Over time, not only has the political ecosystem changed but more so the legal architecture — where a mere bureau has risen way above the line department it falls under; exceeding its scope of authority, nay, the mandate reposed in it.
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An impeachment trial is the sole province of the Senate constituted as an impeachment court. It’s vested with the highest precedence of a political exercise akin, but not identical, to any court of law. If this rule of thumb is accepted, then the impeachment court enjoys what no other court does, similar rules and procedures notwithstanding.
What’s left is to defer to its wisdom and judgment in rendering either of two options: acquittal or conviction of a high public official who is impeachable, as not all public officers are.
Over time, not only has the political ecosystem changed but, more so, the legal architecture — where a mere bureau has risen way above the line department it falls under, exceeding its scope of authority, nay, the mandate reposed in it.
Resultantly, it risks violating the proverbial principle that water cannot rise above its source. Put differently, it means that a derivative right cannot exceed its origin (i.e., nemo plus juris), meaning, “no one can transfer to another a larger right than he himself has.”
It requires the passage of time to distill the current tracks or condition our legal ecosystem finds itself in since politics has thrown poison into the well, thereby risking killing other life forms lying underneath, metaphorically speaking.
It would do well for the Civil Service Commission (CSC) to craft a circular that would effectively shut the door to appointments at the level of Cabinet secretary or the equivalent thereof, if and only if, there’s evidence on record that the candidate held prior elective office (i.e., congressman).
Ironically, the CSC can only achieve an evidentiary level of success if it can fully run against nepotism in any way, shape, or form right at the recruitment of anyone interested to join government service. Still, the final determination, if it could succeed in this task, is to launch a total overhaul of a significant number of malpractices that have taken hold.
The journey to streamlining recruitment in the Senate, as in the House of Representatives, would be long and hard unless and until it discards the euphemistic notion of Senate or congressional staff being classified as confidential appointments and/or non-career.
Such a scheme puts to shame Jose Almonte’s menu for a level playing field. More notably, it shelves Miriam Santiago’s published books that delve into graft, corruption, bureaucratic malpractices and reform challenges. That said, their works should be revisited toward changing the trajectory of how politics should be positioned in our administrative system.
There had been, at least, an initiative by the Commission put in motion, but aborted, to launch a comprehensive personnel inspection and management audit of the House of Representatives as its positive response to a published letter to the editor that espoused legitimate concerns about “crowd-sourced” or mere “job-order” congressional staff.
What the then Speaker did was to route the Commissioner’s letter, minus the published op-ed, to every House member, asking one of two things: agree or disagree with “ensuring that government agencies strictly comply with civil service laws, qualification standards and appointment rules.”
No single House member agreed; hence, the CSC lost in the grand resistance game called the preservation of the status quo which would otherwise disrupt the peace of the “old boys’ club.”
This alone provides a clear overview of the greater challenges that an honest-to-goodness campaign or anti-dynasty initiative would face. In the end, it simply means that we cannot beard the lion in its own den.
On track, unsettling developments must occasion calls for a rapid appraisal of the roles of the NBI within the Department of Justice and the Napolcom within the Philippine National Police.
These could be the proper subject matter of legislative oversight to supply answers to such questions as, viz., “Does the bureaucracy comply with the law or with the preferences of high politicians and elected executives?”
