Impeachment (Part I)

The Beginning

On November 13, 2000, the House of Representatives filed an impeachment complaint against then President Joseph Ejercito Estrada. The complaint stemmed from allegations that Estrada received ₱400 million from jueteng, an illegal numbers game, under a bank account in the name of "Jose Velarde". The suit was brought to the Senate and an impeachment court convened. Estrada pleaded "not guilty".

This was the first time an impeachment complaint ever went up the chain. Previous complaints were always dismissed before it could get anywhere. There was going to be an impeachment trial and everything. Filipinos had never seen anything like this before. It was momentous. The affair was taken as proof that the bad old days of Marcos and his strongman rule were truly over. At long last, the people were going to hold their leaders accountable. It was a victory for justice and for democracy.

It was a mess.

Congress, which was then already well on its hellbound descent to the circus we all know today, was determined to give the Filipino people the greatest show they had ever seen. Make no mistake, this really was a big deal at the time. People were glued to their screens and radios, anxious for every juicy tidbit. From the dusty streets to the air-conditioned boardrooms; from the dingy carenderias to the office water cooler, it seemed like everyone had something to say about the trial and Mr. Jose Velarde.

Personally, I remember that Estrada's impeachment trial had, despite being a supposedly serious matter, a strange fiesta air about it. I was slightly younger then so I couldn't understand the legal arguments or the finer details of the trial, which was just fine apparently since nobody seemed interested in those things anyway. This was drama and people love that. It was funny too. The president became a safe target for comedic sport. "Erap jokes" were so common that it became a genre unto itself, being read and spread far and wide through everyone's NOKIA brick phones.

Erap was asked by a teacher to test his English ability.

Teacher: Use "deduct", "defense", "detail" and "defeat" in a sentence.

Erap: (After 15 minutes of silence) DEDUCT jumped over DEFENSE, DEFEAT first, then DETAIL!

The impeachment trial was running the risk of becoming boring and it was time for some drama. On January 16, 2001, there was a vote on whether the Senate should open a mystery envelope supposedly containing bombshell evidence against Estrada. It would be the smoking gun to prove his guilt once and for all. The Senate blocked it 11-10. The "craven eleven" they cried. There was a dramatic walk-out by the prosecution. Later, the people took to the streets.

Many things were happening but to go over them briefly, an encore performance of the smash hit "People Power" was playing out. The masa calling for his resignation was bad enough for Estrada. But the loss of support from the army and police was much worse. On January 20, 2001, the Chief Justice administered the oath of office to VP Gloria Macapagal Arroyo as the new president while Estrada snuck out through the back door hours later.

Legal Goblledygook

Power, once tasted, is not so easily given up. In a shocking move, Estrada brazenly returned to the scene and claimed that he simply went on leave. It was all a misunderstanding. He called in sick that day, you see. Arroyo was just acting President as far as he was concerned.

The thing was that Estrada was never removed from office by the impeachment court. The show simply hit pause at the bit with the envelope and they lost the remote. To settle matters, they changed the channel to the more dignified court and let loose the lawsuits.

In the landmark cases of Estrada v. Arroyo and Estrada v. Desierto, which I'm sure all Filipinos have read, the Supreme Court unanimously held that Estrada's presidency was over and that Arroyo became the president in his absence. But why or how, exactly? If impeachment wasn't the cause, then it would have to be something else. This didn't seem like a revolution since the VP took over. The system demanded a legal explanation and justification for what the hell just happened.

According to Justices Puno, Vitug, and Pardo, Estrada effectively resigned from his post based on his official statements and some entries in Executive Secretary Angara's diary. He said he was "tired"! (pagod na pagod na ako) So there. Being president is exhausting so he gave up. He resigned. Any dummy can interpret what it all meant. End of story.

On the other hand, Justices Mendoza and Bellosillo argued that Estrada became "permanently disabled" and couldn't...perform anymore. How embarrassing. Estrada could neither command the armed forces nor control the government. Estrada's crippling disability was that people just wouldn't do what he said. So there. That was the reason.

Justices Kapunan and Sandoval-Gutierrez, while agreeing with the rest, stated bluntly that Arroyo's presidency had become an irreversible fact of life and that Estrada was just going to have to deal with it whether he liked it or not. Tough. If you have an issue, grab a tissue.

It was Justice Ynares Santiago's opinion that came dangerously close to the truth. She was of the opinion that mob rule was a dangerous way of changing the government. Mob rule. Feel that in your mouth for a moment. EDSA, the second and by implication the first. Our People Power. Our mob rule. What's unsaid is damning. What happened wasn't constitutional. It wasn't legal. But if we close our eyes, think hard enough and pray, it was all alright. Estrada did it all to himself. Bret screwed Bret. Justice won. Good won. The people won. End of story. 

Aftermath

Hindsight is 20/20.

