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Monday, February 6, 2012

Can democracy heal itself?

Introspective
Can democracy heal itself?
By Raul V. Fabella

It is a popular if seldom openly expressed belief that a democracy gone bad cannot heal itself. Democracy can and many times does fall into a quagmire where all the democratic avenues of accountability have been effectively compromised and all the dominant social forces believe that their best bet is upholding thestatus quo. It is a quagmire equilibrium and internal forces alone will not precipitate a breakout.

You need an alien force to serve as a game changer. This guarded belief often surfaces as the claim that mending a compromised democracy requires a spell of autocracy precipitated if need be by a military coup. To restore accountability in the branches, we should, goes the narrative, abolish accountability in the trunk. Marcos made this point when he declared martial law.


It is also sometimes said that the genius of democracy is that its founding principle is accountability. Periodic majoritarian elections in theory guarantees that the leadership can be recalled for poor performance. If anything is "holy" in the secular world of democratic politics, it is this power of recall. Of course we all know the power of recall can be thwarted by "guns, goons and gold." The charge sheet in the cases launched in the ombudsman against Arroyo claims that this was perpetrated in the 2004 presidential elections (Garci tapes) and the 2007 congressional elections. Such rape of the democratic process must not go unpunished if democracy is to survive. Thequestion is can accountability still be pressed withinthe rubric of the same diminished democracy?

Ex-president Arroyo left no stone unturned to block or cancel the hour of reckoning. The maneuvers during the 2007 congressional elections was to ensure she would secure the first step in the switch to a parliamentary system where she could continue to rule as prime minister. She granted convicted felon Estrada unconditional pardon in the hope that with him as next president she would be accorded thesame obscene courtesy. The gambit almost worked as Estrada came out second only to PNoy in the 2009 elections. She then ran for Congress in the hope thatshe could be speaker and could block any attempt to press accountability. As a last ditch act, she resorted to a sleazy midnight appointment: R Corona as chief justice of the Supreme Court. All the three branches of government were to be muzzled to quash any attempt to call her to account. The plan bore the claw of genius.

Fortunately, in politics there are irreducible uncertainties that neither guns, goons nor gold can annihilate. Marcos, Kadhaffy and Saleh all thoughtthey had vanished the improbable. Arroyo, too, may have thought she had loaded the dice enough in her favor. Instead, the black swans flocked. First, Cory Aquino, who in life could not make Arroyo account forthe Garci scandal, became in death a real force. Then came the Mar Roxas inspired moment: handing PNoythe scepter of standard bearer of the Liberal Party.

Arroyo’s parliament gambit made progress in theLower House but foundered because many senators harbored their own presidential ambitions. The 2009 elections came through with PNoy winning by a landslide. This changed the face of the Lower House making Arroyo as speaker impossible. It was a narrow escape. Accountability or nothing became PNoy’s calling card.

And so the cases with the Office of the Ombudsman were filed. But no progress could be expected if theOffice of the Ombudsman was held by an Arroyo partisan. So Gutierrez had to go and tribute to her she resigned before impeachments proceedings could be initiated. Her schemes routed, flight became the last option. Once out of reach of the law, she could live the rest of her life in relative ease. But another black swan intervened: grit-personified Leila de Lima stepped in brandishing, ironically, an Arroyo creation.The Supreme Court under R Corona decided to thwart Leila who, in turn, used a technicality of non-receipt to thwart the Supreme Court. R Corona’s midnight appointment was now shown in all its malodorous glory. Since all accountability cases eventually end up in the Supreme Court, there was really no choice but to train accountability on the Chief Justice himself.

The Philippines is known in the world as the stinking backside of governance. NBN-ZTE, Garci tapes, Ohara kidnapping by NBI operatives, World Bank aid anomalies, Ampatuan-Maguindanao Massacre, theNAIA Terminal 3 and the worst international airport in the world, a president who coddled the underworld, etc. We need governance renewal like plants need water. No meaningful governance reform can progress without accountability. But all accountability cases invariably end up in the Supreme Court. If the latter is itself not accountable, it could just convert "due process" into "dues process." The Constitution has an answer: Supreme Court justices are impeachable! But impeach the chief justice?

But a compromised democracy that cannot heal itself will soon be fodder to an autocracy. If democratic self-healing calls for pressing accountability on the final fountainhead of accountability, the Supreme Court, so be it. The stakes are enormous. One can view the present impeachment trial as a fool’s errand or one can view it as a historic spectacle of our democracy defying the odds; that is, democracy trying to heal itself. I prefer to view it as a shaking of the foundations without the saber-rattling of men in uniform.

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