The destruction of the presidency

Wrote Montesquieu in The Spirit of the Laws,

…it is likewise a shocking abuse to give the appellation of high treason to an action that does not deserve it. By an imperial law it was decreed that those who call in question the prince’s judgment … should be prosecuted as guilty of sacrilege. Surely it was the cabinet council and the prince’s favorites who invented the crime. By another law, it was determined that whosoever made any attempt to injure the ministers and officers belonging to the sovereign should be deemed guilty of high treason, as if he had attempted to injure the sovereign himself. This law is owing to two princes remarkable for their weakness-princes who were led by their ministers as flocks by shepherds; princes who were slaves in the palace, children in the council, strangers to the army; princes, in fine, who preserved their authority only by giving it away every day…

“[P]rinces who were slaves in the palace, children in the council, strangers to the army; princes, in fine, who preserved their authority only by giving it away every day…” This was how I began my column Scorched-earth governance, in October, 2005 in reply to those who claimed they admired the President because she’d strengthened the presidency.

My column for today, The destruction of the presidency, essentially updates the point I raised then, with five examples that have taken place since then: the foiled attempt to proclaim martial law in 2005; the foiled attempt to turn a proclamation of a state of emergency into a kind of martial law in 2006; the derailing of the President’s expected declaration she would revoke E.O. 464 by Secs. Ermita, Favila, and Mendoza a few weeks ago; and the reckless handling of our country’s relations with the United States (our international obligations abandoned because of a kidnapping) and China (every bilateral agreement mired in the quicksand of controversy) which have will have grave effects for the duration of this administration and perhaps for some administrations to come.

Yesterday I pointed out that some lawyers were comfortable with the Supreme Court’s decision, because it wasn’t a doctrinal one; but what the Supremes might have intended is different from what the consequences of the decision, this early on, have already been. Today’s Inquirer editorial, Presumptuous, points to a concrete example of the law of unintended consequences at work. A lengthy extract is called for:

Are all Senate inquiries void, because the rules of procedure governing them have not been recently republished? …Romulo Macalintal drew the sweeping conclusion soon after the controversial Supreme Court decision in Neri v. Senate Committee came down.

The day after Macalintal did so, it was Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita’s turn to extrapolate from the new ruling. Officials of the Executive Branch will skip future inquiries, he said, because they can be considered to be legally invalid.

It is difficult to imagine any member of the Supreme Court expecting the decision in the executive privilege case filed by Romulo Neri to lead to this exact turn of events. No one so much as suggested that the Senate stop all its inquiries, because of the failure to publish the rules. Inquiries in aid of legislation are not only expressly provided for in the Constitution; they are fundamental to the work of both houses of Congress. What the majority voided were only the Senate’s contempt citation and arrest order against Neri.

But the law of unexpected consequences is unforgiving. There is no appeal.

There is no appeal, if the Executive Branch itself encourages the wrong interpretation of a controversial decision. “All along the Senate has been conducting its hearings but it turns out they have yet to publish their rules of procedure,” Ermita said. “So, it turns out all their hearings can be considered constitutionally infirm.”

In fact, the Supreme Court did not say this. It had limited itself to the “subject proceedings”‚ – that is, the hearings being conducted by three Senate committees on the National Broadband Network scandal, in the inquiry Neri testified in.

If in fact all Senate inquiries are invalid, what happens (to choose one legislative measure the Arroyo administration wants passed) to the Japan-Philippines Economic Partnership Agreement? By Ermita’s vested-interest logic, the hearings conducted on JPEPA must be considered to be constitutionally infirm too.

Ermita said his legal team had prepared the opinion behind the recommendation that Senate inquiries be skipped. We think Ermita’s opinion, because it was transparently tailored to fit the recommendation, is not only presumptuous, it is dangerously presumptuous.

Here’s the crux: The administration argues “presumption of regularity” when its actions are questioned or limited or even voided by the courts. But it does not extend the courtesy of the same principle to the Senate. By extrapolating a conclusion favorable to its political fortunes (that is, avoid Senate inquiries), the administration demonstrates a barely concealed contempt for a co-equal but inconvenient branch of government. If, as the administration believes, presumption of regularity were the touchstone of democratic governance, then surely (by the administration’s own logic) it must apply to other agencies of government?

Again: there are those undisturbed by the recent Supreme Court ruling, because they want to give the high court the benefit of the doubt; and refuse to see, or cannot see, why lawyers and other segments of the citizenry are alarmed. See, for example, the statement by Simbahan Lingkod ng Bayan.

