Our 1987 ‘Accountability’ Constitution

The Senate Impeachment Court conviction of former Chief Justice Renato Corona is the first impeachment trial in Philippine constitutional history ever to reach a verdict. Beyond the five-month cloud of mutual allegations and public recriminations, the unrestrained publicity and spin, no-holds-barred litigation and relentless media strategies, the august Senate Presiding Officer and his fellow Senator-Judges demonstrated that the difficult merger of politics and law in the extraordinary constitutional process of impeachment could be deftly managed, with full respect for public institutions and due process rights. Ultimately, it was the respondent, the former Chief Justice himself, who made the admissions of vast and deliberately undisclosed wealth that proved decisive to his conviction by the Senator-Judges. The former Chief Justice’s immediate acceptance of the verdict forestalled a feared unprecedented clash between the constitutional branches of government. The judicious restraint of the Senate and the Supreme Court throughout this trial prevented public hysteria and averted political crises. Owing to the sage wisdom of these Philippine leaders and the active vigilance of Filipino masses, Philippine constitutional democracy reigned. Order prevails, and it is business as usual for the government branches today.  While it is an extraordinary constitutional process and power, one lesson that can be drawn is that impeachment is not in itself an uncommon phenomenon in the history and practice of government. In the United States, a jurisdiction which strictly confines impeachable offenses to “treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors,” it is interesting that all eight of the impeachment trial convictions issued by the US Senate involved either district or federal judges. The US Senate convicted Judge Robert Archbald in 1913 for using his official position for private gain. Judge Halstead Ritter was convicted in 1936 for bringing his court into disrepute when he illegally evaded income taxes. Judge Harry Claiborne was convicted in 1986 for filing a false tax return. And in the most recent impeachment conviction in 2010, the US Senate convicted Judge Thomas Porteous for corruption. The 1987 Philippine Constitution provided for new impeachable offenses of “betrayal of public trust” and “culpable violation of the Constitution,” which were applied to the admitted acts of the former Chief Justice. The Senate’s management of the impeachment trial to its just and accepted conclusion, with minimal institutional consequences, mark a watershed moment for Philippine rule of law. The 1987 postcolonial and post-dictatorship Constitution entrenched accountability within our constitutional values and democratic lexicon. Until this week’s verdict, Filipinos sought accountability from high officials and impeachable officers by forcing or inducing their resignations, deploying various pressure levers such as popular revolutions and high-profile media campaigns. This year, Filipinos chose to follow and be informed on pedestrian procedure and presentation of proof, and after five months of controlled chaos inside and outside the Senate halls, truth was obtained from the respondent himself. Despite its seeming tediousness and susceptibility to varying degrees of Orwellian drama at many stages in the trial, this week’s verdict stamped the transition of public accountability from constitutional value to working and functioning constitutional reality. Accountability is no longer just an aspiration. In 1987, the 41 Constitutional Commissioners drafted a Constitution that purposely embraces the widest sphere of human rights protections, empowers Filipinos to seek recourse through judicial review to the courts for grave abuses of discretion by government officials and instrumentalities, and creates as many structural and institutional bases to defuse and neutralize the concentration of political power in the hands of very few elites. While this experiment did not always prove successful (especially in the past decade under an administration determined to subvert the extensive system of checks and balances in the Constitution), the Corona impeachment trial and ensuing verdict demonstrated that accountability can indeed be achieved when institutions such as the Senate Impeachment Court and the Philippine Supreme Court exercise careful restraint alongside judicious decision-making, and when citizens discharge their citizenship responsibilities fully to be informed and express informed opinions, and to peaceably participate in the constitutional process, inasmuch as they assert their rights to be heard and to exact justice and demand accountability from their leaders. We as the governed have always had the powers of exit and voice against our governors – the challenge has been to wield those powers within the constitutional rule of law, rather than the extra-constitutional rule of politics. Our forebears well knew that the “thin” version of the rule of law – devoid of genuine human rights and ideological mechanisms for access to justice – was not enough to prevent the undoing of our economic achievements through massive rent-seeking corruption and suppressed opposition. Twenty-five years later in 2012, the Philippines now enjoys one of the highest economic growth rates in Asia, the most skilled and adaptable labour forces at home and abroad, and is fast emerging as the new preferred global investment and tourism hub. We can only sustain the momentum of these socio-economic gains into enduring success if we remain committed to expect nothing less from our leaders and ourselves, than the highest fealty to the ‘thick’ version of the rule of law under our 1987 ‘Accountability’ Constitution. The author has taught international law, legal history, and administrative law at the law faculties of the University of the Philippines and Lyceum of the Philippines; and international law at the Philippine Foreign Service Institute. She is an incoming Assistant Professor (teaching international economic law and international human rights law) at the US JD program of Peking University School of Transnational Law in Shenzhen.