My heart goes out for the prosecution panel. Really.
They are in this over their heads. They are left holding the hot potato: articles of impeachment that are so horribly crafted they could not possibly stand disciplined scrutiny. They are scrounging for a case to build, fishing for evidence they could use and improvising along the way.
In the process, they are taxing everyone’s patience. They have no clear plan for the trial. They are scrambling at every turn.
On Day 5 of the impeachment trial, they were absolutely creamed. When asked pointedly, they had no estimate of the number of witnesses they might present. Even as they had all the time for media chatter, they failed to produce a memorandum to counter the one the defense panel submitted as they announced they would.
The prosecutors, instead, asked for “flexibility” on the part of the impeachment court. What exactly that meant, no one in the prosecution panel could say. At that point, the entire panel began to look like bewildered rats scurrying about a sinking ship.
If this were an ordinary case, the judge might have dismissed it outright and reprimanded the prosecutors for bringing something so sloppy before the court. But this is not an ordinary case. It is imbued with so much political consequence.
This is the second time the impeachment trial was abbreviated because the prosecution was unready. All the brave talk they unleash during media appearances does not seem to be backed up by real work preparing for the trial.
Perhaps the prosecution panel might still regroup, helped along by the private lawyers their hired — the majority of whom are also lawyers for a giant broadcast network. But there is only so much they can do given that the impeachment complaint is defective to begin with.
Pity the prosecution panel. They were sent to war carrying duds.
They clearly did not expect to actually sit through a trial. They expected that a rushed impeachment complaint, signed by overeager congressmen even as it was still being written out, combined with a massive propaganda effort aiming to humiliate the Chief Justice, will be quick and easy.
They expected a repeat of the triumphant blitz that took out Merceditas Gutierrez. That did not happen, as we know, even as administration spokesman continued holding to the hope a sustained campaign of demonization might still work some magic.
Now they have to do what they can in a terrain where rules on evidence matter. There is a price to pay for a strategy driven by political arrogance and weighed down by hubris. It is always the prosecution that carries the burden of proof, a load made heavier by a flawed political strategy.
Salacious
Those whose appetite for really salacious gossip might want to give up on the prosecution panel in the impeachment trial and look at the pages of a newspaper (not this one, thank heavens) that has taken interest in the dirty details of a raging conjugal dispute. Perhaps this has been justified by the fact that the personalities involved in this dispute come from really old-rich clans.
This story revolves around a case for legal separation filed by Susana Madrigal Bayot against her husband of 43 years, Francisco “Paqui” Ortigas III. The wife belongs to the fabulously landed Madrigal clan and, with her siblings, is involved in real estate development projects. The husband belongs to the landed Ortigas clan and was formerly our ambassador to Mexico.
There is nothing extremely unusual about a case for legal separation, which is really about arriving at a settlement of conjugal properties. Normally such things are done quietly and with great discretion. It is a painful process, to be sure, but it can be done with a modicum of dignity. The disagreeing (and sometimes disagreeable) partners can placidly part ways without having to devastate each other on a very public stage.
This is what sets the Bayot-Ortigas case from the norm. Here we see a bitter wife hanging out the dirty linen in graphic detail. More than that, there now appears to be a well-orchestrated publicity campaign to subject the husband to gross public ridicule.
It is this orchestrated publicity campaign that arouses suspicion. On the face of it, there seems to be a motive here more than just the flailing of an embittered wife. The more jaded (or the wiser?) have opined that the campaign of public ridicule waged against Paqui Ortigas aims to exert so much pressure on him that he might agree to sign a quit-claim over his share of the conjugal wealth.
That is not unwarranted suspicion. A quit-claim in this extraordinary case could possibly involve billions. That is such a sum it could justify a layer of malice overlaid on an otherwise routine matter of settling the conjugal estate.
A lesser, or an unwise, man might have instinctively reacted by throwing back mud, matching derogatory accusations with derogatory counter-accusations. He could have put out his own version of dirty linens. But that would have resulted only in adding fuel to this unsavory spectacle, assaulting public sensibility with what is really an ornate, bejeweled version of a peep-show.
Paqui Ortigas, to his credit, has chosen to respond with civility to a massive effort to smear him. In a statement, he says he rejected suggestions “to respond with (his) own collection of unsavory stories” about the estranged wife. He asks simply that “those behind the publication of my wife’s affidavit to please practice a little more civility and allow the legal process instead to take its course.”
Public sensibility, after all, can only be demeaned by dwelling on salacious details of a private pain.