But going beyond this particular president, the problem is that derailing the constitutional balance in this manner means that even if the President steps down in 2010, the harm she’s caused will endure for some time to come; it means, at the very least, that much of the energies of a new administration and new Congress will be spent on restoring constitutional balance -or, if the new president enjoys the Arroyo legacy of impunity, to continuing confrontations between institutions.

Rene Azurin, in his Business World column for today (unavailable online, so reproduced in full), has this to say:

STRATEGIC PERSPECTIVE

René B. Azurin

A captured government

Not being a lawyer, I imagine I can be forgiven if I do not pussyfoot around with legal niceties and just call the Supreme Court decision that granted the President and her minions the power to conceal crimes under the guise of “executive privilege” downright disgraceful. Let me add that I think this could indicate that there are nine Justices willing to bend over for the President when it counts. This could also indicate that the capture of government by the present ruling group is now complete.

With a generally subservient bureaucracy and a majority of the members of Congress firmly in the President’s pocket (pocketbook), control of the Supreme Court would certainly be the final element needed to render the President and her cronies invulnerable and untouchable, no matter what they do. The ramifications of the recent 9–6 Supreme Court vote in favor of the President should thus give us all pause. Keeping in mind that 12 of the 15 Justices of the Supreme Court are already appointees of this President and the remaining 3 will also have been appointed by her before her term is supposed to end in 2010, the question must definitely be asked: is the Supreme Court still independent?

Given the executive privilege decision, the answer appears to be “no”. The arguments made by the majority give the impression that their decision was made first and then a legal basis was sought to justify it. Without going in detail into the legal issues — law luminaries can do that — I feel that the essential weakness of the majority’s decision that former Cabinet member Romulo Neri did not have to answer, on the grounds of “executive privilege”, certain questions put to him by the Senate in its investigation of the anomalous ZTE Broadband deal is that it argues that the confidentiality of communications between the President and her subordinates — even when these have not been shown to compromise national security or diplomatic relations and even when the President herself admits to being aware that this merely commercial matter involves a crime (bribery) — trumps the public’s right to know and, thereby, hold public officials to account.

In his dissent, Justice Carpio says that “even if questions call for the disclosure of confidential presidential discussions or diplomatic secrets, executive privilege still cannot be used to cover up a crime”. That, I think, should be indisputable if public interest and fairness were used as the foundations for framing the decision. Moreover, as some Justices point out, executive privilege is actually only an implied prerogative of the President and not expressly granted as a presidential power. In contrast, express constitutional provisions state that “the State adopts and implements a policy of full public disclosure of all its transactions involving public interest” and that “the State shall maintain honesty and integrity in the public service and take positive and effective measures against graft and corruption”. What the majority Justices’ stand means, therefore, is that they believe that an implied presidential prerogative takes precedence over explicitly stated provisions to safeguard the interest of the public against officials prone to abusing their considerable power.

That makes the decision disgraceful. In effect, it would seem that the Supreme Court majority deliberately opted to take the side of the President against that of the entire community. They did not have to rule in favor of the invocation of executive privilege since they could just as easily have taken the position against it. In fact, the arguments used to support the majority position seem weaker and more legally convoluted than the straightforward logic of the dissenting opinions that argue the primacy of the public’s right to transparency in the exercise of government power.

The Justices who favored the President are saying that the Executive branch of government needs to be even more powerful than it already is and less accountable to the public than it has ever been. This suggests that those Justices want to tilt the balance of power in this country even more in favor of those with already enormous amounts of power and even more against those without any power at all.

If that is the new reality that the Filipino public faces today, it means that we citizens must now live with a system wherein we no longer have any practical means of checking the power of our highest government officials. The two branches of government — the Legislative and the Judicial — that were designed to counterbalance and constrain the tremendous power vested in the Executive branch will now have to be deemed compromised. The public has long realized, of course, that the majority of our Representatives and a good number of our Senators will not act against the President’s interests because the lure of pork barrel fund releases and other goodies (like P500,000 gift bags) is simply irresistible to them. Now, with this new decision, it is becoming clear that a majority of the members of the Supreme Court also will not act against the interests of the President even when this effectively makes them a party to the concealment of corruption and other public crimes.

This should be, for all of us, profoundly distressing. If all three branches of government are now the captured preserve of the President and her gang, what can we, the suffering Filipino public, do about it? We are told that there are prescribed processes to seek redress and we are exhorted to use those processes. But we know — not being quite as stupid as they assume us to be — that these processes and the institutions through which they flow are controlled by those able to exercise the coercive and economic might of government. We have seen how the impeachment process can be blocked completely by mercenary congressmen. It now appears that we can no longer even count on the Supreme Court to stand up for our interests and for justice, fairness, and truth. Are we lost?

