EDITORIAL - Stepping down

She famously vowed to be merciless at the start of her term. Last Friday, Merceditas Gutierrez, under fire for being overly merciful to former public officials and influential personalities implicated in plunder in the previous administration, announced she would step down as Ombudsman effective May 6. She wanted to spare the nation, she said, from a protracted and divisive Senate trial to remove her from office.

Gutierrez, who would have served until the end of 2012, also tried to dispel public perceptions that she became too beholden to the president who appointed her, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, and former first gentleman Mike Arroyo who was a classmate of Gutierrez in law school. Her loyalty, Gutierrez said, was to the Filipino people and the Constitution and she served only the public interest.

That was not how people saw it as the Office of the Ombudsman threw out the plunder case against Arroyo’s first justice secretary and political mentor Hernando Perez and sat on major graft cases arising from the fertilizer scam, the first poll automation contract as well as the aborted national broadband deal with Chinese company ZTE. In the latest scandal, a plea deal approved by the Office of the Ombudsman in the case of former military comptroller Carlos Garcia triggered investigations by both chambers of Congress.

Perhaps Gutierrez may one day prove that she has a point when she defends the performance of her office and says cases must be based on evidence and must be airtight. Until she became Ombudsman, no scandal had tarnished her record in the legal profession. When Gutierrez assumed the post and vowed to be “merciless” to the corrupt, many people believed she would be true to her word.

With her impeachment trial rendered moot, it would be up to history to judge her performance as Ombudsman. Her tone, although tinged with regret, is conciliatory even toward her harshest critics. The resignation of Gutierrez does spare the nation from a process that could further deepen political divisions and distract Congress from urgent legislative work. For this she deserves credit.