Editorial : Pathetic saber-rattling

Philippine Daily Inquirer
Posted date: October 18, 2010

Is President Benigno Aquino III getting the proper legal counsel?
First, the Malacañang review of the report of the Executive inquiry into the Aug. 23 hostage-taking incident watered down the findings and recommendations of the fact-finding committee led by Justice Secretary Leila de Lima. Since the review was made by Executive Secretary Paquito Ochoa Jr. and Chief Presidential Legal Counsel Eduardo de Mesa, it is presumed that the apparent whitewash of the case, the President himself announcing it live on television, had been their doing—or should it be undoing?
Now comes the President fuming before the Malacañang press over the Supreme Court’s order stopping his removal of a “midnight appointee” of his predecessor, and accusing the tribunal of blocking his program of reform. The sight was unseemly as it was dangerous. Here was the President pushing the country to a constitutional crisis, and over what? Over the petition of Bai Omera Dianalan-Lucman of the National Commission on Muslim Filipinos seeking a stop to the implementation of the President’s Executive Order 2 rescinding the last-minute appointments of then President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The petition is just one among less than 10 petitions filed by so-called midnight appointees to contest the new President’s order of revocation. And it is the only one on which the high court has provided relief. “The fact that it covers only the Lucman petition shows that it is a class of its own and it cannot be invoked as a blanket remedy for all the so-called midnight appointees,” the Court’s spokesman Jose Midas Marquez said.
But just the same, the President, with none of his legal staff or star-studded communications staff speaking on his behalf, brought to the public his ugly displeasure. “This order will embolden hundreds of similarly situated appointees of the past administration who had already been replaced, resigned or recalled, to demand that they be reinstated or retained,” he said. “And having returned to their obtained posts, what can we expect from people who accepted illegal appointments?” The President’s remarks are fraught with non sequiturs and contortionist logic. How could those who have already resigned return to their posts? Why would they demand to be reinstated when in fact they had given up their offices? The last remark is particularly inane: “. . . [W]hat can we expect from people who accepted illegal appointments?” But has the Court restored them to their “illegal” posts? What indeed can we expect from them when none of them has been reinstated? Perhaps they themselves are at a loss, that’s why some of them have run to the Supreme Court to determine whether or not their appointments are legal.
And alas for Malacañang and its legal pundits and communication whiz kids burying their heads under the sand like ostriches and letting the President make a fool of himself before the public, none of the alleged midnight appointees can be stopped from running to the Supreme Court. The high court after all is the constitutionally empowered authority to rule with finality on legal and constitutional issues. To its credit, the Court, despite very obvious perceptions that it is beholden to the former administration that appointed the overwhelming majority of its magistrates, has carried itself with correct deportment on the issue. It has refused to issue a temporary restraining order against any of the three executive orders which the President has issued against the former administration’s late appointees. And among the late appointees’ petitions contesting the executive order that rescinded their appointments, only Lucman’s was granted relief.
The Court did not expand its powers and intrude into Executive prerogative when it issued the order. The order is just part of the power of judicial review that is the Court’s by virtue of the mandate given it by the Constitution. Through the judicial review, the validity of the appointments could be ascertained or disproved. In rescinding the appointments, the President believes that the appointments were made beyond the March 11, 2010 deadline imposed by the Constitution. If it has the goods, the administration must show them to the Supreme Court, along with other evidence. If it does not, then it should shut up. Saber-rattling is a sure way to push the nation into a constitutional crisis. And with the President doing it alone, bereft of correct advice from his legal staff and communications powerhouse whose jobs the President himself is doing single-handedly, the whole thing is pathetic.