AS this is written, President Rodrigo Duterte is about to address the
nation in a live TV broadcast. Malacañang has given no indication what
exactly he intends to talk about. He arrived last Saturday from a
week-long arms-shopping trip to Israel and Jordan, which did not bear
much fruit. The news cycle has since been dominated by his controversial
attempt to revoke a 2010 presidential amnesty granted by then President
Benigno S. Aquino 3rd, with the full concurrence of Congress, to former
Navy lieutenant-turned-senator Antonio Trillanes 4th for his
participation in three destabilization efforts in 2003, 2006 and 2007
against the Gloria Macapagal Arroyo government.
This is now the subject of a raging debate, and no one has accused DU30 of winning it.
It is not for me or anybody else to tell him what to talk about. But
he has a vast field to cover if he wants to be informative and
forthright. He could begin by talking about his Israeli and Jordanian
trips: what happened in those visits? He traveled with a planeload of
400 people, according to the news reports; the taxpayers would like to
know if they were all freeloaders who may be part of the reasons why we
now have Southeast Asia’s highest inflation rate of 6.4 percent.
What happened in Israel
In Jerusalem, a number of good things happened. DU30 discovered the God
of Abraham is real, all-wise and all-powerful, and not in the least
“stupid”; that Hitler was absolutely insane for ordering the Holocaust
which killed 6 million Jews; and that he owed former US President Barack
Obama (who is incidentally not a Jew) an apology for calling him a “son
of a whore” in 2016. It would be good to hear DU30 say something about
all these. But more importantly, it would be good for him to tell us
what happened to his well-announced plan to acquire the most modern
military arms and equipment from the Jewish state.
By this,
he had intended to show his “independence” from the US, the country’s
historic ally, which he accused of giving the Philippines only
hand-me-down arms and equipment. Since then, US Secretary of State Mike
Pompeo, Defense Secretary James Mattis and Commerce Secretary Wilbur
Ross have written DU30, presumably on behalf of President Donald Trump, a
letter offering the Philippines a range of modern military equipment.
Is it true Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu showed no interest
whatsoever in selling DU30 any Israeli arms and equipment?
What happened in Jordan
It was in Amman, Jordan where DU30 finally got some discussions on
military purchases going. Jordan agreed to transfer two refurbished Bell
A-HI Cobra attack helicopters to the DU30 government by July. Unless I
am completely mistaken, these are slightly used US-made helicopters. But
the more interesting question about the Jordanian visit was that it was
cut short by one day without any official explanation for it. Was there
anything Malacañang failed to tell us? Perhaps there was.
Earlier in March, DU30 had a lively exchange with Jordanian Prince
Zeid Raad Al Hussein, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights from
2014 to 2018, who once played a central role in organizing the
International Criminal Court at the Hague, where a private party has
brought allegations of crimes against humanity against DU30.
Zeid said DU30 needed to be psychiatrically evaluated after he
threatened to go after Agnes Callamard, the UN special rapporteur on
extrajudicial killings, who has been trying to inquire into the drug
killings in the Philippines. DU30 said Zeid, coming from a monarchy, was
unfamiliar with the ways of constitutional government. Having
apologized to Obama while he was in Israel, people expected DU30 to
apologize to Zeid, a blood relative of King Abdullah 2nd, before or
during his visit to Amman. But he did not, so people are asking whether
that had anything to do with his decision to shorten his four-day visit.
It would be good to hear from DU30 on this.
The Trillanes amnesty
Or he could explain more comprehensively his attempt to cancel Aquino’s
final and irrevocable amnesty in favor of Trillanes. This has been
lengthily discussed in the press, but his latest statement seems to
provide a definitive proof of how he completely misunderstands the
constitutional powers and prerogatives of the President. He says his
attempt to cancel Aquino’s Proclamation 75 of November 24, 2010 by his
own Proclamation 572 on August 31, 2018 is an exercise of “presidential
prerogative.”
This is a complete misreading of the Constitution. The president’s
power and prerogative, under Article VII, Section 19 of the Constitution
is “to grant amnesty with the concurrence of a majority of all the
members of the Congress.” It is not the opposite. The Constitution does
not grant the president the power to revoke or cancel any amnesty
previously granted by another president under the same provision, even
with the concurrence of all the members of Congress.
Least of all does it grant him the power to revoke any such amnesty
without the concurrence of any member of Congress. Some propagandists
have tried to advance the view that while the consent of Congress is
necessary and essential to give validity to the president’s amnesty, it
does not share the president’s power to issue such amnesty. This is
probably the last word in sophistry, but you don’t need to have studied
Aristotelian logic to show this is bunk. The power to grant amnesty is
defined by the Constitution as a shared power of the president and the
Congress.
