Honest inquiries

By ruling that former strongman Rodrigo Duterte wrongfully dismissed Overall Deputy Ombudsman Arthur Carandang, the Supreme Court practically paved the way for honest inquiries into Mr. Duterte’s unexplained wealth.

Some critics of the High Court argue, though, that the ruling came too late. Still, the late January ruling, made public only last week, nonetheless has political implications for the process now playing out.

Admittedly, it may be too early to tell where the High Court’s ruling will eventually lead politically, seeing that the ruling broadly re-affirmed the Constitution’s provisions on the independence of constitutional bodies.

But in today’s immediate politics, prominent critics of the Duterte dynasty already predict the ruling is definitely consequential for the Veep’s impeachment troubles.

What those immediate impacts will be on the Veep’s impeachment aren’t yet sufficiently clear as these do need the legal proceedings of the Senate impeachment court, if it is convened, to clarify.

Generally, however, at the moment House member Leila de Lima argues that the ruling’s mention of AMLC documents made public eight years ago were the same documents lawmakers presented at the recently concluded House justice committee hearings on the impeachment complaints against the Veep.

As I write this, the Veep’s visibly weakened camp and the former strongman’s fugitive blind defenders have yet to sufficiently react to their critics’ arguments.

Nevertheless, it’s interesting what arguments the Duterte clique will marshal against the High Court’s ruling that the former strongman committed an unconstitutional act and abused his presidential powers.

On this, the Supreme Court’s Third Division euphemistically described the ex-president’s illegal action as akin to an “executive overreach.”

Further, the High Court, citing “constitutional design,” said “it would be nothing short of a constitutional paradox and a direct affront to accountability, if former President Duterte were allowed to sanction Carandang, one of the remaining officials explicitly empowered to hold government actors to account.”

So the High Court’s voiding Carandang’s dismissal in 2018 and exonerating him of the graft and corruption and betrayal of public trust charges filed against him by the previous regime now actually serves as a blunt warning to future Malacañang occupants.

Anyway, broadly speaking politically, the High Court’s ruling, as one legal observer pointed out, “formally documented one instance of a constitutional officer removed without legal basis while investigating Duterte money.”

Specifically, therefore, the Carandang dismissal can be made a prime example of an insidious attempt to stall or silence an institutional investigation of any complaint indicating the former strongman and his family had ill-gotten or unexplained wealth — even without the High Court explicitly saying so.

In other words, not only is the High Court’s ruling a firm assertion of constitutional boundaries, the ruling categorically asserts that the country’s highest official cannot mangle the constitutional dictates of public accountability.

“It (the ruling) restores not only an official, but a chain of accountability that was prematurely interrupted at a moment when it was beginning to point uncomfortably upward,” as one political observer put it.

Which can only mean that honest and sober inquiries are now the order of the day, that we have to squarely face the abuses of power and money secrets of our leaders, past and present.

In these times when emotions influence politics more than documentary proof, this is difficult. But then there’s no point to our citizen responsibilities if we knew all these truths yet continue to act as if we did not.