The President as hostage

Economic analyst Peter Wallace recently wrote: "The most disturbing aspect on the political front is that a beleaguered President may pander to the perceived need for popularity by making populist decisions rather than the tough, needed reforms. Reforms she’s said she’s doing, and is a reason for her unpopularity, but there’s little evidence of these reforms…"

When they resigned en masse, the Hyatt Ten asserted that the President’s agenda of governance had been taken over by the paramount objective of political survival. Other critics say that everything that GMA does these days has the odoriferous characteristic of being in furtherance of one, and only one objective: to stay in office at all costs.

No one can, of course, begrudge her a vigorous defense in the impeachment proceedings. And in the course of that defense, she need not be embarrassed by the fact that she has the numbers to make mince meat out of the impeachment complaints.

If impeachment is indeed a political process, to the point that, as pro-impeachment forces always insist, all legal niceties may be ignored if political realities dictate a certain conclusion, then the arena is really occupied not by legislators but by politicians who can then overlay that conclusion with a patina of supposed legality.

In the United States, to cite a recent example, Bill Clinton escaped impeachment, despite his blatant lying and double-talk about his Monica Lewinsky adventure, because the Democratic senators had "the numbers."

Clearly, then, the "numbers" are all-important. With them, this President can get out of the bind many say she got herself into. Without them, the President can look forward not only to being prematurely led out to pasture, like her predecessor, but also to an interesting retirement filled with exciting trips to court and a restful, if lengthy, sojourn in some remote government facility or private dacha, also like her predecessor.

In making sure she has the numbers, GMA has to both keep her majority coalition in the House of Representatives intact, and prevent the minority from poaching enough disgruntled members from the majority to reach the magic number of 79, or one-third of the members of the House. To prevent that, she has to keep more than two-thirds, or about 153 hard-to-please congressmen, happy.

These congressmen do not all come from the Lakas-NUCD. The majority coalition is a motley group from the Nacionalistas, the Liberals, Kampi, the Nationalist People’s Coalition and from some sectoral groups. Some of the component groups have been clever enough to allow members to decide for themselves whether they wish to join the majority or the opposition. Many parties are thus represented in both camps.

Many have observed that in this environment of alliances based on temporary interests or on which side one’s bread is better buttered, there is no real glue that holds the majority coalition together, except for a perceived affinity with a sitting President.

This affinity, mind you, typically has nothing to do with principle or honest belief in the abilities of a President as a national leader. It’s got everything to do with the cliché that in politics there are no permanent alliances, only permanent interests. To whomsoever wields the magic pen does my fealty go… for now.

Nevertheless, there are the occasional exceptions when political courage based on principle manifests itself, as we shall see.

The point is that at this critical stage of the impeachment proceedings, where it seems evident that the majority’s marching orders are to kill the complaints as early as possible, even before the investigation phase in the House Committee on Justice is reached, the majority congressmen think they have enormous new leverage which they can assert and, more importantly the President cannot refuse.

A clear indication of this was what I consider a particularly low point in yesterday’s Justice Committee session when one administration congressman brought up the controversy on the release of infrastructure funds, allegedly only to some but not to all House members.

The propriety of raising the matter at the impeachment hearing aside, the congressman is of course free to lament that funds he needs to improve his district’s infrastructure facilities have been denied him. But the real point of his outburst emerged when he said that if he did not get his rightful share, he would vote for impeachment.

To question the criteria for selection of infrastructure projects is one thing. That’s a legitimate subject for inquiry and the Department of Public Works and Highways must be ready with the answers. But to tie this up with one’s vote on the impeachment complaint is to reduce the process to a cynical quarrel over, yes, pork barrel.

This is one of the biggest flaws of treating impeachment as a "political" exercise. If it’s purely, or mainly, political, then we run the risk of never ever completing the Constitutionally-prescribed process once the politicians take over. The task of getting at the truth becomes secondary to getting the "numbers" in order to frustrate any effort to even begin the search for truth. Naturally, in this level of "pragmatic" analysis, principle does not come into play.

This is why the defection of five congressmen, four from the majority coalition and one sectoral representative, and their endorsement of the impeachment complaint was so refreshing. Their defection, apparently, did not signify belief in the guilt of the President of the charges against her, but, at bottom, a conviction that the impeachment must proceed to investigation and, if warranted, trial at the Senate.

However, the withdrawal of an original endorser of the amended opposition complaint is a little murkier. The reason for his flip-flop is unclear.

But if this is what the process is turning into, bargaining over impeachment vote for pork, then this country is sicker than I thought. If truth can be bought for pork, then we should all reconsider the wisdom of a unicameral parliament filled with small minds that cannot think beyond their pork.

If GMA has become hostage to her coalition’s support, then why bother with impeachment? What reforms, as Peter Wallace notes, can she be possibly talking about? She is already shorn of real power, and irrelevant.