EDITORIAL - Hypocrisy and betrayal

Granting, for the sake of argument, that the conviction and ouster of Renato Corona as chief justice was all in order and that he deserved his fall from power, it nevertheless leaves a queasy feeling to even think of replacing him with any of those who participated in his trial.

But that is precisely what is going on. While nothing is yet formal, names have already been floated, including those of Franklin Drilon, Leila de Lima, and even Kim Henares, all of whom in various ways lent their “expertise” to the eventual conviction of Corona.

Incredibly, no one, including President Aquino, seems willing to drop the idea, thereby suggesting all of them are willing to go along with the notion. How sad that after exorcising the post of chief justice from any demons, we should now soil it with patronage politics.

This is not about qualifications but about the dreadful disappointment that, after all we have been through the past several months, all the mountain labored to bring forth was nothing but the mouse of political debt repayments.

Now, if it looks like we are treading on familiar waters, we are. We are saddled with the same dog whose collar Aquino merely changed. What he used to find so revolting in others he finds nothing wrong with now that he is in the saddle.

For Aquino to once loathe and abhor a particular practice for no other reason than that it was employed by a hated rival and then to completely embrace exactly the same practice now that he has kicked out the rival cannot be otherwise but hypocrisy of the highest order.

It truly is disappointing for a government that promises to lead by the highest moral and ethical example to lose no time divvying up the spoils of a political ouster among those who were instrumental in carrying out that ouster.

If Aquino does not stop this nonsense, this will become the first real concrete evidence that the promises of reform and change he made to the nation truly rings hollow with the sound of his own hypocrisy and betrayal.