Back then, this was the furthest the process of impeachment ever got. While it never "finished", slowly but surely people were getting more comfortable with the idea. Impeachment was no longer some distant thing but became a Sword of Damocles over the heads of government officials. They would attempt to impeach Arroyo later though the attempts never got off the ground. They would try to impeach Chief Justice Davide too, seemingly out of spite, but that deserves its own section. In retrospect, this was all a grim foreshadowing of what was to come.

I wanted to revisit this chapter of history to try and better understand the utter derangement and insanity afflicting the country today, especially when the Senate seems to have become a madhouse. I want to turn back the clock and follow the muddy footprints down the wrong path.

As for Estrada, he would go down in infamy as the second president to have been removed by popular uprising. He was thoroughly humiliated by the ordeal and his reputation was dragged through the gutter. His name would be forever stained and become synonymous with government corruption and ill-gotten gains. He was a villain in the eyes of the people. He was pardoned by Arroyo in 2007 and was elected Mayor of Manila in 2013. He served two consecutive terms. His son Jinggoy Estrada is, as of this writing, currently a sitting senator of the Philippines and under investigation for corruption.

The Ink Spots - It's All Over But The Crying

ENDLESS™ Legend 2 - Panopticon

Conspicuous Consumption

The Philippines was never an egalitarian society. Even before the Spanish arrived and doomed us all to their Christian hell, Philippine society was based on class. In time, nobles, freedmen, and slaves gave way to rich, not-so-rich, and poor. No matter the age, disparity will always exist.

The Philippines is hardly unique in this case. Disparity is the bane of all societies and in my opinion, managing inequality is the reason government exists. Ah, the "allocation of scant resources" - one of my favorite definitions of politics.

The smart people once tried to do away with  social classes altogether and it was a disaster. After the deaths of a few billions, mankind decided it would abide by a polite fiction instead. History was pronounced dead and from then on, people would simply believe that they were all equal. Any inequality was just a "work in progress" - a minor blip to be solved once we put the right systems in place and elect the right leaders. Eventually. Maybe. (Not really)

But in all seriousness, managing inequality should be the chief concern of any sane government interested in its own preservation. Inequality may be unsolvable, but the gap between the haves and have-nots should be kept as narrow as possible. If the gap is too wide, unrest and revolution follow. 

I don't think the Philippine government is doing well in narrowing the gap between rich and poor. The people are already taxed heavily and all that ayuda will eventually run out. 

If you can't solve a problem, all you can do is manage perceptions and make it look like the problem doesn't exist or isn't as bad as people think. Sadly, the government is failing to do even that. To be fair, it's hard to hide the problem of corruption when the capital gets flooded despite supposedly spending trillions in flood control projects. It's hard to hide inequality when the scions of the rich and powerful post selfies with luxury cars and handbags worth more than what the average Filipino makes in ten years.

This is what's funny to me. The government fears social media. Politicians are absolutely terrified by it. They're scared because they can't control it. What trends and what becomes viral is not in their control. That explains all the efforts to control it and to clamp down on vloggers and content creators in the guise of preventing misinformation. Yet, for all their fear of social media, these politicians and their larvae post all kinds of elitist nonsense and bullshit showing how rich and powerful they are. They can't help but play with fire and how can they resist? They crave attention and where else can you get it?

So what we have now is a growing name-and-shame campaign against the politicians and the wealthy. Their social media accounts are now targets for people's anger and scorn. Will anything come of this campaign? I don't know. Regardless, I am truly amazed at the lack of shame many of these spoiled assholes exhibit. In the good old days, flagrant displays of wealth would get you beaten and robbed if you were lucky or kidnapped if you were not. But I suppose since it's all online now, people feel free to show us their worst. Sadly, the technology to punch people through the computer monitor hasn't been invented yet.

All these displays of conspicuous consumption are dangerous in these times of public difficulty from the floods. Such displays during times of hardship are the kind that lead to unrest. Inequality was a serious matter regarded by serious people. The wiser rulers of the past knew this. There was a time when you donned the purple and a time when you donned the sackcloth. Perhaps it's time to bring back the old sumptuary laws, eh? No Chanel handbags and Gucci shit on Sundays or is even that too much to ask?

Butsekik - Yoyoy Villame

At Length

When I was in law school, I was taught to keep my answers brief and concise. When I did just that, I was told that my answers were too short and that I needed to "emphasize" more.

Story of my life: I'm told to do this and then do that. But I digress.

This wasn't new to me. As far back as high school, I was taught that sometimes you had to pad things out when writing an essay. It had nothing to do with the content of the material itself but with its appearance. You could give the most well reasoned and brilliant answer to a question as you possibly could but if it only filled half the page, it wasn't considered convincing. It had to look right. People feel mistrust and even anxiety when things seem too short or too lacking. Hence, there was always a need to add superfluous details and redundant statements. There was always this need to show that you were making the effort.

