Tipping point
needs to be secured, it should be the elections. It is inconceivable that a country like ours should let contractual obligations, and the threat of being sued by a service provider that has lost credibility, be given more weight than the higher constitutional duty to ensure clean and honest elections.
The rage is simmering, even as the erosion of trust in political institutions are evident and is no longer confined to the Comelec, but has even spread to the Supreme Court, sitting as the Presidential Electoral Tribunal ( PET), Congress and even the President himself.
The PET has been taken to task, particularly Associate Justice Benjamin Caguioa, for causing the delay in the resolution of the protest of Marcos. What is even more appalling is the fact, well-established, that Caguioa’s wife openly supported Robredo, who is the respondent in the protest. Again, in a more honest and decent society, a judge who would be placed in such a situation would have inhibited not only to chair the election protest body, but even to be a member of it. It is bad enough that Caguioa remains as the justice in charge of the case. What is even worse is that the entire court appeared to have legitimized it when the en banc ignored the motion of Marcos for Caguioa to inhibit, and did not accede to the latter’s belated intent to inhibit. One needs to ask how being married to one who is partisan to a party in an election protest could not be a ground to remove a sitting justice from the case in question.
Congress is also taking a hit. This is not only because the Senate appeared to have simply allowed resigned Comelec chairman Andres Bautista to freely leave the country in the midst of an important investigation that may have some implications on the conduct of the 2016 elections. It is also because there is a perception that the joint congressional oversight committee (JCOC) chaired by Sen. Koko Pimentel seems to be not as interested in performing its job. Its hearings are very much delayed, and its conduct became suspect when many saw attempts to muzzle election crusader and lawyer Glenn Chong even as it allowed an