Hectoring

The lowest, most pathetic, point of Corazon Aquino’s presidency was that day she called up “people power” to march on the Senate. That was in September 1991, on the eve of a fateful vote on the Military Bases Agreement.

For months, she maintained an indecisive stance on the future of the American bases — bitter, according to accounts by American policymakers, over Washington’s rejection of her request for the US Air Force to bomb planes of the rebellious Philippine Air Force at the height of the 1989 coup attempt. The Americans, we will recall, sent up two jet fighters on “persuasion flights” to clear the skies of rebel aircraft but did not attack Filipino planes on the ground.

By the time she made up her mind about wanting the bases to be extended, a majority of the senators had already made up theirs about terminating the bases agreement. The outcome of the Senate vote was a foregone conclusion.

Cory, however, could not bring herself to accede to the democratic fact that the decision on the fate of the bases treaty was entirely the Senate’s prerogative. Her desire to have the lease on the bases extended was, according to surveys, clearly the more popular one. In the light of the devastation wrought by Pinatubo, it was obviously the option of economic convenience.

Thus, even if it was an act of utter futility (and also of appalling curiosity), she led her most devoted followers in an ugly march against the Republic’s own Senate. She transgressed the sacred principle of the separation of powers in the hope of bullying the senators from the streets to deliver exactly the outcome the President desired.

That unwise (and laughable) march merely hardened the conviction of the senators. The independence of their chamber needed defending from a President on a populist rampage.

The senators (including one named Joseph Estrada) had an act of statesmanship to perform. Unpopular or inconvenient as it might be, the senators exercised their judgment with a longer view of the national interest.

Ailing nationalist icon Lorenzo Tanada was wheeled onto the Senate floor to watch his son Wigberto cast his vote terminating the bases treaty. At the end of the vote, nationalists celebrated and Cory was repudiated. That was the turning point. From that moment on, she had become a lame duck.

 She did not have to be cast as loser in that vote. Had she not called for that absurd march on the Senate, she might have managed to stand above the fray — as presidents should. All she had to do was respect the prerogatives of co-equal branches of government and yield to the separate wisdom of an independent chamber — as proper republicans do.

Cory, however, succumbed to her own imperiousness and the weak appreciation of the role of institutions this implied. She might be the heroine of a democratic revolution — but this did not entitle her to override institutions or treat them with impunity. Democratization, in fact, requires that institutions be strengthened, not undermined or inflicted with disrespect. A robust democratic civic culture cannot be nourished by impugning the independence of institutions — fleetingly popular as that might be.

 Noynoy Aquino’s bizarre behavior the past few days might support the theory that disrespect for the democratic separation of powers is genetically transmittable. Perhaps only imperiousness is.

The past few days, the President has been on a verbal rampage against the Supreme Court. On the most inappropriate occasions, he has said the most inappropriate things against a co-equal branch of government. The sum of all that emanated from the presidential mouth degrades the quality of our public discourse and subverts public confidence in our institutions.

In the course of this verbal rampage, the President called into question rulings of the High Court, maligned the objectivity and professional competence of the justices, and attacks the legitimacy of the Chief Justice. All these tirades were delivered with ample doses of malice, seeping self-righteousness and a truly appalling volume of discourtesy. The timing of this latest presidential outburst leads some to speculate it is a reaction to the most recent Supreme Court ruling on Hacienda Luisita.

It does not matter if what the President says is right or wrong, popular or unpopular. At bottom line, he has no right to hector the Court.

Whatever the powers of the presidency might be, those certainly do not include providing a second opinion on rulings of the Supreme Court. In the democratic arrangement we are trying to consolidate, the Court has the last word on matters of legality or constitutionality.

The President may privately disagree with some of the Court’s rulings but republican ethics prohibits him from publicly disagreeing with them. It is the Court, not the President, entitled to rule with finality on legal and constitutional disputes. Otherwise, the rule of law dissipates and everything becomes a matter of pedestrian opinion or political popularity. That is the ground on which despotism grows.

Encouraged by the President’s irresponsible behavior towards a co-equal branch, his most avid followers are encouraged to impugn the Court from the streets. They have asked the Chief Justice, without any legal basis, to inhibit himself from deliberations in a collegial body. They have accused justices of partisanship. All these call up images of Mao ordering his Red Guards to assault a government he finds disagreeable.

One Noynoy fan brazenly declares on television that the will of the people is more supreme than the Supreme Court. What a dangerously philistine thought he has embraced!

Some senators have now asked the bishops to step in and mediate a war between the branches of government. That bizarre proposal throws us back centuries, before the development of republicanism.