Effort and Money's Worth

A doctor once told me something interesting which I think is related. He said to me that sometimes, he gets patients who believe they have the worst illnesses imaginable but in reality have only minor ones that could be easily remedied. Hypochondriacs, they're called. He told me that even if the patient's illness would go away on its own or if simple changes in behavior would be sufficient treatment, he would always prescribe some harmless painkiller or vitamin so that the patient would get peace of mind and feel satisfied that they got their money's worth. It was a win for the patient and a win for big pharma. Everybody's happy.

I think back to my friend's anecdote when trying to explain people's aversion to short essays and laconic answers. Perhaps this aversion is because people feel they aren't getting their "money's worth". Money isn't necessarily involved, of course, but it's more of a feeling that the other isn't meeting you halfway or making an earnest effort to do the job asked of him. Now there's the rub. If the problem is one of appearance (the answer looks too short) , then what exactly is it that people want to see? 

People want things to be "worth it" and it is most unfortunate that the worth of a thing is equated with the effort that was made to produce it. Therefore, a five page essay is better and worth more than a two page essay. Worse still, effort itself is understood in terms of raw manpower or man-hours spent to produce it. A momentary stroke of genius is incomparable to marathon mediocrity. The teacher/boss wants to see you hunched over your desk and sweating. That's when he knows you're really working and earning the money's worth.  

Did your asshole classmate write five paragraphs? Well your dumb ass better write ten.

Awful Examples

When you think about it, this attitude is everywhere. There are many very weak criminal cases filed in court. Whether it's from a lack of evidence or a procedural flub, it's clear that these cases would never lead to a conviction and are a waste of time. These are cases where you wonder why the prosecutor even bothers at all. Yet they do.

I asked a friend of mine who's familiar with the prosecutorial service and the answer was depressing. There is this concept called "prosecutorial discretion". What it is is that prosecutors have to power to decide whether they should prosecute a crime based on their assessment on the likelihood of a conviction. In sane countries, prosecutors don't bother filing cases unless they're sure that their chance of securing a conviction is high. In the Philippines, prosecutors, I'm told, are loathe to exercise this discretion. They would rather file a bum case than do nothing since doing nothing means they're not doing their jobs. If the list of cases filed is too short, there's a need to pad it out to show they're making an effort.

The government wants its money's worth.

To the prosecutors, filing these cases is no skin off their nose. It's the courts that have to deal with the cases anyway  It's more important to be seen doing your job and making the effort. Did you know that whenever there's an automobile accident that results in a death, it's government policy to file a case against the other driver immediately regardless of the circumstances? The police also immediately detain the other driver too. It's important that the government is seen to be doing its job, that it's making an effort, and that you, dear citizens, are getting your tax money's worth.

Speaking of police, there have been instances where they just arrest people for being at the wrong place at the wrong time. This was a thing during Duterte's drug war where they would do "one time big time" operations and do mass arrests. If you happened to be near a drug den during their operation, they might just haul you in. 

I've always suspected that the police have a quota of arrests they have to make. It's a stupid thought but terrifyingly plausible. Who's to say how many crimes happen a month such that there would be a quota for arrests to make? Well, if the police aren't out there arresting people, they aren't doing their jobs, right? If the list of arrests is short, then they must be getting lazy. We need to pad out that list, no? Lengthen it a little to show you made the effort. 

The government wants its money's worth. 

The Mistake

I think where it all goes wrong is when we equate volume with substance. But in this modern, digitized, algorithm-based hellscape, nothing is real unless we have a number to measure it with. Hence, the obsession with word counts, actions taken, cases filed, arrests made, and other metrics. It's about the view counts, the likes, the dislikes, the comments, retweets, shares, etc. How will we know if there was an effort? How will we know if anything means anything unless there's a number that says it does?

Write more words. Make more content. It's not worth it if it isn't long enough. YouTube won't let you do mid-video advertisements if your video isn't at least eight minutes long. You need to make the effort. They need to get their money's worth.

So we have all this disdain and suspicion over things that don't seem big enough. Is it any wonder that AI came to be the next big thing in our time? What is AI nowadays but a means to pad things out with oppressive walls of garbled text and ugly uncanny images? 

Finally, there is meaning to our lives. After all, there's so much shit around us. We've padded things enough. We have our money's worth. 

The Empty

Another way of looking at it.

There's this superstition in some parts of the Philippines that empty rooms in one's house will come to be inhabited by something. It will be "natao-an". An entity will make its home in uninhabited rooms. It is the way of nature to make use of space for nature abhors a vacuum. 

It is my belief that people, Filipinos perhaps especially, have a fear of emptiness in both the physical and metaphysical sense. Most can't stand to be alone. Many can't stand the silence. That's why there's so much noise. So many words. So much effort. The vibrancy and commotion of life is a comfort. Life must be filled in every sense of the word. Anything to banish the void.

The more content the better.

Two men approached a philosopher and asked him, "Sir, what is the meaning of life?" The philosopher gave a simple reply, no more than a few words. One man frowned and asked, "That's all?" The other smiled and said, "That's all."

I think this is long enough.

Aphex Twin - Orphans