Gazmin’s intervention
The only pro-government argument that seems worth exploring is the one
advanced by the most unlikely source, the presidential counsel Salvador
Panelo, which claims that the official who granted Trillanes and company
their amnesty was not Aquino himself but only his Secretary of National
Defense, Voltaire Gazmin, who had no constitutional authority to do so.
Since Aquino could not delegate his power to Gazmin, if it were shown
beyond doubt that the amnesty was granted by Gazmin rather than Aquino,
then it would be void ab initio.
But was that, in fact, the case?
It appears there is no dispute on the authenticity of Aquino’s
signature on Proclamation 75; Gazmin intervened solely as processing
officer, pursuant to the rules of procedure in the processing of amnesty
applications. His participation could not invalidate the amnesty unless
it was shown that he, rather than Aquino, granted amnesty to the
applicants without legitimate constitutional authority. If DU30 can show
this to have been the case, then he could question not Trillanes’s
amnesty alone, but that of 38 other officers and 53 enlisted men as
well. But can he?
Ousting DU30
This is also a good time for the President to talk with some coherence
about his claim that certain groups are out to oust him in October. He
has identified three groups, but Defense Secretary Delfin Lorenzana has
confirmed the alleged threat from only one group — the Communist Party
of the Philippines/New People’s Army/National Democratic Front. The
communists reportedly started planning their move against DU30 in 2016,
then finalized it in 2018. As an old student of Philippine politics, I
have serious reservations about it. Most, if not all, of DU30’s problems
are self-inflicted.
But assuming Lorenzana is correct, DU30 should have been the first
one to know about it. Why then did he have to appoint seasoned members
of the CPP/NPA/NDF to the Cabinet, give imprimatur to the idea of a
coalition government, and allow his Cabinet secretary, the rebel
ex-priest and vice chairman of the NDF, Leon Evasco Jr., to conduct his
grassroots campaign for the development of a Philippine socialist state?
Why did he make a big show of separating economically and militarily
from the US and aligning himself with China and Russia against the
world? And how does this explain his latest public statements that the
CIA is out to kill him? Will he care to tell the nation whether he sees
an active alliance between the CIA and the communists? Or will he care
to remind the nation that he had long warned us that only two out of his
five statements are to be taken seriously?
The economic crisis
Did DU30 decide to speak to the nation because the looming economic
crisis threatens to go out of control? If so, it will not be enough to
blame Donald Trump’s “tariffs” for the skyrocketing consumer prices that
have given us the highest inflation rate of 6.4 percent nationwide (9
percent in Bicol) in all of Southeast Asia. The people must have enough
food on their table and must not be made to choose between “rice with
bukbok” (weevils) and “bukbok with some rice,” and imported galunggong.
Faced with the massive complaints against all the negative effects of
the TRAIN (Tax Reform for Acceleration and Inclusion) Law, DU30 should
decide whether the problem could be solved by scrapping the said law, or
simply by renaming it TRABAHO (for Tax Reform for Attracting Better and
High-quality Opportunities). Propaganda allows the government to tell
the starving masses how much they are enjoying the bounties of good
government.
DU30 will have to decide whether Davao should carve the biggest share
of the national budget while the other regions get nothing. He will
also have to decide whether the family of his special assistant
Christopher Lawrence “Bong” Go, whom he had long described as a
“billionaire,” should have all the infrastructure contracts denied to
more deserving competitors. Finally, he will have to decide whether or
not to keep the large number of incompetent and corrupt officials who
have become an albatross around the neck of his administration.
I do not expect DU30 to have the courage to fire any of these
scoundrels right now, but never before have I felt any desire to be
wrong about this ex-mayor of Davao.
IN MEMORIAM. It is with the deepest sorrow that I share with friends
and readers the news about the passing of Ambassador Jose V. Romero Jr.,
84, in Baltimore, Maryland. The information is sketchy, but everything
is being done by his bereaved family to make sure his remains are
brought to Manila as soon as possible. Joe served as Philippine
ambassador to Rome, and as permanent representative to the Food and
Agriculture Organization and the International Fund for Agricultural
Development.
Until his passing, he chaired the Philippine Council for Foreign
Relations, and was a professorial lecturer in political economy at the
University of Asia and the Pacific, where he earned a doctorate in
development management. A product of Trinity College, Cambridge, he took
graduate studies in economics at Georgetown University later. One of
his enduring causes was to fight for the coconut farmers. A mutual
friend Charlie Avila was able to pay him his last respects before he
passed. “Finish the fight,” he told Charlie before he expired.
Joe contributed occasional pieces of substance to the Manila Times.
He had a passion for excellence and he lived the life of a devoted
Catholic Christian gentleman. I ask the pious reader to offer a prayer
for the repose of his soul.
fstatad@gmail.com
source: Manila Times Column
By
FRANCISCO S. TATAD
