Category: impeachment

The pitfalls of remembering

By Elmer Ordonez

Writing a remembrance piece is a challenge to memory. I said this much to reader Benito Valeriano, nephew of Col. Napoleon Valeriano whom I mentioned in my last column “First UP Diliman Rally after the War” as the commander of the Nenita Unit that trucked out of their camp in Diliman early that morning of March 29, 1951 headed for the anti-Huk campaign in Central Luzon. Valeriano’s nephew wrote:

“The Nenita Unit which was known for its Skull and Bones symbol was dissolved in June 1947 after he was designated Provincial Commander of Pampanga. In 1948 he organized the First PC BCT (stationed in Diliman) and also used for its emblem the Skull and Bones, hence it was nicknamed “the Skull Battalion,” having most of its men originally from the Nenita. After 1949, the use of the Skull and Bones emblem was no longer authorized due to political controversy. By early 1950, the Philippine Army was already employing the Battalion Combat Team (BCT) in the anti-Huk campaign. This development coupled by a highly efficient military intelligence organization, led to the capture of the Manila politburo headed by personalities you mentioned, Lava, Baking brothers, et al. It also paved the way for my uncle’s 7th BCT (Tapat) to conduct three major operations in Central Luzon and the Sierra Madre that resulted in the complete destruction of two dreaded Huk Recos. In the last major battle at Biak Na Bato, Bulacan on 3 December 1950 he lost his Recon company commander, the intrepid Capt. Oliveros. My uncle who was beside him leading the final assault of the caves was wounded. By 1951 the Army had the upper hand in the campaign, since Magsaysay was a hands-on SND. He remained in Central Luzon up to 1952 as Task Force commander. Therefore it could not have been his unit that figured in that incident in 1951.”

My friends from Pampanga recalled that the “Markang Bungo” unit was feared by the people for the summary punishment of any hapless civilian for just staring at the soldiers trucking by. This terror tactic apparently did not succeed in intimidating the people and outlaws led by Kamlon in Jolo. This I learned from older brother, then a scout ranger officer with the 8th BCT, whose men included survivors of the purported “Nenita Unit” assigned to defeat Kamlon. It is also common knowledge that Col. Valeriano worked closely with Col. Landsdale of the CIA in counter-insurgency projects not only in the Philippines, but also Vietnam, Panama, and the Bay of Pigs invasion by Cuban exiles in the early 60s.

On the prime ministership

Former finance minister/prime minister Cesar Virata clarified that Salvador “Doy” Laurel (whom I mentioned as the second prime minister from our Class ’52) was not elected prime minister by the Batasan Pambansa since President Cory Aquino “threw away the 1973 Constitution.” She replaced it first with a “Freedom Constitution” under a “revolutionary government.” She later convened a constitutional commission composed of 50 members who drafted the 1987 constitution which was ratified at a referendum conducted that year. Doy then may well have been designated prime minister during the euphoria following EDSA in 1986. Unfortunately for Doy, the Batasan never convened because of the abolition of the 1973 constitution.

UP alumni in the impeachment trial

Since the impeachment trial began, I have not commented on the subject beyond saying that former SC justice Serafin Cueva, a UP law alumnus of Class ’52, has figured as the brilliant defense counsel for the accused Chief Justice Renato Corona. The only other member of Class ’52 celebrating its Diamond Jubilee this year is senator-judge Joker Arroyo. Contemporary with Cuevas and Arroyo are presiding officer Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile who belonged to Class ’53, and senator-judge Edgardo Angara, Class ’58.

