What did former CJ Davide do to oust Erap?

Yesterday, a group of Supreme Court employees wore red shirts to show their support for the magistrates who voted to oust Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno. I thought that this issue was over and done with? But in a statement last Saturday, the SC Employees Association urged their colleagues to join in another "Red Monday" event at Monday morning's flag-raising ceremony, saying: "Let's show again our united desire for a free and one Supreme Court."

Last Thursday, former chief justice Hilario Davide Jr. said that the eight SC justices who voted to grant the Quo Warranto petition filed by Solicitor General Jose Calida that ousted Sereno may face impeachment proceedings. Davide always insisted that only the Congress and Senate can impeach an impeachable officer. Alas, Davide must be losing his memory in his old age.

During the second EDSA Revolution, a Facebook friend of mine wrote me a note about the role of Davide in the ouster of then president Joseph "Erap" Estrada when he wrote: "Remember it was him and his very Supreme Court that ousted then President Joseph Estrada for what was that again? Constructive resignation?" And we can all remember the shockwaves it sent to the legal world back then.

He and his justices simply ruled that Estrada was deemed resigned. Until the very end, Estrada contested that. But Davide, as if playing God, did not finish the impeachment court, but instead decided on Erap's virtual ouster in the SC. Indeed, Davide's SC removed Erap, an impeachable official not by impeachment, but by "constructive resignation" on the basis of the "diary account" of Sen. Edgardo Angara, who was then the executive secretary. The justices know that there is no such thing as a constructive resignation of a Philippine president in the Constitution. Then there is also the pile of incontrovertible evidence proving Erap never resigned.

Honestly, I don't want to resurrect old skeletons in the closet. But whether he likes it or not, Davide, is in estoppel if he insists that the only way to remove an impeachable officer is via an impeachment process. History tells us that Davide himself paved the way for the removal of Erap not through impeachment but through his "constructive resignation."

If Davide has taken the cudgels to be the legal voice of the yellow opposition, he is literally starting on the wrong foot. If you read comments in social media chastising Davide, I suggest he is better off quietly exiting from his present position because of the reality of history --that he removed a sitting president, not via impeachment.

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Last Saturday evening I was invited to that private dinner with the local executives with Pres. Rodrigo "Digong" Duterte. Beside him at his table was former president, now Congresswoman Gloria Macapagal Arroyo whom I greeted because the last time I saw her was a year and a half ago when she visited me two weeks after my kidney transplant operation. I was truly happy to see a beaming former president whose legal issues have been settled because these were all trumped-up charges.

As Pres. Duterte was beside her, I greeted him and chatted mostly about the times we had the same motorcycle (a Yamaha Virago) and when I once rode with him during a national convention in Davao City. No, I wasn't privy to the president's meeting with former Cebu City Mayor Michael Rama or what they discussed. But during the nearly twohour talk of the president, he reiterated that Daanbantayan Mayor Vicente Loot was into illegal drugs. But the president did not say anything new in his speech.

The following day, Sunday, the Cebu media was invited to lunch in Tin Gow Restaurant with Special Assistant to the President Bong Go. Of course he answered the most frequent question thrown at him and reiterated that he wasn't planning to run for senator. He blamed the president for spreading this information saying: "Ni sugod ni sa binuang ug ti-ao, tiao ni boss! Dili ko kandidato." When our media friends asked me if this was true, I replied to them that Bong Go was probably waiting for the results of the surveys on the standings of the senators. If he lands on the magic "12" he just might run for senator!