Impeachment issues — here and in the US
Even as United States President Donald Trump faced an impeachment inquiry in the US House of Representatives, he found himself in the middle of another controversy, involving US Navy court martial proceedings that could end in dismissal for a Navy Seal accused of war crimes.
A US Navy review board was preparing to hand down its decision which could dismiss the accused Seal when President Trump took to his favorite media outlet Twitter on Thursday and said: “The Navy will not be taking away Warfighter and Navy Seal Eddie Gallagher’s Trident Pin.”
The president, under the US Constitution, is the commander-in-chief of the country’s armed forces, but US Navy Secretary Richard Spencer said he did not consider Trump’s tweet to be a formal order. The Navy review board is thus continuing its proceedings, a Pentagon official said. Last Sunday, Defense Secretary Mark Esper fired Navy Secretary Spencer.
Fortunately for our country, our President Duterte is not into tweeting. He is, however, given to occasional exaggerations that are sometimes misinterpreted by the general public and, sometimes, by his own people in government. We do have one government official who is also into tweeting – Secretary of Foreign Affairs Teodoro Locsin Jr., but his tweets, which are at times liberally sprinkled with coarse language, are generally considered mere personal expressions of opinion.
US President Trump has used Twitter to reach out to his basic voting supporters who share his rejection of established newspapers and other media outlets. He has used Twitter to answer criticism of his actions and policies in foreign affairs, such as his withdrawal of US troops from Syria and his phone talks with the president of Ukraine.
He uses his tweets to hit “low-life reporters” and to call the ongoing impeachment inquiry in the US House an “impeachment hoax,” a “witch hunt” in Congress, and “a phony scam by the do-nothing Dems.” The House, now controlled by Democrats may go on to impeach him, but very likely, the Senate, which is now controlled by Republicans, will exonerate him. The real battle, it is believed, will be in the November elections when Trump seeks reelection against a Democratic challenger.
The impeachment system was included in the US Constitution as a way to stop a president who abuses his powers, but it can also protect him if his party stands by him. Thus no American president has ever been removed from office by impeachment. President Nixon resigned before he could be tried in the US Senate in his time
We have the same impeachment system in our Philippine Constitution. President Estrada in 2001 also chose to step down in his time before the Senate could reach a decision and the impeachment trial was overtaken by EDSA II. But the very existence of the impeachment system has helped both governments – American and Philippine – carry on whenever seemed there was danger of abuse of presidential power and a consequent breakdown in the political and social order.