Sereno’s ouster
Supreme Court Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno has been ousted by her peers. In an unprecedented ruling prompted by the quo warranto petition filed by Solicitor General Jose Calida, the associate justices voted 8-6. The position of Chief Justice is now vacant and the nomination starts for her successor. This time, President Rodrigo Duterte will have a hand in the process.
It’s not that the decision rendered yesterday was a surprise. Word had spread early on that those who were for Sereno’s ouster had secured a simple majority. Besides, that most of the associate justices hated Sereno is well-known. Thus, Sereno’s defense suffered when the said associate justices refused to inhibit themselves from the case.
These are sad days for the judiciary, but raving and ranting would not lead us anywhere for now. I have long considered Duterte’s rule as like the passing of a storm. The foundations of bourgeois democracy, gradually strengthened after the 1986 Edsa people power uprising drove away the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos, is currently being buffeted by strong tyrannical winds emanating again from Malacañang. Those winds are testing how deeply those foundations have been planted.
Storms, like any process, are not endless. They have a beginning, a peak and the eventual waning. I won’t say the Duterte administration is now at the peak of its power. But I say its assault on the Supreme Court is its strongest offensive so far against our democratic institutions. That it triumphed is proof both of its retained power and of the weakness of the High Court as a democratic institution.
Which brings me back to the analogy. I once wrote years ago an essay for SunStar Weekend following the devastation wrought on Cebu by typhoon Ruping. I noted then that the storm tested the strength of everything in its path. The weak ones are the first to topple in the onslaught. In Tudela town, not one of the banana plants that stood thick at the back of the house of my uncle in the poblacion was standing.
The winds buffeting the country’s bourgeois democracy under the Duterte administration has already weakened our legislature. The Supreme Court, which is composed of appointees of Duterte and former presidents Benigno Aquino III and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo is falling down. The next target seems to be the vice presidency. By then the devastation would be almost thorough.
One thing that this tyrannical storm has thought me is to value again the concept of resilience. Like the martial law years, this too will pass. The idea is to wait out until the onslaught weakens and the political climate changes. The denouement may not happen immediately but it will come. The eventual denouement will also be the time for reckoning.
The Marcoses used to be the most powerful in the country, the brutal dictatorship Ferdinand Sr. set up lasting for two decades. Those of us who grew up in those years initially thought the storm would last for an eternity. It didn’t. I hope those who are now in power will learn from the lessons of those decades. Power is ephemeral. And the highs it provides will eventually give way to a painful period of reckoning.