Are we lost, indeed? The question hangs in the balance, but another non-lawyer, Tony Abaya, points out in his column,

All this calls to mind one of the most perceptive comments made by Engineer Jun Lozada during the Senate hearings on the ZTE scandal, which no one seems to have paid much attention to, to wit, that “in the Philippines, with our abundance of lawyers, there is more emphasis on legality than on justice, and that we have a legal system but not a justice system” How true, how sadly true.

To this non-lawyer, if this landmark decision is left as is, it means that government bureaucrats, favored businessmen and predatory politicians can now conspire with the Malacanang tenants and their relatives to raid the public treasury with more impunity than ever, or to enter into contracts clearly disadvantageous to the national interests, fully confident that they would be safe from investigation by Congress or prosecution by the courts since they can always invoke executive privilege to cover up their crimes.

Then again, a way forward is the proposed freedom of information act being lobbied for by various groups. One such group, Team RP, issued this statement today:

ON THE SC DECISION ON EXECUTIVE PRIVILEGE

“The Court has always been regarded as the final bastion of democracy, a balancer of power and rights, and a champion of the public’s interest, but the recent Neri vs. Senate decision of the Supreme Court promulgated on March 25, 2008, left the public with more deepening suspicion, growing unrest and a sense of confusion with nowhere else to go.

“The decision which ruled that Secretary Romulo Neri cannot be compelled to answer several key questions about the anomalous NBN-ZTE broadband deal, in effect have left the entire nation doubting the Arroyo government in light of this corruption scandal.

“But while the decision left us uncertain, it highlighted some fundamental things which we urge the public to ponder — first, we would not have had this dilemma had our executive officials provided for effective transparency measures espousing a policy of full and authentic public disclosure as embodied in our Constitution; and second, had our legislators not been lost in the world of politicking and grandstanding, their efforts in aid of legislation would have resulted in laws supporting the people’s right to know.

“As a country that prides itself with democracy, it’s ironic that we have no real access to information. Until a policy of full public disclosure, transparency and meaningful accountability is effected, not only will large-scale corruption issues persist, but the people will remain uninformed, disempowered, marginalized and disenfranchised.

“We can only grow as a real democracy when people are adequately informed about the operations and policies of government. The right of the people to be informed should no longer be left to the sheer discretion of the Court, the inertia of the lawmakers and the caprices of our public officials.

“It is alarming that Malacañang announced that members of the cabinet would invoke the Supreme Court decision when invited to Senate hearings. It gives a blanket license with ambiguous parameters to officials to evade the reach of both the oversight and legislative powers of the Senate.

“We believe that the Palace, who has taken the role as the main crusader against graft and corruption should also take the lead not in finding ways to hide from the public’s eye but to be at the forefront of enacting these much needed transparency measures.”

Meanwhile, the debate on what to do, and what’s at stake, continues. In light of the Jesuit Province’s new guidelines on the continuing crisis, two reflections are offered up. A critical look comes from Filomeno Sta. Ana III of Action for Economic Reforms; and a friendlier look’s taken by Juan Mercado.

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Manuel L. Quezon III.

146 thoughts on “The destruction of the presidency

  1. MLQ3:

    I came across a speech by Rage Against the Machine vocalist Zack de la Rocha, when RATM sang at the 2007 Coachella Festival:

    “A good friend of ours once said that if the same laws were applied to U.S. presidents as were applied to the Nazis after World War II, every single one of them, every last rich white one of them from Truman on, would have been hung to death and shot. This current administration is no exception. They should be hung, and tried, and shot. As any war criminal should be. But the challenges that we face, they go way beyond administrations, way beyond elections, way beyond every four years of pulling levers, way beyond that. Because this whole rotten system has become so vicious and cruel that in order to sustain itself, it needs to destroy entire countries and profit from their reconstruction in order to survive — and that’s not a system that changes every four years, it’s a system that we have to break down, generation after generation after generation after generation after generation. Wake up!”

    A little rewording and paraphrasing, and I think the gist applies to the Philippines. I certainly hope there’s still cause for change.

  2. when all sides insist on believing what they are inclined to believe, only the law stands between them and anarchy. the stronger their beliefs, the more literal we need to read the law.

  3. Mindanaoan, your plea for a strictly literal interpretation of the law to prevent anarchy further validates my previous contention (and the related statement by Jun Lozada above) that there is nothing inherent in the legal system that ensures justice.

  4. cvj, it’s like saying a compass doesn’t really point true north. it points somewhere towards the north because of the location of the magnetic pole, and because magnetic declinations vary from place to place. so, do you want to throw away your compass and risk getting lost? do you want to throw away something that does not ensure justice, so you will be left with nothing to shield you from injustice?

