If convicted, then what?

If convicted, then what? | Daily Tribune

Be they opinion surveys or mainstream media accounts, it is likely the truth and social realities on the ground might have been distilled. In short, what surveys and media accounts float as factual realities could be anecdotal, to some degree or other.

OCTA is probably right in positing that “broad support for the trial” has 74 percent believing that VP Sara Duterte should face the impeachment court, notwithstanding that her presence has been deemed through her counsels.

Interestingly, that polling circuit found 81 percent of respondents to be “skeptical or withholding judgment” with regard to how the senator-judges would decide — whether their verdict would be free of political concessions.

By any stretch, it’s not just Sara who’s on trial, particularly so where a conviction would result in not just her removal but her perpetual disqualification from public office. That alone would radically change the political ecosystem if it invalidates her 32 million votes and the legal architecture when a position of power becomes a weapon rather than a shield.

One convicted of plunder suffers the same fate as one convicted via impeachment. Until the Constitution is rewritten, this sad comeuppance would remain between now and eternity. It will become the preferred default of every politician to side with the government at all costs, thereby countenancing blind allegiance or fanatical devotion of the status quo.

Any hope when this trial is over that Sara would survive the “curse” arising from her fallout with the President truly hangs by a thread. The government has been bloody determined to crush her political fortunes by 2028, while on the other end former Speaker Martin Romualdez is deemed neither a spent force nor damaged goods.

There could be a bizarre reversal of fortunes depending on whom the President anoints to succeed him in exchange for post-presidential immunity. Whom FM Jr. will field in the next senatorial and congressional line-ups bears watching.

In simple game theory, let alone the Tragedy of the Commons, it’s always the ruling elite who have the upper hand as they could readily bring more cattle to the free and open grazing grounds.

When most Filipinos stop worrying about flood control corruption, who the next president will be, commodity prices hitting the roof and the prevalence of crime, it’s where our “tiger cub economy” — as distinguished from the Four Asian Tigers — might just be over the long term.

If the chips fall where the autocratic government has pre-ordained, Sara might be the next public official to be convicted by an impeachment court and removed from office like Chief Justice Renato Corona on 29 May 2012 on his mere failure to submit his Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth.

If by some stroke of deus ex machina, the senator-judges vote to acquit Sara, then it’s fervently hoped that it would usher in new heights of public value governance. Truly, everything could be refocused to social objectives that would make the government essentially one “of the people, by the people and for the people.”

At this critical juncture, we cannot be too path-dependent. Critically, we find ourselves at the crossroads of damnation and redemption. Making one of only two possible choices has consequences.

With Sara out of the presidential race, God forbid, who could be the best alternative so that the next six years will not be a case of business as usual?