How does the country hold the president, any president, accountable? The certain death of the fourth impeachment complaint against President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo (reports about Wednesday’s dismissal by the House justice committee and inevitably in next week’s plenary vote are a chronicle of death foretold) should make all of us stop and wonder: Is a politically astute president, any president, above the law?
The constitutional immunity from suit a president enjoys was meant to shield the chief executive, deep in affairs of state, from the sometimes consuming distraction of legal challenges. The idea is that, if necessary, legal reckoning will come only after the commander in chief steps down from office. The only exception lies in impeachment, Congress’ so-called “terrible sword,” which forces a sitting president to answer to both houses of Congress in a partly judicial, partly political process.
The country has unsheathed the sword of impeachment against a sitting president only once, in the breakthrough case of Joseph Estrada, and even then the sword did not fully leave its scabbard. None of the impeachment cases filed against President Arroyo has managed to lift the sword even an inch. Ms Arroyo may be vastly unpopular, but she is unquestionably more politically astute than Estrada.
The result, however, is a staggering setback for our democratic project: When it comes to impeachment, President Arroyo has learned how to game the system.
Her many spokesmen have argued that the President does hold herself accountable to the Filipino people, through the electoral system. This is not exactly true; while Ms Arroyo’s previous election victories (twice for the Senate, once for the vice presidency) are beyond dispute, her election as president in her own right in 2004 remains controversial. Indeed, in the wake of revelations made in the “Hello, Garci” scandal and the fertilizer fund scam, a majority of Filipinos now presume her election to be fraudulent. This is the root, or what some analysts call the original sin, of her crisis of legitimacy.
Her many spokesmen have also argued that the President does hold herself accountable to the Filipino people, through her stewardship of the economy. They point to years of consecutive quarterly growth. But the assumption that the market helps legitimize her presidency is easily disproved. Stock prices have collapsed, the peso-dollar rate has deteriorated and the economy has abruptly slowed, so by Malacañang’s own logic, these developments damn the President. The Palace’s studied silence on this point betrays both the weakness of this legitimacy argument and Malacañang’s hypocrisy in using it.
Her many spokesmen have also argued that the President does hold herself accountable to the Filipino people, through the elected officials she works with. Loyal local government officials, in particular, have proved to be a steady source of consolation for her. But as survey after survey has shown, many Filipinos think negatively of the President; there is no necessary connection between a constituency’s support for a governor or a mayor and that same constituency’s support for the President. If times were less tough, and the long arm of the law much shorter, many more people would be marching in the streets, demonstrating against the President.
In other words: With the President’s crafty refusal to be held to account in any serious form, and with her regularly spending as much as P100 million to buy what former House speaker Jose de Venecia Jr. calls “legal protection,” the sword of impeachment turns out to be made of plastic.
It is still possible, of course, that on Tuesday a majority of congressmen will overturn the justice committee’s dismissal when the House debates the impeachment complaint in plenary. It won’t necessarily be shame at their base servitude to the Palace or newly found courage of conviction that would lead congressmen to do the right thing. They could simply read the signs of an angry electorate, and decide to distance themselves from a deeply unpopular President who, if the sorry example of the dictator Ferdinand Marcos is any guide, cannot possibly last in office forever. In other words, naked self-interest is reason enough to force congressmen to overturn the committee decision.
Holding President Arroyo to account now may cost them in the short term. The upside, however, is that it will place them in better position for 2010.