  5. mindanaoan, you’re right. so in this case, we have a compass that sometimes points north and sometimes points south.

  6. How hard is it to find a balance between the citizenry and the public servants?

    Right now our politicians have more in common with the nobility and royalty than public servants. They even pass the rank on to their children.

  7. cvj, the legal system was invented as our device for dispensing justice. your complaint is that it has imperfections. but what man-made instrument is perfect?

  8. no cvj,

    we have a compass, a right and working compass, but there are two people who differs on how it must be read. that is where confusion comes.

  9. the real test now, i think, is how this administration, given your contention that it now wields absolute power, will act in the forthcoming days.

    will they usurp functions and exercise absolute power, or will they allow everyone else to go and do as they are?

    that is the true test of a dictatorship

  10. Mindanaoan (at 3:27 pm), i agree that was the original [aka textbook] intent of the legal system, but that was not my contention. What i’ve been saying is, absent an internal code of ethics, there is nothing in the legal system that ensures that justice will be the outcome. All it is good for now is in preventing anarchy i.e. preserving order (for whatever it may be worth). When i made that claim a few days ago, you disagreed, but now you’ve just made an appeal to that effect.

  11. Liam, you’re setting up a strawman. You once praised GMA for being Machiavellian. I expect that she’ll continue to be Machiavellian which includes making herself appear democratic in form but not in substance. Her apologists, a lot of whom come from the Jesuit schools, will continue assisting her in this endeavor.

  12. All this calls to mind one of the most perceptive comments made by Engineer Jun Lozada during the Senate hearings on the ZTE scandal, which no one seems to have paid much attention to, to wit, that “in the Philippines, with our abundance of lawyers, there is more emphasis on legality than on justice, and that we have a legal system but not a justice system “ How true, how sadly true. – Tony Abaya

    To which I might add:

    “In Japan there are very few lawyers and the codes are mostly unwritten, but they are binding, nonetheless.”
    Greg Sheridan, Asian Values Western Dreams

  13. from
    http://liambleu.deviantart.com/

    liambleu Aug 11, 2006, 1:41:21 AM
    welcome


    Hindi naman talaga ako magaling eh.. Nagkataon lang na mahihina kayo!

    =========================================================

    Wow,we are not lacking of narcissists here.

  14. Ha! Oh what beauty! Perhaps irony. Remember Romi Neri, using an economics term, talking about captured regulators last year at the Senate? Azurin titles his column ‘A Captured Government’ Too good.

  15. From pcij blog back in 2006:

    ang tindi ng memory ni benignO;Duckvader,Mita ever recall this exchange???

    benign0 wrote on February 28, 2006 – 5:36 pm | Visit Link

    “In Japan there are very few lawyers and the codes are mostly unwritten, but they are binding, nonetheless.”
    – Greg Sheridan, *Asian Values Western Dreams*

    benign0 wrote on February 28, 2006 – 5:40 pm | Visit Link

    the sooner it’s lifted the better for all of us..it’s sad that we even got to this point.

    MitaMS wrote on March 1, 2006 – 12:56 am | Visit Link

    Benigno,
    Do you know why there are few lawyers in Japan?

    DuckVader wrote on March 1, 2006 – 4:25 am | Visit Link

    Sir, can i answer? (taas kamay) ..I think there are few lawyers in Japan coz many of them want to be engineers. Look where they are now.

  16. ang tindi ng memory ni benignO – KG

    Not really.

    I used that quote in an article on Trust waaay back in 2003.

    In fact it is still relevant today as we can see:

    Our failed efforts to combat corruption are echoed by the hollowness of the above-cited slogans. They have one thing in common: They all address the symptom and not the root cause. Corruption is a mere symptom of an underlying dysfunction — lack of trust. And as we have shown above, our attempts to stifle the symptom merely nourishes the environment that breeds it. By attempting to stifle corruption with controls, we nurture an environment of mutual distrust. By making self-righteous calls for “discipline” and “restraint”, we merely highlight that Filipinos are, in fact, an undisciplined and unrestrained lot and enforce our perception of one another’s untrustworthiness.

    Many notable intellectuals have cited this gaping hole in our cultural fabric […]

    Continue reading the article here:
    http://www.getrealphilippines.com/solution/trust.html

    Matagal nang isyu ang corruption in the Philippines. It transcends presidents and even entire forms of government tried in the islands. Even more laughable are the quaintness of the usual no-results “solutions” to corruption being discussed. They are mere regurgitations of previous brainwaves from previous generations of Pinoys (most notable of which are today’s Old Farts).

    The only difference is that these Old Farts have an entire generation of young people to misguide with their silly traditions and tired old mindsets.

