BACKBENCHER
Rod P. Kapunan
5/19-20/2011
Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales' unabashed eagerness to ingratiate herself to the President resulted in two things: She demeaned the stature of her office and violated the right of a person to due process of law.
What puts a bad taste into one's mouth is that she and her cabal of what many suspect are crackpots feel they stand above the law. If not this, they see the law as their instrument to punish those whom they perceive as corrupt elements in their hypocritical "tuwid na daan." What Ombudsman Morales did was all for show.
She appeared serious. After all she had all those illegally furnished raw documents supplied by Vicente Aquino of the Anti-Money Laundering Council who, like her, takes on the same level of arrogance as standing above the law. Expectedly, that drew firestorms both from the members of the Senate impeachment court and from people who still bother to use their common sense. Maybe they know the role of the Ombudsman, but certainly they doubt much that her motivation was in pursuit of what the law mandates her to do. Her action is an attempt to pass on her duty to the Senate impeachment court, for it to continue in mercilessly destroying the reputation of the accused chief justice in a trial by publicity.
To begin with, under the Constitution, the Ombudsman, by her own accord, "as protector of the people, shall act promptly on complaints filed in any form or manner against public officials or employees of the government, or any subdivision, agency or instrumentality thereof, including government-owned and controlled corporations, and shall, in appropriate cases, notify the complainants of the action taken and the result thereof." (Section 12, Article XI of the Constitution). Given that vast and encompassing powers, many are puzzled why Ombudsman Morales allowed her position, not to say the dignity of her office as a constitutional body, to be demoted by submitting itself to an ad hoc impeachment court. Many are in a quandary because the power which drove her to deliriously act with alacrity is equivalent to a blanket authority to deal with any form of venalities in government by mere complaint even from "anonymous" persons.
Many were surprised why she rushed herself to the public gallery when she could have done her job better by investigating and filing complaints if she finds any prima facie evidence against Chief Justice Corona. If there are legal limitations that could prevent her now from filing them, then she should, as a matter of judicial abeyance, wait because observance of the judicial process is pivotal to the dispensation of justice and that goes even to any man on the street. But as the thinking public could see it now, her attempt to shortcut the process was a consciously sorted out conspiracy to destroy the reputation of Corona by way of trial by publicity.
Similarly, that local administrator of AMLC cannot just hand out left and right records of bank deposits and transactions as though he is handing out condominium fliers. The Ombudsman and her cabal of self-righteous people know they are obligated to first file a complaint much that by their grotesque incompetence, they failed to include that particular offense in their impeachment complaint. Ombudsman Morales has lost her honing skill to legally interpret things, entertaining the thought that the members of the Senate will grill Corona, and not the one who supplied her those questionable evidence. This is what that zealot Senator Franklin Drilon is now doing.
Like the head of the Commission on Audit, Heidi Mendoza, and that self-styled crusader of "Kaya Natin Movement," Harvey Keh, the campaign to malign Corona is now revealed as a well-orchestrated demolition job. This may be because the Aquino government knows the impeachment court is not obligated to observe the rudiments of judicial procedures as done in the regular courts. It is more on how they could sway those senator-judges to act by the impulse of their loyalty. They always count on public sentiment, exploiting their lust for blood by the constant barrage of lies and propaganda to put pressure on the senator-judges to finally convict Corona. But that has visibly backfired. Ombudsman Morales not only destroyed the credibility of her accusations, but that razed to the ground the institution she represents. This is the point the feisty Senator Miriam-Santiago wanted to nail deep into the head of Morales.
More than that, Morales created a constitutional crisis, for should the Senate impeachment court strike off from the record her testimony or throw into the dust bin her alleged evidence, that could mean that the constitutional body she represents has been by-passed and overruled by an ad hoc body. It could be most embarrassing because she effectively allowed herself to be reduced into a mere stooge. In that instance, the impeachment court would have acted well within its jurisdictional domain to decide on the evidence brought before it.
The only unfortunate thing would be that it was brought in by the Ombudsman herself.
