ENQUIRY
DEMAREE J.B. RAVAL
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Mind-conditioning
Sunday, 08 02, 2009
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Create a situation that will most likely cushion the impact of an otherwise objectionable decision. Dissimulate: camouflage the thing, disguise its appearance, and dazzle your intended targets. This is what the Arroyo administration has been very good at for the past nine years.
They did it again, when Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita returned to the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) the short list of six nominees for two vacancies in the Supreme Court. In his letter Ermita asked for additional names from which President Gloria Arroyo would pick out the replacements of retired Supreme Court justices Alicia Austria-Martinez and Dante Tinga.
In plain text, what is immediately apparent from Ermita’s letter is that the two anointed choices of the appointing power – Arroyo - are not in the original short list of six. And by inference, the unspoken message is: “Hey, JBC! How few the names you have today. You got to give us some more lambs we can lead to the slaughterhouse!”
Should the JBC oblige, would the requested longer short list - did I just use an oxymoron? -then include Arroyo’s choices? Almost, but not quite. In all probability, Arroyo’s choices are already neatly camouflaged, imbedded, in the original short list of six.
The president is not free to appoint somebody who is not in the list. The procedure outlined in Section 9, Article VIII of the Constitution makes this restriction to the president’s generally vast appointing power very clear: “The Members of the Supreme Court…shall be appointed by the President from a list of at least three nominees prepared by the Judicial and Bar Council for every vacancy.” Ermita and Arroyo obviously are not ignorant of this constitutionally prescribed course of action, given the many appointments that have been made to the Supreme Court by Arroyo since she was elevated to the presidency by the Supreme Court pronouncement on Erap’s “constructive resignation” in January 2001.
As expected, there was a nationwide hue and cry against the request for a longer list. Everyone was saying that Ermita’s letter is an attempt at emasculating the JBC. Every opinion writer worth his word processor was calling on the JBC to assert itself and prove its independence from Malacañang. Every wimp of a politician who wished to curry favor with the pillars of the justice system had a word for the dissimulation that the letter contained.
And, of course, everyone expected the JBC itself to remain unflappable, to stick to its original short list of six nominees. If there ever was one, this is the one opportunity for the JBC to refurbish its image. The JBC, for sure, will not budge to include a Devanadera - or some other name that is widely and wildly speculated to be Arroyo’s choice - to the short list. After all, the JBC was created to make sure that the process of screening and nomination to the Judiciary is insulated from politics and that only those with proven competence, integrity, probity and independence will be appointed. In bucking the Malacañang request, the JBC will have earned points for standing up to the appointing power.
But, as they say, forewarned is forearmed; Ermita and Arroyo rightly predicted that all these would come about. They are not experts at mind-conditioning for nothing. In the same fashion that they floated the bogey about the SONA segueing into a joint session for the Con-Ass - and watched the administration critics wipe the eggs splattered all over their faces when the expected maneuver did not materialize last Monday - they have cunningly set the stage for another deception, this time without appearing too publicly devious.
They did it again, when Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita returned to the Judicial and Bar Council (JBC) the short list of six nominees for two vacancies in the Supreme Court. In his letter Ermita asked for additional names from which President Gloria Arroyo would pick out the replacements of retired Supreme Court justices Alicia Austria-Martinez and Dante Tinga.
In plain text, what is immediately apparent from Ermita’s letter is that the two anointed choices of the appointing power – Arroyo - are not in the original short list of six. And by inference, the unspoken message is: “Hey, JBC! How few the names you have today. You got to give us some more lambs we can lead to the slaughterhouse!”
Should the JBC oblige, would the requested longer short list - did I just use an oxymoron? -then include Arroyo’s choices? Almost, but not quite. In all probability, Arroyo’s choices are already neatly camouflaged, imbedded, in the original short list of six.
The president is not free to appoint somebody who is not in the list. The procedure outlined in Section 9, Article VIII of the Constitution makes this restriction to the president’s generally vast appointing power very clear: “The Members of the Supreme Court…shall be appointed by the President from a list of at least three nominees prepared by the Judicial and Bar Council for every vacancy.” Ermita and Arroyo obviously are not ignorant of this constitutionally prescribed course of action, given the many appointments that have been made to the Supreme Court by Arroyo since she was elevated to the presidency by the Supreme Court pronouncement on Erap’s “constructive resignation” in January 2001.
As expected, there was a nationwide hue and cry against the request for a longer list. Everyone was saying that Ermita’s letter is an attempt at emasculating the JBC. Every opinion writer worth his word processor was calling on the JBC to assert itself and prove its independence from Malacañang. Every wimp of a politician who wished to curry favor with the pillars of the justice system had a word for the dissimulation that the letter contained.
And, of course, everyone expected the JBC itself to remain unflappable, to stick to its original short list of six nominees. If there ever was one, this is the one opportunity for the JBC to refurbish its image. The JBC, for sure, will not budge to include a Devanadera - or some other name that is widely and wildly speculated to be Arroyo’s choice - to the short list. After all, the JBC was created to make sure that the process of screening and nomination to the Judiciary is insulated from politics and that only those with proven competence, integrity, probity and independence will be appointed. In bucking the Malacañang request, the JBC will have earned points for standing up to the appointing power.
But, as they say, forewarned is forearmed; Ermita and Arroyo rightly predicted that all these would come about. They are not experts at mind-conditioning for nothing. In the same fashion that they floated the bogey about the SONA segueing into a joint session for the Con-Ass - and watched the administration critics wipe the eggs splattered all over their faces when the expected maneuver did not materialize last Monday - they have cunningly set the stage for another deception, this time without appearing too publicly devious.
The nominees in the short list of the JBC are Court of Appeals Associate Justices Martin Villarama, Abdulwahid Hakim and Mariano del Castillo; law dean Roberto Abad; Sandiganbayan Associate Justice Francisco Villaruz Jr.; and lawyer Rodolfo Robles. Their competence and probity -and especially where their loyalties will lie when appointed - have been thoroughly dissected and minutely scrutinized. And the JBC having spoken, it is too late in the day to state once more that not one of them can be appointed. Ermita’s letter, however, would have us believe that Arroyo is locked in the horns of a dilemma: she has to pick two from the list, but her preferred choices are not in the list.
But mark this: After all the furor generated by Ermita’s wish for a longer list, and Arroyo’s initial hesitance to appoint two from the six in the original short list, Arroyo will nonetheless appoint the two justices of the Supreme Court from the original short list. She will get her wish, without the public realizing soon enough that she had just added two to her numbers in the Supreme Court.
The incipient opposition to the appointments to be made by Arroyo will have been cushioned by the seeming independence of the JBC to stick to its original short list of six. And Arroyo can very well whistle her way out of the presidency - and on her way to her secret bank accounts - starting June 30, 2010, with the numbers in the Supreme Court already stacked in her favor.
Neat.
===O00===
Today the nation mourns the passing of Former President Corazon C. Aquino. The rest of the world will remember her. Heads of states will eulogize her. Friends and enemies will extol her virtues and gloss over her shortcomings. People whose lives she touched as well as those whose determination to dream the impossible dream should find comfort that, once more, they are united in their collective sorrow for this great woman.
I will not dare unburden the personal sorrow that weights down my heart, and I do not care if the rest of the nation calls me unfeeling and cold. I am merely truly sad that good things and good people must come to an end, while bad things and evil people go on their way with impunity.
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