    That’s why it is so ridiculous how today’s instances of corruption are attributed to specific administrations.

  17. Benign0, so if someone in Gloria’s administration engages in a corrupt deal, to whom should we attribute this instance of corruption?

  18. “Benign0, so if someone in Gloria’s administration engages in a corrupt deal, to whom should we attribute this instance of corruption?”–cvj

    to no one, cvj, to no one. why ridicule ourselves condemning this administration when past administrations in this god-forsaken land were also corrupt?

    the 3 wise monkeys should serve this country good as our patron saints.

  19. quote: “fully confident that they would be safe from investigation by Congress or prosecution by the courts since they can always invoke executive privilege to cover up their crimes.” — close-quote

    Pleading the fifth — refusal to talk for fear of self-incrimination — goes only so far. When there is a body and a solid trail of evidence, the guilty can be found.

    Lifestyle-check… rat on your neighbor.

  20. MLQ3,
    I guess I don’t agree with the characterization of a destroyed Presidency. For the moment, we can believe that a serious imbalance has been introduced into the Machine. Only in 2010 will we see whether the whole machine will once more be smashed as Marcos did in 1972 or whether a new President, can and will restore the balance. The seeds of this imbalance were planted right in Senate v. Ermita when the Supreme Court insisted that Judicial Review would do the balancing between Executive Privilege and the Power of Inquiry. But my take on Separation of Powers is that this is a clumsy and non self-executing safeguard because as Neri v. Senate proves, it is not actually possible for Judicial Review to do that. It should never come to that, as it never has in the US.

    I agree with CVJ on a “metaprinciple” about the Law, that it is in fact incapable of rendering Justice in some cases, though our routes to that conclusion may be different. Those cases are where the system design of separation of powers so finely balances the powers of all three branches that they are at the very point of neutral equilibrium at which the “marble can roll in any direction.”

    That is why we need some mechanism that tips the balance one way BEFORE it gets to that point. That I think is what the whistleblower protection laws would do, so that it never gets to that point.

    I think anyone who wins the Presidency from the Senate will do so by signing a Freedom of Information Act (after the fact public oversight) or better, a comprehensive whistleblower protection law. That is what the US congress did in 1912 when Woodrow Wilson (Democrat) defeated two Republicans (Theodore Roosevelt and our Wm. Howard Taft, who had issued EO464 type orders.)

    The problem will occur when Gloria is faced with the prospect of an uncovered nuclear reactor of criminal lawsuits against her and her family if she steps down. Most likely, she will now be too pre-occupied with the food price crisis being fueled by high oil prices to be doing chacha. So, martial law, I fear could come on the wings of real or hyped food shortages and high prices of all basic commodities, ably assisted by the CPP and the Left as in 1971-72.

    In a way, Noli de Castro cannot be allowed to take the presidency as LaKampi’s puppet.

    They’re building him up already.

  21. KG,

    It was really obvious that Ramiele has the poorest performance of the night. My cousin was telling everybody in the house that we give her another change. But everybody is just so tired of giving her a change to teh extent na nakakahiya na sa ibang contestants at sa audience na rin kung mag papatuloy yung kanyang mediocre performance. So everybody in our house did not vote that night just so she will be in the bottom three to wake her up. But she was eliminated.

    But when I saw her inteviews in fox news this morning she said “just when I m starting to get comfortable”. And our reaction was : Sayang!

    But ist OK she will have be joining the AI tour.

    And thinks now its David Archuleta and David Cook in Final 2.

  22. cjv and others: This comment I lifted off one of my posts in my own blog where Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin during her speech before the Lawyers extolled the virtue that Access to Justice System is A Basic Right and must be made affordable to all citizens…

    The justice system risks losing the confidence of the public when “wealthy corporations,” or the poor, who qualify for legal aid, have the means to use the court system, she said, noting that for “middle-class” Canadians, resolving a legal problem of any significance often requires taking out a second mortgage or draining their life savings.

    With this message in her speech before the Canadian Bar Association in Calgary Alberta, Chief Justice Beverly McLachlin has issued a call to governments, lawyers and judges to find solutions to the “crisis” to the access to justice that is imperiling the country’s legal system that is becoming expensive and complicated.

    In her speech, she declared the access to Justice a “Basic Right” for Canadians, like Education and Health Care.

    The Chief Justice Added:

    “The price of justice should not be so dear”. McLachlin said in a speech to the bar association’s governing council at the opening of a four-day legal conference here.
    “Something must be done,” she urged. “We must all get on the same track and move down it together.”

    There’s “no point” in having a justice system that nobody can afford to use, McLachlin said. “We need to keep the justice system relevant and available to Canadian men, women and children.

