Sounding Board : We will never know for sure
Fr. Joaquin G. Bernas, S.J.
Inquirer News Service
WHETHER or not Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo really won the presidency by defeating Fernando Poe Jr. (FPJ) and Ping Lacson, we will never know. By "we," I mean those of us who had no hand in the much talked-about manipulation of the last presidential election. And, of course, there are also those who do not care to know what does not affect their exclusive lives.
We could have had some degree of certainty had the inquiry made by the Supreme Court, as Presidential Electoral Tribunal, reached completion. But when FPJ died, the inquiry stopped with the Court's refusal to allow his widow to substitute for the candidate-even if only for the sake of finding the truth.
The inquiry could have continued if the third placer in the last presidential election, Lacson, had decided to file his own protest. Under the rules of the PET, a third placer may file a protest. But Lacson, for reasons of his own, chose not to.
If the case filed by Loren Legarda against Noli de Castro reaches conclusion, we may also get an inkling of what actually happened in the presidential race. Some of the election returns challenged by FPJ may also be challenged by Legarda. That, however, will not be enough to clear up the cloud that hangs over Ms Arroyo's presidency.
Meanwhile, evidence that seriously casts doubt on Ms Arroyo's victory has been piling up and coming out in the media. For instance, more than one-half of the latest issue of Newsbreak, a weekly news magazine that is fast establishing a reputation for hard-nosed journalism and integrity, is devoted to stories about the last elections. The lead article is titled "Cheats Inc." and it makes serious allegations in persuasive details. It cites some of Ms Arroyo's operators as saying that "they continued to manipulate the votes even after her proclamation"-evidently in anticipation of an election protest. It also alleges that "when the results from Poe's bailiwicks in Luzon came in, the President's margin from the fixed votes in the Visayas was almost wiped out. Dagdag-bawas was then carried out in Mindanao."
The anticipated election protest materialized, but it was abruptly ended by the death of FPJ. We may have to wait until the Last Judgment to know the truth. In the meantime, the cloud over the legitimacy of GMA's election will continue to haunt her and affect her capacity to govern.
Contrary to the opinion so warmly defended by a congressman from Mindanao, the impeachment complaint against GMA does not have, for an objective the intent of looking into whether Ms Arroyo won or lost. The congressman argued on the floor of Congress that the impeachment complaint should not be allowed because it is an attempt to resurrect the election protest already ended by the death of FPJ. The good congressman must know that an election protest can be filed only by a defeated candidate who claims to have won the election and who is seeking to take the place of the proclaimed winner. That is not the object of the impeachment complaint, whose object is merely to determine whether Ms Arroyo committed an impeachable offense which can justify her removal from office even if she indeed won the elections.
Whether or not this verification will take place in an impeachment trial is now seriously in doubt. The justice committee of the House of Representatives has decided that the three impeachment complaints should be trashed. If one-third of all the members of the House should uphold the decision of the justice committee, the nation would never know whether the allegations in the three complaints are true.
What are some of these allegations?
I start with the Lozano complaint-admittedly the weakest-and his subsequent supplemental complaints. Lozano alleges that: she has been silent about the wiretapped conversations and about the flight of Garcillano; the silence in both instances amounts to a betrayal of public trust; she lied when she confessed to a lapse in judgment when in fact she called several times-meaning, she made several lapses in judgment; she allowed her husband to go into "exile" as part of a cover-up. The Lozano complaint is suspected of being a "friendly complaint" designed to bar more serious complaints.
There was an attempt by the oppositionists to beef up the Lozano complaint by accusing her of impeding the administration of justice in various manners, and of concealing ownership of various pieces of property contrary to law. She is also accused of tax evasion, of acquiescing in the killing of political dissenters, of approving contracts manifestly disadvantageous to the Republic, of accepting bribe from jueteng operators, of undermining the independence of the Commission on Elections, and of knowingly allowing electoral fraud and misuse of government funds for electioneering purposes. Those are a big mouthful of charges.
The authors of the amended complaint sum up their allegations in the following words: "By her conduct, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, President of the Philippines, has undermined the integrity of her office, has brought disrepute on the presidency, has committed culpable violations of the Constitution, bribery and graft and corruption, and betrayed the public trust. By so flouting justice and the rule of law, she has committed an unforgivable outrage against the Filipino people to whom she must answer under the Constitution."
Will we ever hear evidence in support of these accusations? It seems that, in the words of veteran politician Sen. Aquilino Pimentel, these complaints are headed for the trash can. Let's just hope that after the verdict is out, no matter how unsatisfactory, the nation and its leaders will buckle down to work and move on to make this place a little better to live in.
