Justice without emotion / Railroading the ChaCha

When the guilty verdict by Judge Benjamin Pozon was read on national television, American Daniel Smith simply looked stunned, almost to the point of being catatonic. He could not believe it was happening to him, a 21-year-old kid from St. Louis, Missouri. Smith was fresh out of high school when he volunteered for the Marines in 2004, hoping it would help him save up for college and get a good start in life. The young man told one of his friends that he looked forward to coming to the Philippines as part of the American contingent for the Visiting Forces Agreement, having been told that this was an exotic country with friendly and lovely people. He certainly did not know that his life would turn upside down less than two years after he joined the Marines.

If anything, this landmark case shows that it’s possible to resolve cases within one year. Remember there are many other rape cases languishing in the courts, and even worse crimes like murder and the like. Unfortunately, this high profile case has been highly charged and emotional, with a lot of political color attached to it because of all these left-leaning groups like Gabriela and Bayan Muna latching on to the issue to denounce the United States and fan anger against it. There’s no denying the tendency of these leftist groups getting so emotional over issues involving Americans. The US had consistently refused participation in the International Criminal Court (ICC) because of concerns that Americans could become easy targets for the filing of politically-motivated cases that are driven by anti-American sentiment.

Anyway, under the VFA treaty, it’s very clear that the Americans can take custody of the Marine while judicial proceedings are still pending. In other words, if they appeal the case, this becomes part of the legal proceedings – and it looks like the Americans are prepared to go all the way to the Supreme Court for this one. You can’t really blame the Americans for being so insistent on taking custody of Smith, knowing the deplorable conditions of our jail cells. Some dogs are even kept better than most prison inmates. The subhuman conditions in these congested cells would really make anyone feel sorry even for the worst criminal. Anything can happen to this young man with the kind of jails we have here, and he might just become a victim of rape himself.

If we really want VFA provisions to be more clear and fair on certain issues like sovereignty and custody, then we definitely have to renegotiate its terms. American forces should be confined to their quarters throughout the duration of the VFA exercises for their own good to prevent sticky situations like this case from happening again. These troops are really here to do a job and not to be on R&R. In the first place, this is what former vice president Tito Guingona had been fighting for when he rejected the VFA. He was particularly concerned with Article 5, Paragraph 6 which said "the custody of any US personnel over whom the Philippines is to exercise jurisdiction shall immediately reside with US military authorities, if they so request, from the commission of the offense until completion of all judicial proceedings." The phrase "if they so request" as well as "completion of all judicial proceedings" obviously gave the Americans a lot of leeway regarding custody.

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Railroading Charter Change by convening Congress into a Constituent Assembly (ConAss) could have created another political firestorm in this country, and it’s a good thing Speaker Joe de Venecia and his allies shifted gears on this one. There are many groups that were beginning to resent the high-handed manner by which the majority bloc passed a resolution amending Rule 105 which would have bypassed the Senate on Charter Change. Senators have closed ranks and signed a resolution to resist the House move. Church leaders have expressed condemnation at the haste by which GMA allies were pushing ChaCha, calling on their faithful to express their opposition against ConAss through massive prayer rallies.

The House move was another typical quick fix solution where possible consequences have not been carefully weighed. I am one of those who believe Charter Change is necessary to improve this country’s seemingly endless political system of gridlock compounded by outdated protectionist economic provisions in the Constitution. But this cannot be done by ramming it down the throats of everyone. People perceived the Congressional move as a display of sheer arrogance through numbers, with the haste in rushing the process nothing but a self-serving move on the part of these congressmen. Joe de V alienated a lot of people including ChaCha supporters because of the way it was being done. Whatever political capital the Speaker had was certainly lost on the issue of ConAss. Joe de V has always been a political survivor, but he might not be able to survive this one.

Holding a Constitutional Convention is perhaps the best solution but setting a time frame is pure hogwash. Charter Change will determine the future of the next generation of this country and we may want to push through with it sooner than later, but if we want it to happen, it should be done the right way. It should be thoroughly debated on, it should be properly discussed and ventilated, it should be well thought out, and most of all, it should be acceptable to the people. Otherwise, it would become just another useless exercise if people won’t believe in the legality of the process, and this would just bring us back to square one. Doing it through sheer arrogance of numbers is not riding on the ChaCha train – it’s railroading the bloody thing!

It’s a good thing the ASEAN summit was postponed to January because organizers were concerned that typhoon Seniang would hit Cebu which was hosting the Summit. We couldn’t have picked the worst time to railroad the ChaCha with all the planned massive protest actions by multi-sectoral groups. It’s bad enough that the US, UK and Australia had issued travel advisories citing credible information that a terror plot was being hatched by extremists, but what’s worse is that everyone would have been sidetracked by ConAss, with the planned massive protests adding fuel to the fire. Had the Summit pushed through, we would have been subjected to the wrong kind of publicity from the international media – a lost opportunity to show the Philippines as a stable nation, especially now that the economy is really getting better. A lot of people were saying this ConAss is "a con job coming from an ass." Perhaps typhoon Seniang is God’s way of telling us that we can’t afford to shoot ourselves in the foot once again. For if the Summit were held simultaneously with the ConAss, the political firestorm would become a major disaster worse than Milenyo and Reming combined – which could literally bring the House down.

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