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Impeachment Row Isolating Arroyo
Julie Javellana-Santos & Agencies
MANILA, 31 October 2003 — President Gloria Arroyo is looking increasingly isolated as a row over the impeachment of the nation’s top judge threatens to spin out of control, giving more popular rivals a boost ahead of 2004 elections.
Political analysts said yesterday that Arroyo’s chances of winning a fresh mandate next May will be in serious doubt if she fails to defuse a crisis that has started to split the country along familiar lines.
Sen. Raul Roco, one of those seeking to contest the presidency in May, said Arroyo’s “failure of leadership” on the part of the president was to blame for the political crisis.
The bid by a group of legislators, some from Arroyo’s own ruling party, to remove Supreme Court Chief Justice Hilario Davide has been seen by many as a power struggle ahead of elections next May.
Supporters of ousted president Joseph Estrada, himself the subject of an impeachment trial presided over by Davide, are mobilizing poor urban residents to rally in favor of the impeachment, while the powerful Roman Catholic church and former president Corazon Aquino have been leading the fight against it.
Aquino and the Church were key players in the country’s “People Power” uprisings — the first to unseat late dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1986 and the second to oust Estrada in 2001 — but Estrada still has a strong following among poorer people.
The legislators want Davide to stand trial in the Senate on accusations, denied by the chief justice, that he misused public funds. Supreme Court opposition to the move threatens to bring the country’s institutions into direct conflict and strain fragile party alliances to breaking point.
“This war of institutions could redefine the political alliances. It could paralyze government. It could torpedo the economy,” commentator Alex Magno wrote in the Star newspaper.
Arroyo lost some key allies in the Senate, including her vice president, last month, when she went back on a decision not to run in next May’s election.
Several former members of her Cabinet and advisers have also left to join charismatic Roco, who has also been attracting support from some Lakas members in the House of Representatives.
Popular movie star Fernando Poe Junior could deal a further blow to Arroyo’s election chances by declaring his candidacy.
A recent opinion poll by independent pollster Ibon showed Arroyo slipping to fourth place with only 7.8 percent of 1,300 respondents backing her.
Poe had leapfrogged to third place with 11.2 percent, while Roco was leading with 24.88 percent support, just ahead of broadcaster-turned-senator Noli de Castro, with 23.8 percent.
Investors know that little official business will get done as candidates jostle for votes over the next seven months.
The peso has been treading water after threatening record lows earlier this week. It hit a high of 55.20 per dollar in morning trade against its previous close of 55.24, but was quoted at 55.26 by noon.
Portfolio managers outside the Philippines are warning of capital flight as political instability increases.
Fence-Sitter
The crisis inadvertently exposed the prime weakness of the president, according to Roco. “She knew all about it. (But) she did not see the crisis coming,” he said. “She does not understand the forces at work.”
Roco noted that as early as Friday last week — the day newspapers bannered that 82 congressmen had impeached Davide — he and his possible running mate, former Cebu provincial governor Lito Osme?a, were already on radio attacking the decision of the congressmen.
Arroyo, however, took her own sweet time, preferring to have a “neutral” stand, Roco said. Only after Sen. Joker Arroyo claimed that Arroyo and Cojuangco could have conspired to allow the impeachment complaint to prosper, and former President Aquino and Cardinal Sin openly attacked the impeachment, did she drop her supposed neutrality by attending the flag-raising ceremony at the Supreme Court on Monday.
“That is why it is really a failure of leadership,” Roco said. He explained that leadership meant that one could anticipate the crisis, and intervene. “Do not wait for it (a crisis) to happen.”
Political Resolution
Despite the weakness of the president, Roco predicted that the crisis would be over before Congress resumes session on Nov. 10. Because politics was behind the impeachment move, it would be politics that would provide resolution to the raging crisis, he said.
Senate President Franklin Drilon said it was now up to the Supreme Court to defuse the politically charged dispute.
Drilon said the Supreme Court should decide on the issues of jurisdiction and constitutionality before Congress resumes session on Nov. 10. Otherwise, he said, the Senate would have “no choice” but to accept the Articles of Impeachment that the House of Representatives threatened to transmit to senators in defiance of a Supreme Court order for Congress to keep the status quo.
If it does not, the Senate will have “to perform its constitutional duty, and the Constitution provides that the Senate shall proceed with the (impeachment) trial,” he said. “These are extraordinary times that call for extraordinary remedies. We should defuse the tension the best way we can,” he added.
Lesson From Marcos
Sen. Joker Arroyo, meanwhile, reminded members of the House of Representatives that not even strongman Ferdinand Marcos attempted to gag the Supreme Court.
When the late dictator proclaimed martial law, he ordered the arrest of his political foes and critics, Arroyo recalled. But, he added, despite Marcos’ ban on any challenge to his martial-law decrees, the Supreme Court ordered the armed forces to produce the detained journalists, and the solicitor general “dutifully appeared and defended the action of the government before the court.”
“What is the lesson to be learned? That the autocratic Marcos, despite martial law powers and the military behind him, wisely allowed the Supreme Court to exercise its jurisdiction because he knew full well that a damaged and humiliated (Supreme Court) would not be good for the country and the martial law image,” Arroyo said.
Arroyo also admonished pro-impeachment congressmen for trying to rush the transmittal of the impeachment documents.
to the Senate by asking the latter to agree to convene a special session during Congress’ Nov. 1-9 break.
“The House of Representatives should not have such an inferiority complex that suddenly it had the assiduousness to assemble and find itself with a quorum just to wail and kick” the Supreme Court, he said.
He reiterated that the Supreme Court on Tuesday did not issue a temporary restraining order but only a status quo order. He said it issued the order because of six petitions filed before it, all raising the constitutionality of the impeachment complaint against Davide after a previous one was dismissed by the House.
“Whenever it involves a concept of interpreting the Constitution, the Supreme Court will have to do that,” Arroyo said. “That is what is called allocation of powers. Even the Senate, the president, anyone in the entire country, must yield to the supremacy of Supreme Court when it comes to interpreting what the Constitution means.”
Arroyo called on the impeachment proponents not to transmit the Articles to the Senate pending the resolution of the petitions.
“Prudence dictates that we should not act on it to allow the (tribunal) to rule on it,” he said. “It’s really a question of what we should do and not do. Since the (tribunal) is clothed with the powers to interpret (the issue), then give it the chance, the time, to resolve it. And not to rush the (tribunal).”
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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