UP alumni, lawyers and non-lawyers are the more visible actors in the impeachment drama – sitting as senator-judges or standing as prosecutors and as defenders of the accused. Listening to the lead players who are UP alumni, and observing their style or manner of questioning witnesses, I could not help but recall the “terrors” in the classrooms of UP Diliman not only in Malcolm Hall but in other colleges as well. A few professors were famous in the early 50s for their unorthodox ways of teaching their subject. After the war, “terrors” could be at risk. I remember a mature law student (an ex-guerrilla fighter who shared quarters in a faculty college) packing his .45 to class, “just in case,” he said, his professor, “acts up” – like heaping verbal abuse on students. In the English department, students majoring in literature waged a strike in the 60s against a few professors with sharp tongues–one of whom did not give a grade higher than “3.” With the student revolt in the late 60s, “terrors” became more careful.

The “terrors” of academe live on in the trial. But after the constant barrage of legal technicalities, pomposity, ex cathedra statements, incivility, grilling, grandstanding, ego-tripping and other antics in the trial, tedium and frustration have started to set in. I now prefer following the progress of the trial through video footages and print media reports and analyses. I miss the cool and unruffled manner of Chief Justice Hilario Davide presiding over the impeachment trial of President Estrada.

iglesia ni kristo rallies, prosecution rests #cj trial

day 25.  synchronicity:  the iglesia ni kristo, known to be pro-corona (chief defense counsel cuevas is an INK member), holds a humongous rally in luneta  and many more simultaneous rallies nationwide, this as the chief prosecutor in the senate impeachment court surprises with the announcement that the prosecution is “dropping” 5 articles of impeachment, having presented, he believes, sufficient evidence to convict chief justice corona on articles 2, 3, and 7.

the co-incidence is hard to shrug off.  on the surface, nothing seems to connect the two events, but beneath the surface, who knows what kind of strings were pulled by what hands towards what end.

tupaz could have announced it tomorrow, but no, he had to do it today, as the rally rolled off, quietly, massively.  but what about the invitation they had sent justice sereno just this morning?  oh, but she’s not likely to defy the feb 14 resolution on judicial privilege, given midas marquez’s afternoon statement that all sc personnel are bound by it.

hmm. not that i can blame sereno.  di bale sana kung the case against corona is solid, but it’s not.  what would happen to sereno if corona were acquitted in the end?  too big a risk.

o baka naman it’s as simple a matter of having no witnesses to prove articles 1, 4, 5, 6, and 8.  or maybe they have witnesses, but the kind that defense counsel cuevas and / or senator-judge miriam would again make mincemeat of?

but acc to dean tony la vina on anc with lynda jumilla, witnesses are not needed for the dropped articles, which are not “evidence-based”, rather they call for “assertions of judgment.”  hmm.  maybe tupaz et al don’t feel up to asserting anything after being outclassed by cuevas, not to speak of miriam.

of course there is also the allegedly sagging public interest, on the one hand, and some pro-corona catholic bishops nagging for an end to the trial, on the other.

this brings me back to the iglesia ni kristo’s grand gatherings nationwide — i bet it made the catholic bishops and archbishops sort of nervous, if not envious.  kaya ba nilang magtawag ng ganyang klaseng rally, halimbawa, against the RH bill?  i doubt it very much.

catholics are quite divided, fragmented, on many issues.  iglesia members, in contrast, are quite united spiritually and politically.  in elections they vote as one.  perhaps the rally reminded the congressmen-prosecutors of the 2013 elections, and reality kicked in?

just wondering.

 

presidential backing #cj trial

day 24.  the prosecution’s request that the court subpoena justice ma. lourdes sereno to testify on her dissenting opinion (re the TRO on de lima’s watchlist order) was denied by presiding judge enrile.  senator judge trillanes also withdrew his request of day 23 that justice sereno be sent questions to be answered in writing.  on grounds that it would violate the doctrine of judicial privilege.

prosecutor colmenares pleaded that the feb 14 judicial privilege resolution, effectively forbidding members to testify against each other, was making it difficult for them to get witnesses, and that it might take a subpoena to make justice sereno appear in court.  or something to that effect.

enrile suggested that the prosecution try inviting the justice muna, because what if the senate issued a subpoena and sereno did not comply, then malaking kahihiyan para sa senate court.  and then what?  cite her for contempt?  it would mean a major major clash with a co-equal branch of govt that has the power to declare the senate impeachment court unconstitutional.  or something like that.

senator judge joker arroyo, for his part, expressed amazement at the prosecutor’s statement re difficulty of getting witnesses from the supreme court just because the respondent is the chief justice himself.

