Bribing congressmen to impeach Merci?

In the past week, whenever we met up with friends, the question of the week was whether or not we were for or against the impeachment of Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez. As we all know, the impeachment of Merci by an Aquino dominated Congress was attributed to the leadership of Pres. Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III. Now whether he would fare equally well in the Senate is still up in the air, especially a Senate not controlled by P-Noy. 

But then a dark cloud suddenly hung over Pres. P-Noy’s leadership in Congress, which came in the form of an exposé done by ANAD Partylist Rep. Pastor Alcover Jr. who openly accused the Aquino administration of bribing the Congressmen through early release of their Priority Development Assistance Funds (PDAF) if they voted to impeach Merci Gutierrez. Mind you, this accusation was already denied by House Speaker Feliciano Belmonte, coming from a text message purportedly from the minority party.

Rep. Alcover’s exposé is no text message as he held a presscon at the Baseline Restaurant in Cebu City for this. He said that there was a meeting a day before the impeachment vote held by Aquino’s political adviser Ronald Llamas assuring their colleagues of the immediate release of their PDAF amounting to P70 million and another P20 million to be given after the voting. Incidentally, Rep. Alcover voted “no” to the impeach Gutierrez move.

Strangely, this exposé didn’t make the national headlines, though it was headlined on Mar. 25, 2011 in The Freeman in Cebu City. If you ask me, the Aquino administration ought to come up with a statement to explain the accusations of Rep. Alcover because, for all intents and purposes, if Rep. Alcover was right, then the Aquino administration just committed an act of “bribery” in getting the votes to impeach the Ombudsman.

Meanwhile, Ombudsman Gutierrez has repeatedly said in public that she had done no wrong and cried out that she’s a victim of injustice by the Congressmen who impeached her. I do agree that an impeachment procedure isn’t a criminal trial as it is truly a political exercise. However, let me point out that we’ve listened to both the pros and cons of this debate and both observations are correct, especially those who support Merci that if she should be impeached, then everyone else in the Judiciary must be impeached as well… after all, they too are taking their sweet time instead of rendering justice to those seeking it in their respective courtrooms.

But in the end, I still am for impeaching Merci Gutierrez, not for what she has done, but rather for what she hasn’t done. Call it an act of omission, which in my book, has put so many good men in hell if we are to use that old quotation by Edmund Burke, “All that’s necessary for the forces of evil to triumph is for enough good men to do nothing!” in the case of Merci Gutierrez, she did nothing to bring a lot of graft cases into court and our best example is the case of the Girls Scout scam in 2003 in Cebu. Where is it Merci, we pray?

In truth, Merci Gutierrez personifies whatever is wrong with our justice system. First of all, our centralized form of government means that the regional directors under the office of the Ombudsman do not have the authority to file graft cases against erring public officials. But more than booting out Merci, who will replace her? If it is going to be someone pro-P-Noy then we are not solving the problem that breeds corruption.

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Last Saturday, some 160 members of the Cebu Country Club (CCC) held an impromptu golf tournament dubbed “Ganbare (which means fight on!) Japan to raise funds to help the Japanese people victimized by the earthquake and tsunami last Mar.11, 2011. This tournament was planned and executed in less than ten days and raised a total of P1.5 million which the CCC gave to the Philippine Red Cross, chaired by Sen. Richard “Dick” Gordon.

During the awarding ceremonies last Saturday evening, Sen. Gordon came to honor us with his presence as Red Cross chairman. Cebuano golfers (I guess it also goes for other golfers as well) have a very low tolerance for listening to speeches during awarding ceremonies, but Sen. Dick Gordon gave an impressive speech, especially when he praised the members of the Cebu Country Club (our Japanese CCC members were led by Mr. Kazuie Hirose of Mitsumi) for being the first to come up with this type of fund raising to help Japan. 

Perhaps the most important message that Sen. Gordon imparted to us is that, we should learn a lot from Japan in this crisis… that the Japanese people were totally calm in the midst of this natural disaster. They shared what little they had when the food and water ran out. There was no looting anywhere and when emergency provisions were airdropped, no politicians’ names were printed in the packages and above all, no one complained of the way the government was handling or mishandling this problem. So the big question really is, can we Filipinos learn those lessons that the Japanese people showed to the world?

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