“The bone of contention has now become Tolentino’s treatise on functional dismissal versus Pimentel’s ode to continuity from the 19th to the 20th”
TO TRY or not to try, that is the question. Whether ‘tis nobler to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous reactions, or to prevent a sea of troubles, and forthwith end them?
With apologies to the Bard of Avon, whose famous soliloquy from Hamlet I paraphrased, the above seems to be the question on the mind of our senators, and its current president, the right honorable Francis G. Escudero.
The diligent majority floor leader of the 19th Senate of the Republic stood last Monday at the re-opening of its session, and declared that crossing over the impeachment trial from the 19th to the incoming 20th Congress would be “ultra vires,” beyond the authority of the current Senate.
The opportunity to try the vice-president was lost when the Senate failed to act “forthrightly” on the midnight railroad express delivery of the articles signed by 215 congressmen on Feb. 5.
“Forthwith” as the Constitution stated was given a time frame by the Senate President of June 2, after the elections, citing previous impeachment trials.
Escudero has a “brilliant mind,” not necessarily in mathematics as a US television series depicted, but in the maneuverings of the law.
Whether he read the mind of our conflict-averse president or simply read tea leaves in his political cup, Escudero did his own arithmetic: the early surveys of Jan. 2025 showed that the star-studded Alyansa would outclass the unknowns who peppered the Duterte-sponsored slate.
If trial commenced forthrightly, the seven re-electionists, consisting of two Dutertistas and five from the Alyansa, would need the 34.5 percent of the vote which the former president and his political heiress Inday Sara could swing in Mindanao and the Bisaya.
No re-electionist in his right mind would risk that, as their political interest required they refrain from touching a hot potato, so Escudero thought at that point it would be better to delay, and he had reasons acceptable to an electorate hungry to cast their vote.
After all, the HoR delayed the process, with Reginald Velasco freezing the three balls tossed upon him in early December last year despite the HoR rules that said he should immediately send the complaints to the Speaker.
So the HoR could not count on any moral ascendancy and demand that the Senate act “forthwith.” The might of 215 members did not necessarily make them right.
The Alyansa’s “sure” victory withered when the gods in Malacanang decided to surrender Rodrigo Duterte to the ICC on March 11, triggering an emotional tsunami that doomed the administration’s projected sweep.
Reacting to the electorate’s clear repudiation, the president did a tactical retreat: offer of reconciliation through a podcast, followed by a “reset” that has gone pffft, accompanied by the projection of a “new, improved” leader suddenly hands-on.
His minions are now in cadence through “Utos, Sundin, Palakpak,” the unique selling proposition sold to it by its hired marketing experts who must have remembered Procter and Gamble’s “new, improved Tide” advertisement in long-forgotten days.
Then, as if to cleanse his hands of the midnight railroad express led by his own son, our president reiterated that he was “never” in favor of impeaching his vice.
And his Senate president, to the tune of more important “unfinished legislation,” moves once more his trial pendulum from the 2nd to the 11th of June, with nary an objection from the majority.
The minority of two and a politically resurrected Leila de Lima, eager to show her legal chops as a newly-proclaimed prosecutor, cry foul. This is echoed by those who simply want the vice-president politically entombed upon the “lofty” ideals of transparency and accountability.
Accountability could be had through charges filed in court, but that would deprive the public of a political telenovela, which is what Sara’s haters want, not accountability but demolition.
The bone of contention has now become Tolentino’s treatise on functional dismissal versus Pimentel’s ode to continuity from the 19th to the 20th.
The issue may be brought to the Supreme Court, which is likely to tell the Senate that it is their own business, not the tribunal’s.
Will the conundrum impact on the leadership of the 20th Senate, with the incumbent realizing that the Duterte bloc is the “swing vote” on July 28?
Since impeachment and its trial is a political process, and politics is the art of the possible, who knows what calculations are in the “beautiful” mind of Escudero?
Whatever, is he the “artful dodger” as Charles Dickens wrote in Oliver Twist whose skill could be brilliantly deceptive?
