Popularity over accountability?

An interesting question arose from the defense during this week’s Senate impeachment trial. Defense lawyer Mark Vinluan presented Social Weather Stations (SWS) data showing that Vice President Sara Duterte had a 57% trust rating, compared with President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.’s 34%.

He then asked the prosecution witness, National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) Director Melvin Matibag, whether Duterte’s high trust rating meant that she had not betrayed the public trust.

Matibag answered that a public official’s high trust rating neither absolves the official of accountability nor proves that the official has not betrayed the public trust. “Kapag popular na tao, puwede nang gumawa ng krimen at hindi papanagutin?” he asked. He added that trust surveys merely provide a “snapshot” of public opinion at a particular point in time and do not override the rule of law or shield anyone from accountability for wrongdoing.

I find the exchange interesting and significant because I believe it captures what impeachment is fundamentally about, which is the primacy of accountability and the rule of law over what happens to be politically popular or fashionable at the moment.

Matibag said so himself: “We (the NBI) cannot be swayed by public opinion o kaya po ng aming personal na opinion. Kami po ay nag-iimbestiga na nababatay sa batas, nababatay sa proseso, at nababatay po sa ating itinakdang mandato base po sa pagtatatag ng NBI.”

We are not oblivious to the reality that impeachment is a numbers game and that politics, including popularity ratings, figures prominently in the equation. But the constitutional mandate of accountability exists precisely to protect the integrity of the nation and insulate it from the passions of the mob.

As legal scholar Nicola Lacey (2019) of the London School of Economics and Political Science observes, constitutionalism and the rule of law operate by tempering power and restraining the sway of popular will. They protect the integrity of democratic government from the political passions of the moment, whether those passions arise from genuine public grievance or are manufactured and intensified through disinformation and organized influence.

In what Anton Jäger calls the age of hyperpolitics, politics has become intense and omnipresent, even as durable institutions and the habits of collective political discipline have weakened. In such an environment, the dangerous belief can more easily take hold that a leader who remains popular has somehow been given a blank check to govern without moral or legal restraint.

That would be a fatal mistake. Popularity may explain how power is acquired and maintained, but it cannot justify how that power is exercised. Hitler and the Nazi Party enjoyed genuine mass support among the German people, while Vladimir Putin continues to register high approval ratings at home where he rules in an authoritarian political environment. History has shown what happens when popular support gives a leader too much power. Popularity is not virtue. A high trust rating is not a license to escape accountability.

Laws exist as guardrails against the abuse of power, enforced through institutions that limit, constrain, and hold its exercise accountable. They are the product of costly lessons drawn from the widespread destruction and immense human suffering that follow when leaders are permitted to govern without moral restraint, legal accountability, or respect for civil liberties.

Sure, if the survey numbers hold until election day in 2028, the country could very well elect a popular leader whose political brand has been carefully constructed and implanted in the public consciousness by sophisticated social media disinformation networks. But the more pressing question is whether our political institutions will survive.

From a geopolitical perspective, the weakening of our institutions and of the country as a whole could eventually lead us down the same path as Myanmar. Leaders who carry a heavy burden of unresolved accountability and serious moral questions will almost certainly provoke bitter and divisive political battles, further weakening the institutions needed to preserve democratic stability.

In such a situation, the principal beneficiaries would not be the Filipino people but the geopolitical powers waiting to exploit the resulting divisions and institutional weakness. In conflict-torn Myanmar, China has dealt with both the military regime and armed groups to protect its investments, secure vital resource flows, and preserve access to rare-earth minerals essential to its strategic interests.

When a country loses faith in its institutions, it becomes far more vulnerable to the leverage of external powers.