Contested truths in the Philippines
By Joel D Adriano Southeast Asia Nov 20, 2010
MANILA - Philippine President Benigno Aquino, elected in May largely on an anti-corruption ticket, has hit high hurdles trying to deliver on his campaign trail promise to prosecute officials associated with the outgoing and scandal-plagued Gloria Arroyo administration.
Some analysts believe his diverse and broad-based coalition could start to show cracks as early as next year in the absence of quick and demonstrable results. Aquino's first presidential directive after taking office in June, Executive Order No 1, called for the establishment of a "Truth Commission" to investigate alleged cases of corruption and abuse of power committed under Arroyo's nine-year tenure.
His second and third directives aimed to purge hundreds of "midnight appointees" to key positions made in the waning days of Arroyo's administration. The president's supporters have claimed the appointments were intended to protect Arroyo against future corruption-related prosecutions, by tactics such as covering up paper trails, once Aquino came to power.
The five-member commission is scheduled to weigh 23 cases involving alleged large-scale graft and corruption, including cases implicating Arroyo and her family. It will be headed by former Supreme Court chief justice Hilario Davide Jr and have the power to subpoena suspects. The commission's recommendations will be submitted to the president, congress and national ombudsman for consideration. The nominally independent body's mandate will expire at the end of 2012.
Among the cases the commission will consider is the US$329 million National Broadband Network (NBN) deal her government tendered to Chinese telecom firm ZTE Corp, a $14 million fertilizer fund scam, and a 2004 election scandal that linked Arroyo to an alleged conspiracy to rig the results in her favor.
Arroyo was also listed as the prosecution's first witness in the graft trial of former socio-economic planning secretary Romulo Neri in relation to the ZTE-NBN deal, which was eventually aborted due to irregularities. She has sought to quash the court's subpoena by invoking her right against self incrimination.
Arroyo now serves as a congresswoman and her political allies in congress have already challenged the Truth Commission's mandate and legitimacy. Congressman Edcel Lagman, a well-known Arroyo ally, recently filed a petition before the Supreme Court questioning the legality of Aquino's first executive order.
Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago has claimed the commission has no legal basis because it duplicates tasks already performed by the Office of the Ombudsman, which is charged with investigating alleged improprieties in the bureaucracy.
Politicians in Aquino's camp, on the other hand, believe that both the Supreme Court, where 14 of the 15 justices - including the chief justice - were appointed under Arroyo, and the ombudsman are biased in her favor. Arroyo came under heavy criticism in May after losing the election for naming her former aide Renato Corona as the Supreme Court's next chief justice.
The Supreme Court has blocked on legal grounds Aquino's efforts to annul Arroyo's late appointments and has stonewalled other executive orders, moves which threaten to paralyze the workings of the executive branch. At the same time, the Supreme Court's credibility took a hit recently after one of its justices was accused of plagiarizing articles from international law reviews in authoring a key opinion in a recent case.
The Office of the Ombudsman is led by Arroyo appointee Merceditas Gutierrez, a classmate of Arroyo's husband, Mike, who was appointed in 2005. She has been instrumental in either delaying or dismissing corruption cases against the Arroyos and recently asked the Supreme Court to permanently discontinue the work of a congressional justice committee that had focused on impeachment complaints against Arroyo.
Critics thus believe Arroyo deliberately placed her known allies into key positions of judicial power to guard against possible legal cases after she left office. The lower house of congress is now dominated by Arroyo's allies, while the senate is mostly aligned with the faction of Manuel Villar Jr, who ran against Aquino and was placed second in the May election.
On the campaign trail, Aquino accused Villar of serving as Arroyo's secret candidate. (Arroyo's publicly supported candidate, Gilbert Teodoro Jr, her Harvard-educated defense minister, fared poorly at the polls.)
With a strong reformist mandate, Aquino appears to be following in the political footsteps of his late presidential mother, Corazon Aquino, who died last year with cancer. She rose to power in 1986 on a wave of popular dissent against decades of corrupt rule under then dictator Ferdinand Marcos.
While Benigno Aquino has said he patterned his Truth Commission after the one South Africa created following the end of apartheid, analysts here are already drawing comparisons to the efforts his mother made to investigate human rights abuses and recoup public funds allegedly pilfered by Marcos, his family and cronies.
Corazon's state-sponsored commission recovered a mere US$1 billion of a high-end estimated of $10 billion that may have been stolen and she failed to put any of the accused behind bars. Her recovery efforts were stymied by a weak and ineffectual justice system and calls for reconciliation to maintain stability amid a series of coup attempts against her government.
As a low-profile senator, Benigno Aquino failed to build a strong political base prior to running for and winning the presidency. Many political parties and factions attached themselves to his political bandwagon when it became clear he could leverage his family's good name into a successful bid for the presidency.
Past coalitions of convenience, however, have often splintered once public support has waned and the government is unable to live up to its reform promise. Significantly, Arroyo rose to power on reform hopes in the wake of corruption charges that sparked public protests that ousted Joseph Estrada.
The commission is already shaping up into an important test of Aquino's reform credentials. Its every move has been scrutinized by the press and opposition and its progress or regress is expected to set the political tone of his expected reform drive. His supporters are already drawing hopeful comparisons to Indonesia's Corruption Eradication Commission, which has boasted a 100% conviction rate and has handed prison sentences to several top former officials.
Others perceive early signs of weakness, seen in the amnesty Aquino granted to a group of mutinous soldiers who laid explosives around a luxury hotel and attempted to overthrow the government in 2003. The disgruntled soldiers claimed to be rebelling against high-level corruption in the armed forces. Former top soldiers and police are among those who could face sanction by the commission.
Corruption and weak law enforcement are consistently cited as reasons why foreign investors shy from the Philippines. In Transparency International's latest global corruption index, the country rated in the "highly corrupt" category, ranking 134 out of 178 countries. It's a hard truth Aquino's commission is likely to have difficulty in overcoming.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Joel D Adriano is an independent consultant and award-winning freelance journalist. He was a sub-editor for the business section of The Manila Times and writes for ASEAN BizTimes, Safe Democracy and People's Tonight.
(Copyright 2010 Asia Times Online (Holdings) Ltd. All rights reserved. Please contact us about sales, syndication and republishing.)
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