Erap ploy to delay trial

Joseph Estrada’s impeachment bid for eight Supreme Court justices is no different from the Moro separatists’ 10-day truce. It’s a tactical ruse. The unilateral cease-fire by the Moro Islamic Liberation Front, as presidential spokesman Ignacio Bunye explained, "is a ploy meant to mislead." The rebels are at the end of the rope. For desperately butchering civilians, they are on the verge of being listed as a terrorist group. President Gloria Arroyo had given them one last chance up to June 1 to forsake terrorism, surrender the attackers of Maigo and Siocon towns, and return to the peace table. Playing for sympathy in the wake of a military posse, the MILF then declared a truce starting June 2, the day the Organization of the Islamic Conference opened its meeting in Tehran.

Erap too is at rope’s end. Prosecutors are done presenting evidence and witnesses of his P4.2-billion plunder. It’s now his turn to offer defense for a crime that fetches the death sentence. But since the case is air-tight, he has chosen to not abide by the court process. Instead, he is resorting to the old claim that he is still President and thus is immune from suit. For good measure, he is delaying sentencing by having his political allies file a case to impeach the justices who had ruled against him.

As with the MILF’s ruse, Erap’s is fatally flawed. The separatists had wanted the OIC to think that they’re being hunted down despite a truce. Too bad for them, the OIC is instead inclined to listen to Philippine official accounts of the MILF atrocities on civilians. Eight of the 58 OIC states even endorsed the Philippine application for observer status. For not returning to the peace talks as told, the separatists lost by default in presenting their case to Muslim leaders.

Erap’s error is in the fictitious immunity claim. Nowhere is it stated in the Constitution that a President is immune from suit. Only by tradition is a President not sued for his official acts while still in office. He does not enjoy immunity, however, for illegal acts. If he kills, rapes or steals – in this case, plunders – off to court he goes for trial just like anybody else.

Erap hopes to turn the tables by having the justices put on trial instead. The eight, along with five others, had ruled thrice in 2001 that he constructively had resigned by ordering his executive secretary to prepare a smooth turnover of power to then-Vice President Arroyo. Now he is saying that the eight – he exempted three of his appointees who also ruled against him – had wilfully violated the Constitution by participating in a partisan political exercise at EDSA where millions of citizens had gathered to demand his resignation. His evidence: a religious account of one of the justices attributing to the Holy Spirit the events at EDSA on that fateful morning of Jan. 20, 2001.

But of course the justices were there. They had received word from Mrs. Arroyo that Erap was permanently incapacitated by the resignation of four-fifths of his Cabinet. Requested to swear in the Vice President as new President, they thus proceeded to the venue of the high noon oath-taking. But not before debating on the veracity of Mrs. Arroyo’s report and the constitutionality of the events. In his book Reforming the Judiciary, Justice Artemio Panganiban may have given a religious meaning to what transpired. But that is his own interpretation of history. As acting Chief Justice Josue Bellosillo said, "we are not bound by his opinion."

The impeachment complaint has little chance of prospering. It was filed just when the House of Representatives is to go on month-long recess. More than the time constraint, the substance of the case has no merit. Most congressmen are not about to be taken in by an obvious ploy by a plunder indictee to exact vengeance on the justices. A handful of them may be eager to cut the justices down to size, having been shamed by recent Supreme Court voidings of the Piatco and Amari contracts which the congressmen earlier upheld. But it is unlikely that they will surface to act as prosecutors, and risk exposés of having been paid off to begin with for their opinion on the contracts.

Yet even the potential trashing of the impeachment complaint is eagerly being awaited by Erap’s political allies. The case is not central to their aim of delaying and derailing his trial. It is essential only to the publicity and politicking that they play. Speaker Joe de Venecia surely will be villified by Erap’s gofers, for instance, even if his role in impeachment cases is merely ministerial. He is everybody’s favorite punching bag. Paid media hacks will cry injustice at the ruling Lakas majority. Erap’s men want the issues to join. As this piece is being written, Piatco and Amari agitators are faxing invitations to mobs-for-hire to picket the Supreme Court building. The aim is to squeeze every media print space and air time for the twists and turns of the impeachment case.

How far Erap will go in avoiding trial will depend on the judiciary’s resolve. Thrice, he had tried to thwart the hearings of the Sandiganbayan. At first, he questioned the ascendancy of Mrs. Arroyo to the Presidency. Then, he questioned the formation of a special division to hear his plunder case. Months later, after confessing in a television interview that he is the Jose Velarde under whose bank account P4.2 billion came and went, he dismissed all his lawyers and refused to attend hearings. The trial went on just the same. The impeachment case, coupled with a pleading that the Sandiganbayan has no jurisdiction over a sitting President, is just the latest of the series.

The government did not fall for the MILF ruse of a truce. Law-abiding citizens can only pray that it will not fall for Erap’s ploy of an impeachment complaint.

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