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May 16, 2010

A chief justice who will be holding office for eight years, thus being in situ, so to speak, during the entire period of her successor’s term, thus depriving President-elect Noynoy Aquino the opportunity to make arguably one of the most important appointments of his administration—the head of the third branch of government. If that isn’t an act of malice on her part, it is at least one of the pettiest—unworthy of a president.

One would think that it would have been enough of a victory for her that the Supreme Court decided in her favor that she indeed had the right to make midnight appointments. That this decision flew in the face of reason and the Constitution, that it was excoriated by legal luminaries and law school deans, that mental gymnastics had to be performed in order to justify the same; that while she could not make midnight appointments to the rest of the judiciary or to the constitutional commissions, she could, by heavens, make appointments to the Supreme Court, these should have been also enough to give her pause. Having won her point, she had nothing to lose (she already has 14 appointees to the Court), and everything to gain, by being gracious, humble, magnanimous in victory, and by allowing her successor every chance to organize his own team, or at least choose his own poison, as it were.

But no. She could appoint, and she would appoint. She seems to want to exact every last ounce of blood from her opponents and critics, and damn the country, damn history, damn delicadeza. Damn also that she was going against what was effectively her father’s stand on the issue when he became president of the Philippines. Diosdado Macapagal succeeded President Carlos Garcia, whose midnight appointments may arguably take the cake for chutzpah. Garcia reportedly signed 350 appointments on his penultimate day in office. President Macapagal voided all the appointments, was haled to court, and won in most of the cases. (Interested readers might want to look at the Aytona v Castillo case.) It is ironic that Ms Arroyo is now doing a Carlos Garcia. She has said that she would rather be right than be popular. Except in this case, she is not only not popular, she is not right either.

So Ms Arroyo is indeed ramming Supreme Court Justice Corona down President-elect Aquino’s throat. And to make matters worse, Corona knows it, but is a willing accomplice anyway. Unlike his colleagues, the cousins Carpio, who refused to be nominated for the position because they did not believe that Ms Arroyo had the right to make the appointment in the first place. And unlike Chief Justice Manuel Moran, the first chief justice of the Supreme Court after World War II. He retired after six years (at the age of 58) and served as first Philippine ambassador to Spain and the Vatican. Even as it was his greatest desire to get back on the Court, albeit as associate justice, he still turned down his interim appointment tendered by President Quirino after the latter lost the election to Ramon Magsaysay. Now that was a class act.

— Solita Monsod, GMA in the footsteps of her father’s rival, May 15, 2010.

8:01am | URL: http://tmblr.co/Z42vXyZuwib

(Notes: 18)