    Echo of Tommy Douglas call to keep the Health Care available to all Canadian men, women, girls and boys. And the call was heeded.

    Commenting on recent cover story of a weekly magazine portraying lawyers as money-grubbing and unprincipled by one of the members in his recently published book, Lawyers Gone Bad the Chief Justice said name-calling and exaggeration would not help.

    The process to Criminal Justice has become complicated of late after the passing of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, where an accused can tie up too much of a court time challenging the constitutionality of the law and the admissibility of evidence.

    On the civil side, the use of pre-trial hearings known as “examinations for discovery,” which can drag on for months and even years, as well as an increased tendency to rely on expert witnesses, is contributing to longer trials ,chief justice McLachlin said, with often devastating consequences for litigants.

    “People need prompt resolution of issues so they can move on with their lives or businesses.”

  23. On why there are few lawyers in Japan:

    The reason there are few lawyers in Japan is that the legal profession has tried as much as possible to restrict the number of lawyers entering the profession. This drives up the price that they can demand.

    That’s why the so-called “trust” system evolved in Japan — the strength of the handshake and using a network of references and connections to determine who you can trust or not trust. People and businesses wanted to avoid the cost of litigation or lawyers by vetting their counterparties beforehand through this trust system.

    In other to protect their rights (and finding lawyers to be expensive), the Japanese also basically demanded a competent bureaucracy immune as much as possible from partisan politics. This way, they wouldn’t need to hire lawyers as often, because the bureaucracy functioned as an independent implementor of laws. Thus, the LDP and DPJ can thrash about as much as they like, but they don’t distort the bureaucracy’s policies as much (except for Public Works).

    Therefore, it is greed that is at the heart of the low number of lawyers in Japan.

  24. cvj, i’m sorry i wasn’t able to follow your contention of ‘internal code of ethics’. is this from luhmann again that you are applying to the legal system?

  25. What is the way forward? I don’t know but if the current situation continues, the way forward will be less and less civilized. A Gavrilo Princip may come forward to break the impasse.

  26. Just checking in after an absence…is it martial law yet?

    Soon, right? Because the military, LGUs, CBCP, House and SC have capitulated to Malacanang…isn’t it? And the media has been eerily “chilled” and refuses to say a malignant word against the administration. Awful, huh?

    Thank God we have this Senate. They’re saving us. Them and the NGOs. And the communists. And a few choice blogs and blog personalities. And Bishop Cruz. Oh, and Erap, too.

    Whew!

    For three or four years I’ve heard about all of these doomsday scenarios. And of all the grand schemes which netted the First Family billions of US dollars. All of these “boxes of evidence” and “irrefutable witnesses”…bolstered by reports from “anonymous sources”…which can clearly demonstrate so-and-so did this-and-that.

    All for nought. Nothing. Nada.

    A big bag of wind storms that did nothing but damage the economy, the country’s global reputation, the names of innocent people…and on and on.

    All for what? To succumb to the machinations and scheming of professional political players and to assist in the prime-time coverage of amateur blabbermouths?

    Personally, I don’t know if I’ll ever forgive the destroyers. The only good news is that the positive developments may yet overwhelm the destructive elements in society.

    This country continues to be one of the best mid-to-long term investments in the world.

    That is…if you don’t mind this bloody and stifling Martial Law we live under…..

  27. Geo:
    “This country continues to be one of the best mid-to-long term investments in the world.”

    Uhh, a bit of a reality check here. Our expenditures on infrastructure, education and healthcare — key to long-term economic competitiveness — are among the lowest in the region. Our tax collection efficiency is also among the lowest in the region. Take a look at the recent JETRO survey that had the country at the bottom end in terms of Japanese investor preference. Major western investors are building capacity in Thailand and Vietnam, not here.

  28. liam,
    what topic, that everyday is April fools?

    On that accidental discovery of your website….
    I googled your name and machiavelli,para malaman ko yung claim ni cvj re:gloria is machiavellian acording to you.
    naclick ko yong website mo,tapos.

    Don’t worry I am not judging you based on your comment to your site’s visitor,pero tama ka walang kinalaman sa topic at hand yon.

    So you are an end justifies the means kinda fella I assume, based on your favorite book the prince of Machiavelli.

    ok let me have a piece of the lobbying idea of yours.
    alam natin na almost one hundred percent of the bills come from lobbyists. I know that you know that lobbyists usually are strong influential groups like big pharmaceuticals for example, for that branded medicine lobby and an immovable counterpart for the generics lobby.

    Lobbying are for bills,you don’t lobby impeachment IMO.

    On your test for dictatorship, if for you we are not yet run by a dictator,fine;wait a few more days.

