Sunday, January 15, 2012

The Battle Royale among Pinoy elites in Chief Justice Impeachment Trial

Tomorrow, the elite groups of this small country will again battle it out for supremacy. The first group led by the President wants to leave a legacy--they want to be the first ones who successfully impeached a sitting Chief Justice and thereby, " restore and strengthen the integrity of the Highest Court of the Land". The other, well, tries to portray itself as a "defender of Philippine democracy", while looking at the people behind this group, they are far from being democrats or even defenders of democracy. 


The focus is the Chief Justice, whose properties are being systematically bared before the public to see--an obvious tactic meant to send a strong message--desist now, resign now, before we even contemplate of turning all these properties into sequestered assets. It's a ploy meant to weaken the Chief Justice's resistance. " Resign now or face the bleak prospect of you and your family without any single property."--that's the message of those who want nothing more than see a Chief Justice humiliated before a blood-thirsty public.


While hundreds of families flee raging floodwaters in Davao del Norte and Compostela, and people in both the urban and rural areas are busy, hard at work, trying to scrape the bottom of their rice bowl for a few morsels of rice, these elites busy themselves with comparing notes--who among the Justices amassed great amounts of wealth just by writing several pages of decisions. Is it the Chief Justice who got at least 40 or so properties under his name or the names of his family during his decade long stint in the judiciary? Or is it Justice Carpio, who reportedly owns several properties which were not at all listed in his own SALN?


As they say, when times are rough, fellow thieves meet among themselves and discuss who among them got more than others, so that others may follow suit.


Kidding aside, in reconstructing a system, such situations like these occur as part of a disruption in the normal course of business. These disruptions are necessary in order to correct the obvious flaws of a system. 


This impeachment trial is just one stage of a long process of crystallizing a cacique type of change within the bureaucratic superstructure.


The thing that we need to wait, is after this Chief Justice is formally ousted through a verification of his impeachment. When the Senate affirms the findings of the Lower House, that the Chief Justice, did, indeed, committed these alleged infractions against the Constitution, power will revert back to the people, doctrinally headed by the Chief Executive. The Chief Executive will then exercise his powers of appointment. 


When this point comes, we will now know the real motivations of this impeachment move--we will see whether or not this administration is really committed to changing things for the better or changing things only for the pursuit of interests by a faction of this country's elites. 


When we learn that it is only for the interests of a few that this exercise was made, then real change and a revolution would definitely happen.


No comments:

Post a Comment

Thank you very much for reading my blog. You inspired me. But if you intend to put your name "anonymous", better not comment at all. Thanks!