Sans malice, an impeachment is an indisputable tenet in a constitutional context. But it’s at the back of everyone’s mind that the volatile crisis the government and the people now face will end in a compromise.

The country might be pushed to the brink of another Gen Z-led uprising as experienced in Madagascar, Nepal, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, all aimed at regime change and toppling presidents because of “inept and corrupt governance.”

“Asian Spring” was the term used to describe these events that had spread across Southeast Asia.

In the Constitution, the term “graft and corruption” is used only twice, in Sections 2 and 27 under Article XI titled Accountability of Public Officers. And it may surprise its advocates that there’s not once any mention of the concept of “good governance” anywhere in the constitutional text. Strangely, everyone from academics to bureaucrats to politicians keep screaming “good governance” as though the fundamental law carries an explicit definition, but it does none.

In an earlier editorial, the DAILY TRIBUNE argued that so-called unprogrammed appropriations (UA) “resurrect the pork barrel,” with the leaders of both executive and legislative branches in syndicated collusion. If, therefore, the UA is PDAF-incarnate or has become the old tumor that recurs to the point of irreversible metastasis, then this government is deemed to be in a “state of decay,” to use Huntington’s worldview.

The judiciary becomes the last branch of the tripartite government to preserve the checks and balances in overall state affairs. Unfortunately, it’s already infested with the virus of political patronage that, quite consequentially, renders the Civil Service Commission’s core advocacy of meritocracy a hoax.

The President can be impeached when all the likely options fail, viz., resignation, coup d’etat, Gen Z phenomenon, “people power.” How then will the President’s subalterns get him off the fence, he who has always played the neutrality game aside from giving us a disturbing demonstration of “the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing?”

The global broadcasting networks are beginning to amplify the country’s “culture of corruption” as a barrier, not a driver, to the “future of the Philippines” — encapsulated as “stealing from the public treasury.” This has generated disincentives from foreign governments that are now making the lives of our OFWs “disturbed,” if not discriminated against.

Scholars are starting to worry about the “emerging congressional practice” of enacting appropriations laws rendered as “inscrutable even to the well-trained eye as serious changes go unnoticed.” “Insertions” reflect budgetary downloading climaxing to unprecedented levels during the President’s watch.

This floodgate scandal could well be the mother of all corruption cases in our history. No less than the Department of Budget and Management condones these UAs under the guise of only providing “standby authority to incur additional agency obligations when revenue collections exceed targets or additional grants or foreign funds are generated.”

What of foreign grants we were not made aware of, much less were entered into the book of accounts? How about the Official Development Assistance as a major source of public funds from foreign loans or funding institutions that require a counterpart government equity?

Sadly, ODA funds found their way into the UAs rather than the “programmed appropriations,” thereby catastrophizing the general appropriations. With no less than line department secretaries in cahoots or in connivance with wicked congressmen and senators in a “looting mode,” the syndicate effectively circumvents constitutional accountability.

The moment the economy crashes, is there a port in the storm for the taxpaying public? Don’t we foresee some external shocks, a stock market plunge, capital flight, suspensions of foreign loan packages?

The changing structure of the corruption investigation allows the trail of bread crumbs leading to the Palace to disappear. The birds that are the ICI ate the crumbs so they disappeared. With the proceedings hidden from the public, what isn’t “cloak and dagger” stuff?

In every emerging crisis — natural or man-made — the President has an escape hatch. It’s time we had a President, not a tribute act.