EDITORIAL - Payback continues

And so the paybacks continue. But this time, to use a term quite popular of late, this particular payback can have a very chilling effect. We refer to the appointment of lawyer Arthur Lim as the newest Comelec commissioner, replacing Grace Padaca who was not reappointed after getting bypassed again by the CA.

Lim was one of the private prosecutors in the impeachment trial of then chief justice Renato Corona. He is the latest from the private sector to be rewarded by President Aquino with a juicy post in government. The senator-judges were, of course, rewarded differently.

Lim is a top-notch lawyer. He used to be president of the Integrated Bar of the Philippines and has represented some of the biggest corporations in the country. If not for his role in the Corona impeachment on the side of Malacañang, his Comelec appointment wouldn't have made a lot of folks uneasy.

But there it is -- a lawyer on the side of Malacañang in the Corona impeachment now appointed by Malacañang to the Comelec with elections just around the corner. If that doesn't make a lot of folks jittery, we don't know what does.

This is not to accuse Lim of anything before he can even warm his seat. For all we know, Lim might yet prove to be the biggest asset toward a truly free, clean and honest election. But as we said, there it is. No one who is made aware of his previous connections can come away with the knowledge not feeling a little numb.

And it is not even Lim's fault. Malacañang, or more specifically Aquino, if he truly wanted to pursue the straight path, if he truly wanted to tread the moral high ground in order to win public confidence for his supposed reforms, should have appointed someone else with no previous Malacañang connection.

For a country that has just breached 100 million in population, surely there is no dearth of talent out there who can help the Comelec do its job better without having to fall back on someone who, while definitely qualified, has had ties with Malacañang.

The appointment of Padaca, a known Aquino ally, already raised a lot of questions, especially since at the time of her appointment she already faced a graft charge. It did not help that Aquino himself paid for the bail of Padaca.

If Aquino truly had honest intentions, he should have seen the CA rejection of Padaca as his graceful exit (no pun intended) and corrected his mistake by appointing one with no Malacañang connections. But Aquino is not known to be swayed by anything, not even ethics and delicadeza. And then there is 2016.