Testing the limits
Brinkmanship” is a word popular during the Cold War era, when leaders of some states bring their actions to the threshold of confrontation in order to gain advantage in negotiations. I would use “brinkmanship” differently--to describe President Rodrigo Duterte’s style of governance. Apparently, this is also what Supreme Court Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno meant when she talked about the present setup wherein “everything that can be shaken is being shaken.”
President Rodrigo Duterte’s declaration of martial law in Mindanao is one form of brinkmanship, so too his recent statement that he would listen only to the military and the police, who are fighting the Maute terrorist group in Marawi City, and not to Congress or the Supreme Court on the matter of the imposition of military rule. He is pushing his actions and policies to the precipice beyond which the law, even the Constitution, and our moral compass would fall.
It’s like the limits of what we as a people can accept is constantly being tested. The President has been successful so far mainly because, according to the surveys, a good number of Filipinos are satisfied with his governance. But his advisers, if he has them, must tell him a breaking point exists somewhere.
The 1987 Constitution mandates that Congress and the Supreme Court subject the martial law declaration of any president to a review. One or both of them could reject that declaration and the president should adhere to it, or chaos would happen. Of course, a president has more potent power considering that he holds sway over the armed forces—-the military and the police. But can he be assured that the entire military and police organizations would unite under him?
One thing observable, for example, in the imposition of military rule in Mindanao is that while the President talked about his version of martial law being as harsh as the one declared by former dictator Ferdinand Marcos in 1972, that largely has not happened on the ground. To a certain extent, Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana, Armed Forces Chief Eduardo Año and Philippine National Police (PNP) Chief Ronald dela Rosa do not share the President’s mindset on military rule.
Decades after the 1986 Edsa people power uprising and after the coup attempts against former presidents Corazon Aquino and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo were quelled, the military and police organizations have been strengthened by the mantra of adherence to the rule of law and the defense of the Constitution. While both organizations have their share of scalawags, many have remained professionals and true to their calling. They can’t be forced to follow unlawful order.
That is why I find reassuring Malacañang’s recent statement that the President didn’t really mean what he said and that he would actually listen to what Congress and the Supreme Court would say about the martial law declaration. Because I don’t think that the kind of brinkmanship that would involve putting the country on the precipice of a constitutional crisis would work this time. It could send us crashing into the abyss of chaos.