Can Trump or Duterte pardon himself?

“Pardon given to Rodrigo Duterte for the crime of multiple murder, signed Rodrigo Duterte.” --Then presidential candidate Duterte in April 2016, before Makati business leaders

Americans are talking about whether U.S. President Trump can pardon himself after he tweeted that the legal experts believe so and his own lawyer Rudy Giuiliani babbled about it in TV and cable talk shows.

Trump is more than two years behind President Duterte in publicly espousing self-pardon. Duterte floated it during the 2016 election campaign. Sensing he might be held to account for the casualties of his drug war, he said he’d face charges of multiple murder but he’d just pardon himself.

The idea, pushed by a future president, was novel and controversial. In an April 28, 2016 piece on the campaign, Time magazine reported that Duterte told the Makati Business Club he’d “issue 1,000 pardons a day, before referencing a law that allows the president to pardon himself.”

Future conviction

Our Constitution indeed grants the president the power of reprieves, commutations and pardons. But its limits are specific: it shall not apply to impeachment cases “or as otherwise provided” in the said Constitution “after conviction by final judgment” (Section 19. Art. VII).

The Constitution doesn’t say as to who may receive the pardon. An omission now exploited by Trump under the U.S. version but Duterte may not be able to pursue under ours.

Our president cannot be indicted while in office. Thus he cannot be convicted by final judgment during his term. Once he steps down or is removed by impeachment, he may be indicted but if convicted, he cannot exercise the power of pardon anymore.

Our Constitution, unlike the U.S. counterpart, bars a president from pardoning, himself or another person, for a future conviction of a crime.

The only way he might be indicted while still in office is by the International Criminal Court but even in the unlikely chance he’d be so prosecuted and convicted, the matter of pardon wouldn’t be an option.

Nature of the act

Pardon is “an act of grace” whose essence is “forgiveness or remission of guilt.” It removes the penalty but not the crime: “it doesn’t wash out the moral stain.” Normally, one extends pardon to another, not for one’s self.

A University of Michigan law professor in a Vox forum said mere talk about self-pardon is for “a theater of the absurd.” Outrageously improper, said the web site’s Sean Illing. The U.S. House Office of the Legal Counsel, just before Richard Nixon resigned in 1974, ruled that “no one may be a judge in his own cause.”

Then there’s the basis for the grant of the power to pardon: public welfare, Alexander Hamilton wrote. Obviously not for personal interest, such as returning a favor. Duterte pardoned Robin Padilla in 2016 because the actor helped him win the election.

Admission of guilt

Trump talked of pardon but at the same time scoffed at the need for it since, he said, anyway he is not guilty of the charges that might arise from special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation into Russian meddling in the last U.S. elections.

Pardon is inconsistent with innocence: they can’t stay in the same box. Court conviction by final judgment is required; so is acceptance of the pardon. For pardon to take effect, it must be delivered and accepted.

Why talk of pardon when one is innocent? One has to be guilty and accept the guilt before the penalty is removed. Gloria Arroyo pardoned Joseph Estrada in 2007. Yet Erap in the campaign for president in 2010 said he was not guilty of any crime; the pardon, he said, washed it away.

Ultimate abuse

Whatever the purpose, even if tainted with personal motive or otherwise irregular, usually nobody questions the authority of the president, thus nourishing the false notion that it is absolute.

Public apathy might turn to collective wrath if a president would pardon himself. “I pardon me” screams of ultimate and inordinate abuse of power.