Defiant hope
Cynics probably lead less stressful lives. When one believes that self-interest is the main impulse that motivates people, or when one lives in that manner, few decisions can surprise them. Or disappoint them.
I expected Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno to be removed from office but, being an optimist, I thought that she would at least be granted trial in the Senate, where the political numbers game had all but sealed her fate.
Certain allies of the Duterte administration in the House of Representatives certainly were hell-bent on ensuring that the chief justice would be impeached. So when Solicitor-General Jose Calida filed his quo warranto petition last March, I thought it was a diversionary ploy, meant to draw fire so that the administration’s allies in the Lower House could proceed with the impeachment with less opposition and noise. But then, I am not a cynic.
Some cynics who have made it their mission to sing this administration’s praises will frame the Supreme Court’s decision last Friday in several ways. Some will say it was plain karma and that oversensitive “Yellowtards” should just remember that the late Chief Justice Renato Corona endured much worse. What this line of reasoning omits is that Corona’s removal followed the procedure spelled out in the Constitution. You could disagree with the outcome, and many did, but the process held fast to the rule of law.
Some have already framed the decision as a triumph of change; that even institutions as cautious and as steeped in tradition as the Supreme Court must allow for new ways of giving people the justice they deserve. What this tack ignores is that change, while necessary and often positive, always exacts a price. When the price is too high—say, the further loss of trust in institutions and the erosion of necessary ideals, like the impartiality demanded of judges—then those seeking change must pause and consider if there are other ways the change they desire can be pursued.
Some of those cynics have used and will continue to use personal attacks, will say that those of us who aren’t legal scholars shouldn’t even bother wading into this discussion. The “beauty” of this approach is that it’s easy: the social media mob loves a public flogging. But this approach, while popular, is also the easiest to ignore because it reveals the absence of any real argument on the cynic’s part. All it is, really, is a blunt attempt to intimidate others into silence. And for as long as we can resist becoming cynics like them, we can find the strength to attempt understanding. We can even find a glimmer of what my friend, the lawyer and human rights advocate Fionah Bojos, calls “defiant hope.”
In their decision, the eight associate justices who voted to remove Chief Justice Sereno explained that for one to act with integrity, one must be consistent, must do “the right thing in accordance with the law and ethical standards every time.” (Very Aristotelian of them.) As a non-lawyer, I am perhaps oversimplifying the situation, but aren’t the rules clear? The chief justice may have, indeed, erred in failing to submit 10 years’ worth of her statements of assets and liabilities. But if a quo warranto petition should have been filed within a year of her appointment in August 2012, why allow the republic’s principal lawyer to break that rule so easily? And if the chief justice’s trial in the Senate was all but guaranteed, anyway, why prevent the proper, constitutional means of removing an impeachable official from proceeding? Can you demand consistency of someone, while failing to consistently uphold the Constitution you have sworn to protect?
I have yet to finish reading the individual justices’ opinions (there are 11, apart from the decision itself). So far, my main takeaway is that the rule of law is only as good as the people who live by it. It is not a guarantee, but a benchmark: something that those of us who believe in democracy must always hope and strive for, no matter how often we fall short of its ideals.
(@isoldeamante)