words were clear: “I order you to stay in the barracks.” Earlier though he said that should his PSG men appear in a legislative investigation and asked some questions, their answer should invariably be “I refuse to answer that question because it might incriminate me.” However we juxtapose the president’s statements, the signal for the legislature was clear. Keep your hands off! The president himself lent credence to my observation that our government has become a government of men!

While it is a constitutional authority of congress to conduct inquiries in aid of legislation, and therefore it is within its sole competence to determine what laws it may draft as a result of the investigation, the president already ruled that there is no possible area of legislation should the investigation be held. Duterte in effect, substituted what could be the legislators mind. He had determined that no piece of legislation can be made out of the investigation.

I will wait for the move of Congress. If, despite the verbal warning of the president, it proceeds to conduct an investigation on why an unauthorized drug was smuggled to our country (and used by PSG), ours may still be claimed as a government of laws. If, in the other hand, it wags its tail and fails to inquire what laws may be crafted in response to the misconduct of the executive department, then indeed our government has deteriorated from its republican form to something not unlike that of a dictatorship!