Tenure

The initial sessions of the House Committee on Justice deliberating the impeachment complaints against President Arroyo might seem like an unbearable drone to many.

Each congressman, it seemed, wanted his three minutes of fame rather desperately, delivering either a ponderous monologue or a trite and repetitive commentary. All that was important, it sometimes appeared, was television face time.

But we must all learn to bear with this. It is a terribly important process, although mind-boggling at times.

Since some of us were so easily swept off their feet by a surge of public emotions and started demanding the impeachment of the President of the Republic, all of us will now have to endure this democratic ritual – even if it pains us to the bones.

Impeachment is not easy. It ought not to be.

All republican constitutions protect tenure rather heavily. We guarantee terms of office for officials in high elective posts, the courts of the land and those appointed to constitutional bodies like the Civil Service Commission and the Commission on Elections.

Our civil service code protects the tenure of public servants at all levels. The lowliest public servant can only be removed only after adjudged guilty of some serious offense.

There is a reason for protecting tenure. Public servants must be as insulated from unwarranted pressure as possible. In the case of the constitutional bodies and the high courts, tenure is the best guarantee of independent judgment.

Tenure makes the bureaucracy and the constitutional agencies less permeable to the whims of powerful vested interests and the ploys of crafty political players. That allows our public service to do their jobs without being threatened by ouster at every turn.

As a general principle, the higher the office and the greater the responsibility, the more tenure ought to be protected.

For this reason, justices and officers of constitutional agencies can only be removed by impeachment. And the President of the Republic is immune from suit during her tenure and could be removed only after a most rigorous impeachment process.

There are solid reasons why democratic constitutions protect as best possible that tenure of chief executives. It diminishes the opportunity for useless harassment of the most senior public servant – especially those driven by trite partisan whim. It enhances the capacity of the leader to exercise statesmanship when the good of the republic is at stake. It improves the chances for political stability to prevail.

We are told daily, as the impeachment complaint against President Arroyo is being deliberated upon, that this is a political process. That is very different from saying this is a partisan process.

It is a political process because the principal – in fact, the only – consideration the legislators ought to have is whether or not the Republic will be better off is the sitting President is removed. This is a consideration settled not by the parameters of partisan whim or emotional discomfort. It is a consideration settled on the parameters of statesmanship.

When a presidency has so obviously failed, as in the case of the Estrada presidency, then removal of the chief executive is not just an option of the legislators. It is a hallowed republican duty.

Sometimes presidents might indulge in truly scandalous behavior – as in the case of Bill Clinton’s sexual proclivities. Those morally offended tried to remove Clinton by impeachment. In the end, Clinton was acquitted and continued on with his second term as one of the best presidents ever had.

Titillating as Clinton’s sexual inclinations might have been, his presidency was not a failure. In the end, that is what matters in an impeachment process.

True, there is a higher bar of public morality that leaders must meet. True as well, there is a higher bar that those who seek to remove them must surpass.

Otherwise, we will have a marshmallow state. Tenure, when constantly vulnerable to pre-termination on the basis of some passing scandal or some otherwise transient factional whim, will be meaningless. There will be less guarantee of continuity, less solidity in our institutions. There will be less space for courageous statesmanship.

The presidency will be held hostage to the unruly and volatile temper of the legislature.

Those who are now desperately trying to remove Gloria Macapagal Arroyo from office by way of impeachment want to lower the republican bar for extricating leaders. They annoy us with flippant argumentation. They threaten us with disorder in the streets if they do not get their way. They try to agitate the public rather than educate us.

They try to cajole us into forgetting why the Constitution has made the impeachment process rigorous: and that is to protect tenure to the fullest extent in order to protect institutional integrity.

There is a reason why the process, as we now see, will tend to be tedious. What the opposition belittles as "mere technicality" may also be called institutional safeguard designed to foster statesmanship.

Instead of grandstanding and attempting to overwhelm us with impassioned pleas, the opposition must try harder to convince us that eviction of a sitting President will serve the Republic better. We deserve a disciplined explanation that does justice to the rigorousness of the process itself.

Inasmuch as this is a political process, we deserve the highest quality political argument that tells us why the nation will be better served by pre-terminating the term of a duly-proclaimed president. That has yet to surface above the rubble of hearsay, insinuation, vacant rhetoric and double-talk.

If it is clear that the challenge of a higher bar for removing a president will not be met by a sloppy and mediocre political opposition, then let the primacy of tenure be upheld. End this carnival soon.