‘Let Gloria walk and there will be more Glorias to come. There have been a few before her but they roam the country free. That is why our democracy is a farce.’
THE problem with the communications group in Malacañang is it talks too often, and just as often, out of turn. The latest is a statement that the Palace is not shaming Mrs. Arroyo with the filing of election sabotage charges that in turn justified the issuance of a warrant of arrest that has prevented her from leaving.
The respondent is not entitled to bail. But to say that the Palace is not shaming Mrs. Arroyo is most stupid. The Office of the President is merely doing its job, not just fulfilling an election promise.
The only correct part of the statement is that indeed, Mrs. Arroyo is beyond shame. If she could shame herself by going back on her word that she would not run in the 2004 polls but ran just the same and won by cheating; if she could shame herself giving the MILF an independent territory within the Philippine sovereign territory; if she could shame herself allowing her military generals to loot the budget of the Armed Forces; if she could sell or donate a huge armory to the Ampatuan clan that in turn denied her soldiers the arms to fight the enemies of the state; if she left for Beijing to witness the ZTE broadband deal when her husband was in critical condition, who or what else would be able to shame her?
Certainly not President Aquino who, by doing his job, found Mrs. Arroyo at the receiving end of the law.
The Arroyo issue is not related to shame, as she has always been shameless. It has nothing to do with sympathy or "awa" for being threatened with punishment for some crimes she is alleged to have committed.
In fact, the issue does not even directly involve the law and its proper application.
The issue is what appears to be uncompromising stand of President Aquino to prosecute the former president for electoral sabotage and plunder as opposed to what clearly appears as just as determined an effort of the Supreme Court to allow her to walk.
Where does the law sit in a case such as this? There is no law at all but everybody in the dispute is invoking it. The law is obeyed more in the breach than in observance.
It all started when the Supreme Court, obviously at the behest of Gloria Arroyo, "raped" the Constitutional prohibition against appointment to the judiciary during a prohibited period.
It was that "rape" that facilitated the appointment of Renato C. Corona as Chief Justice. The acceptance of the appointment was, practically "statutory" rape since the senior peers of Mr. Corona told the Judicial and Bar Council that they too would be honored to be appointed chief justice if the position would be given to any of them by the next president, not by Gloria Arroyo who ordered the Court to allow her to make the appointment during a prohibited period.
That, too, should have shamed Mr. Corona who got the job from the Supreme Court and not exactly through an appointment made by President Arroyo.
The appointment consummated the "rape." Mr. Corona was the lone beneficiary. The acceptance was shameless.
The ruling penned by Associate Justice Lucas Bersamin shamed Mrs. Arroyo who ordered the decision; it shamed the Supreme Court who succumbed to the pressure of Gloria and most of all Renato Corona who accepted the appointment based on the "rape" by his own peers .
The only job of the Supreme Court is to uphold the Constitution. The Court upheld it because its "rape" of the Constitution is part of the law of the land. I will say again, not for the last time, that the Supreme Court is right even when it is wrong. That’s what made the "rape" in accordance with the Constitution.
Why should anybody benefit from the "mistake" of the Supreme Court? Mr. Corona did. The Constitution was "raped" for his own benefit and nobody else’s.
But there must be away of evening up a score, in fact punishing abuses made by the Supreme Court. It is the Court itself that says in some of its rulings that the "voice of the people is the voice of God."
Does the Court hear or at least feel the nation-wide hatred of Mrs. Arroyo? Obviously, it does not because it has plugged its ears.
Why should there be an issue over the fact that Mrs. Arroyo is being prosecuted for her alleged crimes? She is merely reaping what she sowed. Justice of the heavens, if not of men.
And now comes my friend Congressman Edcel Lagman saying that there have been cases in the past where house arrest was allowed. I particularly detest the house arrest of Au San Suu Kyi. She is a victim of the military regime of Myanmar.
She is a freedom fighter. Reason for her to be under house arrest? She should not have been arrested at all for fighting for her country.
The rest of the prominent persons Lagman mentioned including Augusto Pinochet and Nikita Krushchev were oppressors of their people. They ran their countries with an iron fist. House arrest for them was a reward, not a punishment.
There should be no debate on house arrest for Gloria Arroyo. The law does not allow it. So she should be in jail. However, the Supreme Court might save her again. Under the watchful eye of the Chief Justice, the Court was expected to lift the warrant of arrest yesterday.
We would have or the Court would have started another round of disputes that shows nothing but the bias of the Chief Justice for the perceived thieving and cheating president who appointed him.
Reason for honorable men to resign. The Court should not defend a "felon."
My generation wants to see a repeat of the Oscar Castelo case. He was concurrent secretary of justice and defense in the time of President Elpidio Quirino. Yet Castelo was sentenced for life for the murder of Manuel P. Monroy but was pardoned by Ferdinand Marcos in his twilight years.
We want to see a former President serving a jail term if convicted of plunder and electoral sabotage. It is equal application of the law that gives democracy its truest meaning. It is equal application of the law that results in peace and progress.
Let Gloria walk and there will be more Glorias to come. There have been a few before her but they roam the country free.
That is why our democracy is a farce.
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