Oh yes, they’ll chicken / The demise of ConAss

There’s a Great Scriptwriter in the sky. And he’s now scrawling in letters big and bold that soon, Congress will sprawl in the fight pit, dead as a dodo, and knocked out by a citizenry that has had enough of its stupidity, arrogance, thievery and abuse of power. The House, led by Speaker Jose de Venecia, made the mistake of imaging Supreme Court Chief Justice Hilario Davide was ripe for the pickings. A good central casting director would have told him from the outset the impeachment scenario was doomed.

Why? Its cast of characters resembled a rogue’s gallery.

The charge was led by the Nationalist People’s Coalition, a bonsai sprout of the Marcos dictatorship led by businessman Eduardo (Danding) Cojuangco, Macoy’s favorite crony. The irony of it all was that young irrepressible and highy irresponsible Rover Boys, headed by Reps. Gilbert Teodoro, Wenceslao Fuentebella, Francis Escudero and Gilbert Remulla, comprised the spearhead. Who were they anyway? Who were these upstarts? What had they done for the country? The only impression they created was that they were a spinoff of Adolf Hitler’s Jugend, his Youth Corps, strutting down the valleys wild, piping songs of fascist glee.

And this was the group that would upend Chief Justice Hilario Davide? As we said earlier, he is the nation’s most revered and respected personality. Did they really think that so-called "conspiring" triumvirate of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, Danding Cojuangco and Joe de Venecia would be the battering ram that would finish Davide once and for all? And in the Senate, Franklin Drilon would trumdle out the coffin where eventually the Chief Justice would repose in pacem eternam?

This was supposedly the script. And it didn’t, couldn’t work.

The citizenry immediately saw through it. It was the "mother of all political scams" – forbidding, sinisters, dangerous. Almost overnight, the whole nation exploded with anger and protest. The hue and cry came from priest and peasant, steward and stevedore, poet and professional, businessman and bricklayer, lawyer and laundryman, janitor and jeweler, manicurist and mailman, millionaire and mason, Cory and carpenter, the Great Grandees and the Great Unwashed.

Also almost overnight, the triumvirate cracked from the pressure.

GMA dismounted her high "neutral" horse, rushed to the side of Justice Davide during Mass Monday at the Supreme Court. Once again, she was playing safe. Jaime Cardinal Sin plied the Chief Justice with fulsome praise. Cory Aquino entered the devil’s den (Batasang Pambansa) in black, and in her own gentle way pilloried the plotters. This was an unusual move for Ninoy’s widow. Several times she told me emphatically she had permanently retired, and would now leave the fighting to the young. And I told her: "Cory, you can never retire. You are one of the few pillars of morality left, and when the occasion demands, you will fare forth, believe me." And so, she fared forth.

In the midst of all these, we are told by the House impeachment camarilla they will fight to the end, come what may.

Oh yeah? And you will fight with what? If even Ferdinand Marcos chickened with all the might of Gen. Fabian Ver and the Armed Forces behind him, I say to you: Give up before the shadows of history pounce on you. If you don’t, the Philippines will eventually do an Argentina. That means once Filipinos spot you on the streets, in restaurants, in hallways, in public places, they’ll spit on you, beat your names to a pulp, scream imprecations that will scorch your hide, and in extreme cases, beat you up. And you will squeal like whipped dogs – and flee.

They claim, particularly one Rep. Constantino Jaraula of Cagayan de Oro, and another Rep. Gilbert Remulla that Justice Hilario Davide "had it coming" because "he was arrogant". He wouldn’t allow the House to examine the books and accounts of the Supreme Court. He is damn right. You, sirs, should hunker down to your knees and apologize to the Filipino people. You boast of your "power of oversight", your "power of the purse". You accuse Mr. Davide of "technical malversation".

You have the gall? Why don’t you open up the House books and records to show how you have misappropriated billions of pesos in pork barrel, in shady deals, in ghost public works projects, in rampant wheeling and dealing, in franchise heists, in midnight trysts with Mephistopheles, in horizontal hoochie-coochie hooplas at the Casbah. And you, Mr. Jaraula, you have the nerve to say "We are acting for the people?" You must be nuts.

If you know your politics, there is a line in the ground, a line you have to respect – or else.

You don’t fight the Church, the bulk of the business community and civil society at the same time. You have to have your ears on the ground, on that tight drumskin under which wells and bounces the angry rumbling of society. You don’t even have the Armed Forces backing you up, and that’s the only way you can win. And you don’t have Cory. What you have is the legacy of the Marcos dictatorship, a spent spectral force in our history. At a time you have to project statesmanship of the first caliber, you project the ooze and the slime of the darkest chapter in our history – the dictatorship.

You know what? You should resign from the human race.

* * *

We are told one big casualty of the impeachment process is the Constituent Assembly project of Joe de V and his cohorts. So much the better. It appears that with the republic reeling from the impeachment threat, and so many legislative bills moldering on the vine, there is no longer any time for ConAss. In fact, we are not even sure there will be elections next year.

In a sense, I pity Joe de V. ConAss was his pet project and he travelled so many extra miles to promote it. But from the beginning, he chose and played the wrong cards. He didn’t realize the harm all this inflicted on his stature, his personality. Well, he finally did. When the Speaker hied to touch base with Cory Aquino and her fellow demonstrators Monday, he pulled up with a start. Joe de V was roundly booed. This was practically civil society booing him, and it must have hurt badly. And what was worse, he was booed in his own homeground, the Batasang Pambansa.

Joe de V, an old, old friend by the way, must now realize he cannot be all things to all men. Despite the unpopularity of Con-Ass and the kind of system he shilled in all his speeches, he continued to sell the false gospel that a parliamentary system would eventually rid the nation of all its ills, particularly graft and corruption. This was snake oil blarney, but he persisted. Then when the House voted to impeach Hilario Davide, he certainly was in on the loop. But when protests broke out, Joe de V sought to ride the fence, and declared he tried his best to stop the impeachment proceedings.

Now that the whole nation is in an uproar, Joe de V is looking for a win-win solution, announced two days ago this solution was virtually 90 percent in the bag. As of this time of writing, it isn’t. Joe de V will have to do a Houdini to get out of the trap, and save himself. Even the speakership, it seems, is no longer securely attached to his belt. Nobody is really secure anymore in Congress, not even Franklin Drilon as president of the Senate. Even GMA, better still particularly GMA, is now listing in the wind. Reports that she had struck a deal with Danding Cojuangco the better to ensure her victory in 2004, were a big wound in her underbelly.

When she realized the magnitude of this blunder, she got off her "neutral stance" and rushed off to the side of Chief Justice Hilario Davide. Now she is being accused by some senators and critics of meddling, of playing politics, of breaking the delicate countervailing balance mandated by the Constitution among the Executive, the Legislative and the Judiciary. Already, even it has not yet crashed against the wall, there is a constitutional crisis.

This is additional proof that the system is cracking wide open. The ship of state is careening here and there. Congress has hit an iceberg. In the main the judiciary has been spared. And the Chief Justice remains the man of the hour by declaring war "against those who will destroy our democracy."

How the nation will get out of this big, gaping hole remains everybody’s guess. But as I said in a previous column, the only honorable way out is for Congress to withdraw its impeachment of Chief Justice Davide. This means the Articles of Impeachment should never reach the Senate. Once there, you never know what will happen as a grab-bag of senators, avid for the limelight, scramble to pounce on those articles. We will do our job, say the senators, we will conduct the impeachment proceedings against Justice Davide as we did against Joseph Estrada.

That is precisely what horrifies me.