Nothing but the tooth
Diokno and his ilk are not interested in the truth, they are interested in biting into the Vice President’s popularity with propaganda.
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Diokno and his ilk are not interested in the truth, they are interested in biting into the Vice President’s popularity with propaganda.
Chel Diokno was never considered a topnotch lawyer. In fact, he once was castigated by the Supreme Court for representing a group of fishermen who didn’t know that he was their lawyer until they read about it in the papers. Awkward…
But even Diokno could not be so obtuse to think that any power granted by the Constitution could be limitless. After all, as we were taught when we were but law freshmen, the Organic Act basically consists of two parts: One is the grant of powers to the three Great Branches and two — equally important — is the limitation to such powers known collectively as the Bill of Rights.
So it boggles the mind where Diokno, as a House prosecutor, got that weird “catchphrase” in arguing that the Impeachment Court should grant the prosecution a roving commission to look into the financial records of the Vice President from 2007 up to the present, a period of 19 years(!). The phrase is this: Nothing should handcuff the impeachment court; the truth is not confidential.
Not only is the argument hypocritical — it is at war with every constitutional precept on governmental powers.
Hornbook it is that limitless power is abhorrent in a democratic and republican government. Thus, reining in the powers of government is not only the Bill of Rights, but many provisions strewn around the Charter. The veto power as a restriction on the lawmaking power; the Commission on Appointments as a curb on the executive appointing power; judicial review as a check on both the executive and the legislative; etc. etc.
True it is that Article XI creating the Impeachment Court grants it sweeping powers. But as the three Great Branches are, the Impeachment Court is likewise a creature of the Constitution. Thus, it cannot be impervious to the restraints imposed by the Bill of Rights.
One curtailment on such powers is the due process clause. Distilled down to its core concept, “due process” simply means that every person is entitled to fundamental fairness, that all governmental actions “must not outrun the bounds of reason and result in sheer oppression.”
In light of the recent pronouncement of the Supreme Court that only acts done by an official after he has become an impeachable officer can be the subject of grounds for impeachment, wanting to examine bank records starting from the time the Vice President was a vice mayor is not only a fishing expedition, it is juridical dynamite, cyanide, trawl and muro ami fishing rolled into one.
And it is hypocritical because the House, to which Diokno belongs, does not seem to think that truth is not confidential. Witness the latest exchange between the Solicitor-General and Mr. Justice Caguioa wherein the former practically admitted to the House leadership’s veritable stonewalling of the information needed by the High Tribunal on the case regarding hundred billion-peso insertions in the General Appropriations Fund, or “Floodgate” if you will.
Diokno and his ilk are not interested in the truth, they are interested in biting into the Vice President’s popularity with propaganda. Unfortunately for the toothy — but hardly toothsome — Diokno, the Constitution renders his motion toothless. He thus has nothing but the tooth, literally but not in the constitutional sense. And as the old Chinese adage goes, kapag wala kang ipen, wala kang tooth.
