[Newspoint] Our own inconvenient truth

Congressman and pastor Benny Abante started it all. He cherry-picked in law and the Scriptures, in conspicuous disregard of the passage that truly matters: “The truth will set you free” (Jesus in John 8:32). Thus, by a multiplication of cherries, he ended up having the overwhelming majority of the House committee on justice eating out of his hand. 

That was on Wednesday, at the final hearing of the pre-trial investigation of the impeachment charges against Vice President Sara Duterte. Following Abante’s lead, the committee voted against opening the box that contained the records that would show if she, as a public official for two decades — first as vice mayor, then as mayor, and now as vice president — paid the right taxes on the right income. The determination was important in light of conclusive evidence that billions of pesos passed through her and her husband’s bank accounts, but that these were not declared in her Statements of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth. All public officials are required to submit their SALNs every year for reference in case suspicions of ill-gotten wealth arise.

So, what’s with the box? 

The committee itself had asked for that box, and the Bureau of Internal Revenue complied, dutifully. After all, it was subpoenaed, demanded on command in the exercise of impeachment powers — powers exclusively vested in Congress by the Constitution. That was in fact the crux of Representative Leila de Lima’s argument. With six other members of the committee, she voted for the opening the box; 38 voted against it. 

The box became an issue when the internal revenue chief, Charlie Martin Mendoza, had apparent second thoughts about his submission. He had shown no problems with it until his turn came to testify. He warned the committee that it could be liable under the privacy law if it opened the box.

Surely, he was not being funny, but, just as surely, he was being disingenuous. For heaven’s sake, he had delivered the box in open obeisance, in unquestioning submission to the authority of the committee! What is funny is that, in the end, it was the committee deferring to him. And for what reason, pray tell? In reverence of the pastor of the house? 

Ironically, it was the very moral point of the vote that got lost. My inside sources validate my own suspicion that the committee voted to leave the box alone because it was expedient and convenient to do so: since the impeachment case, by the committee’s appreciation at that crossroads moment — that iwas-pusoy moment — had been established beyond the bar of “probable cause” required for trial, the committee voted to forget the box, forget the truth crying inside it, and, by inference, let the Senate, as the impeachment court, deal with it, and also with Sara Duterte’s proclivity to run to the Supreme Court for rescue.

I would myself concede that the standard for trial has been met; in fact, I would think (if you would allow a place for the instincts and logic of a non-lawyer for the moment) that Duterte deserves to be tried on the strength of any one — just one — of the following pieces of evidence presented at the hearings:

One, the Commission on Audit’s disapproval of expenses in hundreds of millions of taxpayer pesos from Duterte’s intelligence and confidential funds and its consequent orders for her to return the money; 

Two, the Anti-Money Laundering Council’s affirmation of billions of pesos in transactions flagged by the banks where the Duterte couple kept the accounts that took and dispensed the money, and also the council’s exact, if incidental, validation of findings Senator Antonio Trillanes IV had turned up in his own investigation — findings that all these years had been suppressed, kept from being investigated by the oversight institutions under the presidency of Sara’s father, Rodrigo, and under his residual sway after his term; 

Three, the establishment of a Duterte pattern of accumulating ill-gotten wealth.

Neither does it help Sara Duterte that she is unable, so far anyway, to dispute the accusations with counter evidence, that she has in fact refused to attend the impeachment hearings, ignoring, haughtily, the opportunity to say her piece, and that all she has done instead is issue blanket denials in social media and before a herded press.

A plenary vote to send Duterte’s case to trial may be a foregone conclusion, but that’s beside the point. The point lies with the truth that lies sealed inside that box — the truth that the House committee on justice just escaped, with repercussions bound to haunt it no end. For, by escaping, the committee, and the entire House by extension, failed the test that was to prove two things: one, whether it deserved to keep an exclusive power critical to the nation’s democracy — impeachment — and, two, whether it had the moral conviction to do the right thing with the truth — and that right thing is certainly not to keep the truth hidden in a box. De Lima knows, having been herself boxed in for nearly seven years, imprisoned on charges concocted at Rodrigo Duterte’s bidding.

Actually, the House had faced a similar test before, just over a year ago. It was the first time Duterte had been, in fact, already impeached and her case brought to the Senate for trial. The Duterte-friendly Senate did not mount a trial right away — not “forthwith,” as the Constitution commands. It delayed the start of the trial for months, giving Duterte time to go to the Supreme Court. Not unexpectedly, the 15-member court, where 12 Duterte appointees sat, voided the impeachment on a technicality — one justice could not vote, being on leave, one abstained, and one was co-opted into the Duterte club to make the vote a unanimous 13. The House could have rightfully defied the court, but chose to concede, effectively surrendering its power to an interloper, and decided to do the impeaching all over again, as the interloper says. 

This second time, the House was presented an opportunity to redeem itself, by letting the truth out of the box, but, again, it turned tail. And the presumptuous master appeared to smell right. On the very same day that the House committee on justice dodged the box decidedly, the Supreme Court, from left field, as it were, but not necessarily without foresight or meddlesome intent, a compulsive trait in its case, issued a ruling defining the word “forthwith” for impeachment trials as “within a reasonable time,” aping Chiz Escudero, the president of the Duterte Senate.

Escudero is the original reviser of Webster and Oxford — the Supreme Court is a mere imitator. He did it to justify the Senate’s inability, under his leadership, to hop to its duty as an impeachment court, in 2024. 

But, the Senate having been reconstituted after the midterms, last year, and Escudero consequently relegated to the minority, the Supreme Court, which itself has retained 11 Duterte appointees and their recruit, needed to step in for whoever might be susceptible to its promptings. But of course, in matters of words, the dictionary is the recognized universal arbiter, and it defines “forthwith” as “right away,” “immediately,”  and never, not in any circumstance of usage, as “within a reasonable time.” Also, there have been enough impeachments to refer to for precedents — in the case against Chief Justice Renato Corona, in 2012, the Senate formed itself as an impeachment court the day after it received the Articles of Impeachment from the House, began the trial after a month, and after 44 days of trial over 13 weeks declared him guilty as impeached.   

In any case, the Supreme Court can say what it likes, but, still, there’s no enforcing power behind it, because, again, it is an interloper in impeachments. It is the Senate that ultimately decides. The House could have set the Supreme Court straight, but it blew it. – Rappler.com