    Benign0,
    sorry lumayo pa ako di ko nabasa yung trust article mo pero siguro alam mo na ngayon na binabasa ko naman yung mga articles mo kahit papano

    rego,
    yeah I think too that Ramielle was not giving her all,at sayang naman kung yung deserving pa ang ma vote out.

    lastly to DuckVader,
    thanks for your two cents on the number of lawyers in Japan.

  29. Yes, RP bonds are overly subscribed says government trumpeteers (DOF, BSP-IRO, Treasury. BOI, etc).

    Besides adequate rik premium built in, there is an automatic debt repayment line in the national budget, which is the comfort zone of int’l. institutional investors.

    The other truth: Philippine governments (since Cory Aquino’s)are easily bullied to settle, even the most anomalous, like the Westinghouse loan for the Bataan nuclear plant.

  30. Bert, so that means Ombudsman Merceditas Guiterrez is on the right track when she found that, in the case of the Megapacific deal with the COMELEC, there was a crime but there were no criminals. 😛

  31. Bert, so that means Ombudsman Merceditas Guiterrez is on the right track when she found that, in the case of the Megapacific deal with the COMELEC, there was a crime but there were no criminals. 😛

    Mindanaoan, yes you can refer back to our discussion on Luhmann in the previous thread. That’s also the reason why, as Benign0 pointed out above, Japan can make do with fewer lawyers. Notice that Greg Sheridan whom he quoted specifically mentioned ‘codes [that are] mostly unwritten‘.

    I acknowledge though that Duckvader’s exposition on the unintended consequences of the Japanese Law profession’s greed reveals that the interplay between code and system design is a two-way street. That’s why your focus on the mechanics of the system is also valid in itself, and DJB’s and Vic’s recommendations (on freedom of information and affordability of justice respectively) on how to improve the system’s design are of value. It’s just that we should not ignore the critical role that a given subsystem’s internal code of ethics plays, without which any redesign can eventually be subverted.

  32. It’s just that we should not ignore the critical role that a given subsystem’s internal code of ethics plays, without which any redesign can eventually be subverted. – cvj

    Code of ethics is a product of millenia of history, culture, religion, traditions, etc. In the case of Japan: code of the samurai, bushido, and the like.

    Now let’s systems design the Filipino code of ethics with the following inputs: utang-na-loob, pakikisama, excommunication, fiesta, kapamilya, kapuso, etc.

  33. Maginoo, that’s an excellent point, i agree. Let’s know our strengths as a people and build on it. (That being said, i read somewhere that the popularization of the Code of Bushido which was previously limited to the Samurai class, was a relatively recent and conscious effort by the Japanese government after the Meiji restoration.)

  34. @ cvj:

    We were heavy on the “bayanihan” concept before but I’m not sure if it still has the same meaning today.

    Maybe, if we could list down our strongest points as a people which we could use in antion building. Benign0 might question some of them, of course.

  35. Maginoo, i still think bayanihan is still viable enough. Off the top of my head…

    – mapagmalasakit
    – hating-kapatid
    – walang iwanan
    – pakikipag-kapwa
    – matiyaga, pursigido
    – mapasensiya
    – maparaan (a combination of ‘innovative’ and ‘efficient’).

    I would like to add ‘walang sinasanto’ to reflect a healthy disrespect for authority. We need this to eliminate the elitist mindset.

  36. your hypothesis “the destruction of the presidency” is just another partisan point of view with which i cannot agree. the presidency is as strong as ever in spite of all the wasted effort to diminish it by those who think they can do better, and their failed attempts to wrest power by whatever means, fair or foul. i have no doubt that pgma will leave the office of the presidency in 2010 much stronger than she found it in 2001.

    let me just comment on the “examples” you cited:

    * on the “foiled attempt” to declare martial law in 2005. the events and conditions of the time point to a clear and present danger to the state which the president had a right to suppress under the constitution. opinions differ as to whether they were grave enough, but i think it was the president’s call in the first instance. foiled by whom? avelino cruz might be a hero to gma’s enemies but who was he to “foil” the president? only gma could make a decision on the matter and only she should have the credit, as well as the responsibility, for whatever she did.

    *declaration of national emergency in 2006. again, the tumults engendered by an apparent public uprising by partisan elements of the opposition, the leftists/communists, the military, the clergy and the media, presented a clear and present danger that the president had a right to defend against. again, it was pgma who decided that the reason for the declaration of emergency had ceased and emergency powers were no longer needed. to give credit to a “faction” of her cabinet for that would be clear demagoguery – staple for the undiscerning.