“But you have the backing of no less than the President of the Philippines! You should have no problem getting witnesses!”

true.  napa-tweet tuloy ako na medyo uncreative yata ang presidential backing for the prosecution.  kung sa West Wing yan, nagapang na ng palasyo ang mga anti-corona sa supreme court at meron nang nag-surprise witness sa senate court.  kumbaga, ala enrile and ramos nuong EDSA.

or maybe the palace has tried, pero talagang mas matindi lang ang firewall ng supreme court kaysa ng banking system?

as for the abs-cbn cameraman on the justice beat who took videos of sc spokesman midas marquez and of the lawyer topacio & cash, i hope it’s not true that he doesn’t understand what he was covering, not the TRO, not the cash bond, etc.  i hope he was only advised to pretend that he doesn’t understand what’s going on to save him from being grilled by the defense.  otherwise, medyo nakakadismaya for someone who has worked more than a decade in the country’s largest media network.

enrile & EDSA #cj trial

22 feb 2012.  day 22.  at the end of questions for the prosecution, senator alan peter cayetano reminded of feb 22 1986 and thanked the presiding judge juan ponce enrile “for what he did” then, or something like that.  enrile brushed him off: “that’s all in the past…” and at once went back to the task at hand.

it’s quite ironic that of all the highlights in his political life, it is EDSA — the one that made him a people power hero — that enrile does not really like to remember or celebrate.  very disappointed in the cory administration, he supported coup attempts post-EDSA and openly expressed regret about giving way to cory in ’86.

but, really, in feb ’86, given people power’s clear clamor for cory to replace marcos, enrile had no choice but to stand aside and let cory take her oath as president.  the people would have settled for no one else; besides, they had no idea, didn’t have a clue, that enrile considered himself better qualified to run a government.  and because he had denied marcos’s accusation of a failed coup plot, and people had bought into cardinal sin’s assurance that the military rebels were “our friends”, it was easy for the people to wax romantic and think that he and ramos had defected to support cory’s cause.  like knights in shining armor.

what if enrile had not denied the coup plot.  what if he had told the truth at the feb 22 presscon — that the plan was to install a revolutionary council that would include cory and cardinal sin.  how would that have changed the outcome?  i guess it would have meant a divided people: cory would have rejected all talk of power-sharing with the military that arrested and jailed her husband for 7 years.  and a people divided would have been to marcos’s advantage.

it bears pointing out that in EDSA the conflict was no longer between marcos and cory — panalo na si cory by the 7th day of the crony boycott, marcos would have folded, EDSA or no EDSA.  the conflict was between cory and enrile.  cory who wanted nothing to do with enrile; enrile who didn’t think much of cory’s leadership skills, if any.  but it was out of their hands.  it was the people — by their sheer presence, in huge numbers, stopping tanks and braving death, unarmed — who were in control, and they wanted cory in the place of marcos, and they wanted enrile and ramos and RAM in the place of ver and the generals, and that decided the matter.  cory and enrile were simply forced to negotiate and to reconcile their differences.

unfortunately the reconciliation was short-lived.  too soon the people dispersed, the power dissipated, and the differences re-surfaced and proved irreconcileable.  perhaps if the people had been aware, informed, of the dynamics and issues between the two, and if they had remained vigilant and on people-power mode post-EDSA, maybe then, cory and enrile would have gotten the hang of reconciliation over time, and the nation would probably be in a better place.

still and all, EDSA was fantastic, an extraordinary event, a timeless lesson on how to effect change non-violently.  enrile should not regret EDSA.  if he had not given way to cory, if he had contested cory’s claim to the presidency instead, he would probably not be senate president and presiding judge of the senate impeachment court today.