Doubtful of majority

If you are facing trial before a regular judge and your opponent threatens to have the judge jailed if he or she does not decide the case in his favor, you’d scream bloody murder and ask for the recusation of the judge and a declaration that the other party be cited in contempt of court.

And if the judge refuses and you file the proper petition for contempt, no superior court judge in his right mind would deny you your remedies.

So why are the judges of the Impeachment Court (IC) — the only court other than the Supreme Court constituted by the Fundamental Law — being tampered with by forces outside the said court, and very few people are saying that this is wrong?

From the get-go, tremendous pressure has been brought to bear on the members of the IC — who were elected by the entire country — by vested interests bent on having the Vice President found guilty.

First was the manhunt for Senator Dela Rosa, never mind that the basis therefor is dubious and there is a yet-unresolved case before the Supreme Court. Then came the jailing of Senators Estrada and Marcoleta, the latter on the very day the IC opened its first session.

Then came the veiled (and not-so-veiled) threats against the Villar siblings, as well as the Sword of Damocles now poised over the head of Senator Legarda and the obvious persecution of her son, Batangas Rep. Lean Leviste.

The icing on the cake is the execrable and very public blackmail by Trillanes, directed at IC Presiding Officer Chiz Escudero, reminding him in no uncertain terms that he (Escudero) has a pending criminal investigation for plunder (the present administration’s weapon of choice against the political opposition) and that if he does not toe the line, he will be marched straight to jail.

This is unbelievable in a country calling itself a constitutional democracy!

It is sad when senators of the Republic, who are supposed to be the vanguard against abuses by (mainly) the Executive in view of their national constituency, start behaving like scared schoolchildren and go through the hoops upon the command of that branch.

Witness, thus, the woeful spectacle of Sen. Mark Villar doing a veritable “Ben Tumbling” (the label slapped on him by former Rep. Nani Braganza) and rolling himself into the majority, thereby getting juicy committee positions for himself and leaving his sister Camille with the dwindling minority.

Atty. Paolo Panelo, the spokesperson of the Vice President, on seeing the sad state of affairs in the IC, was led to comment that the proceedings had become nothing but “lokohan.” Many people, especially lawyers who have retained a sense of justice and fairness, tend to agree.

Every act of government is subject to due process, which concept, among other things, has the indispensable requirement that — aside from a hearing — the person or persons sitting in judgment must have the “cold neutrality of an impartial judge.”

The majority members of the IC do not have that. They only respond to partisan politics and threats, with the end game of getting the numbers to convict.

This has become the age of the majority (and a doubtful majority at that because of the unwarranted lowering of the threshold) — and a majority in this case does not equate to truth and justice.