    * declaration of revocation of e.o. 464 – cabinet secretaries owe their being on the president. no one, but no one among them can second-guess her, countermand her, or get his/her way with her. that’s why i thought the members of the so-called “hyatt 10” are poster people for presumptuousness and arrogance. whatever she did with e.o. 464 is gma’s ultimate prerogative and responsibility.

    * relation with u.s. re iraq withdrawal, and china re alleged “scandals”. if withdrawing participation from an unpopular war to save a poor filipino; or being the subject of scandal witch hunt by her enemies, could destroy the office of the president, then i don’t know what would preserve it. as far as i can see, there is no significant adverse impact on phil-am relation as a result of the withdrawal (if there is, it’s only in the minds of gma’s never-say-die detractors), nor is there any weakening of phil-china relations, as a result of gma’s enemies’ non-stop serial “revelation” of unsubstantiated “scandals”.

  37. this story in the asia sentinel on singapore’s lawyer shortage may interest you:

    http://www.asiasentinel.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=1109&Itemid=34

    Singapore is facing a growing shortage of lawyers and is trying to find ways to increase their numbers even as they leave the profession in droves, driven out partly by low pay, long hours and, critics say, a legal straitjacket that prevents them from the effective practice of the law.

    On balance, only about 75 additional lawyers have been added to Singapore’s legal system since 1999. According to the Law Society of Singapore, some 3,401 lawyers were practicing in the island republic in 1999. By March 2006, the last year for which the Law Society maintains figures on its website, only 3,476 lawyers were practicing, a 2 percent increase despite an 11 percent rise in population to 4.4 million. Singapore has only one lawyer per 1,136 people. By comparison, the state of California in the United States, with a population of about 38 million – a place many say is over-lawyered – has more than 200,000 lawyers, or 1 per 190 people, according to the state bar association.

    “I think the younger generation does not fancy law as a subject anymore,” said one lawyer. “They prefer graphics and computer studies. The legal profession is essentially a service industry. That means you get paid for hard work and most Singaporeans I believe either prefer business or government jobs, not dry boring stressful legal work.”

    Exorbitant legal costs also have caused litigants to resort to other means of settling disputes, according to Gopalan Singh, a longtime critic of the system who is now practicing law in California. Legal aid, he says, is only available in criminal cases for social welfare recipients. That has led to convicted offenders who are appearing in High Court appeals without lawyers. “People are resorting to unconventional methods to settle scores, such as paying gangsters to recover debts,” Gopalan says.

    Singapore Chief Justice Chan Sek Keong attributes the lack of lawyers to the low salaries and suggests an upward review. Local media reported last year that junior lawyers are paid more than double in Hong Kong, about S$11,650 a month compared to about S$4,000 in Singapore. According to the Singapore Department of Statistics, the average monthly income among employed residents was S$6,830.

    A doctorate in law in Singapore takes anywhere from two to five years, according to the National University of Singapore. At an average salary of S$8,775 a month, the legal profession ranks 11th among professions in Singapore, according to the Ministry of Manpower, well behind such occupations as financial futures dealer, at S$13,449 a month (although far above journalists, a profession relatively despised by the Singapore government, and ranked 104th at S$3,711 per month).

    “Pay them well,” Chan said. “Greed works most of the time, even for the large majority of people in affluent societies.”

    But there are other reasons as well, says a Kuala Lumpur-based lawyer. “Many of my lawyer friends there who have been in practice for yonks (a long time) have very little work. Corporate work goes mainly to the big connected firms, like those connected to the (family of Singapore patriarch Lee Kuan Yew) or the bigger names with lots of influence. The medium and smaller firms chase after the scraps.”

    In addition, he says, Singapore’s judicial system is so efficient that everything is done by email. “That means documents and filing papers are done at lightning speed. So when you strike an action you file in your basic documents along with every other legal form from A to Z in one go. Within two days you may get a trial date. All this speed means fantastic stress for lawyers. Justice rushed is justice denied.”

    While these are certainly reasons for a languishing legal profession, the courts are probably at least a partial cause of the hemorrhage. Lawyers say the emasculation of the Law Society of Singapore in the mid 1980s has contributed. Francis Seow, who became a vocal critic of Lee Kuan Yew, was ultimately elected president of the law society in 1986 and ran for public office only to be arrested and accused, among other things, of taking money from American political interests. He fled the country but was later convicted in absentia of tax evasion. It is not advisable, lawyers say, to practice any kind of law that brings lawyers into conflict with the government. To date, no major judgment has ever gone against them. To be sued in Singapore is as good as being convicted.

  38. Manolo, so what if there are no lawyers in singapore. What’s the problem? The last sentences is the answer. Government decides everything. It’s micromanaged dictatorship.

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