Impeachment season started early in this administration.
It is surprising that only eight months into his presidency, an impeachment complaint has been filed against President Rodrigo Duterte despite his huge margin of victory and his almost-martial law style of governance.
Still, with the number of House members in the so-called supermajority, it is doubtful if the impeachment complaint will go anywhere. It does tell us, however, that all is not quiet in the western front. Also, even with the near-absolute control that President Duterte exercises over the entire government machinery, someone had the temerity to file an impeachment complaint.
The filing of the impeachment case by Rep. Gary Alejano of the Magdalo Party-List clearly caught the administration and the public by surprise. It took President Duterte and his political allies a couple of days to swing into action. Led by House Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez and other senior government officials allied with the President, they went into the attack. The usual suspects consisting of the Yellow Army were targeted.
Because Alejano is a known ally of Senator Trillanes, who is the most vociferous critic of the President in the Senate after the now-detained Senator De Lima, the impeachment complaint has been characterized by Malacañang as nothing but a power grab by the political opposition to install VP Leni Robredo as President.
That reasoning is plausible but there could be other reasons like disgruntlement among members of the House. As one House member said, they are now experiencing a new brand of leadership, something that they are not used to. The complaint itself was not crafted well, according to some legal experts. They say it could not even reach first base.
But the complaint certainly got the attention of the Palace and judging from the actions of the administration, it has been rattled. The ongoing reorganization in the House for instance is now dead on its tracks for fear of driving members of the House who are hedging and harboring resentment against the administration to bolt the supermajority and vote for impeachment. Knowledgeable sources are discounting this possibility but at this stage of the ball game, anything could still happen.
If there is anything that previous impeachment attempts teach us, it is again fiesta time for the members of the House. There will again be a lot of haggling for additional congressional allocations. This is after all the reason why every time there is a new administration, there is hardly any block that one can call the opposition. Almost all are with the administration. The reason? Fund allocations.
VP Robredo who may or may not have anything to do with the filing of the complaint is now herself under siege because an impeachment complaint is now being readied against her. And because impeachment is more of a numbers game than a legal one, she is perhaps more threatened than the President. But this remains to be seen.
What this threat against VP Robredo is going to do is that it will be another political upheaval that will somehow affect our political institutions negatively. The chances of her being impeached by the House and tried by the Senate is real.
If this happens, though, it will be a big distraction. Instead of focusing on the many problems facing the country both in the home front and overseas, the country’s attention will be focused on an impeachment trial that could last for months.
What the country needs at this time is to cool down. These threats and counter threats are not doing the country any good. It seems that our senior elective officials, instead of leading the effort to fortify and strengthen our fragile political institutions, are the ones trying their best to weaken our democratic foundations instead.
Beginning with the ouster of President Marcos, there have been several political upheavals that contributed to the weakening of our political institutions. The ouster of President Estrada, the impeachment of Justice Corona on trumped-up charges, the numerous impeachment and coup attempts have all contributed to the weakening of our democratic processes.
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Of all the democratic countries in the region, we have the oldest democratic tradition. We have been having elections since 1907. That is 110 years. It stands to reason that we should be the model or at least an example of political maturity and stability. Yet compared to our neighbors, we seem to have never matured politically. The specter of martial law or the threat of it is always hanging above everybody’s head. Democracy as a system is frustrating, cumbersome and oftentimes infuriating to a leader. The temptation to lead without dissent is natural. But democracy is the kind of system that the Filipino people have grown accustomed to and comfortable with. Those who are thinking of tinkering with it to make it easy to govern should think again.
We have gone along this path during martial law and it has brought us nothing but hardship. We are in fact just beginning to recover and start getting our act together. It would be a pity if we will backslide and retrogress instead of moving forward. We should always be mindful of the lessons of martial law.