At the outset, maybe a caveat is in order. I post this article here as a caring observer of Philippine affairs from a place here in the northeast USA.. I am in no way an apologist for the Arroyo Presidency, nor a “paid hack” engaged in selling propaganda for any one. I call it as I see it, and I welcome any contrary views expressed in a high level of civility and decorum as befit a respectable blog such as FV.
The recent announcement by President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo that she was ordering the involuntary leave of absence of the prosecutors involved in the controversy surrounding the dismissal of the drug charges against the so-called “Alabang Boys”, coupled with a temporary direct take-over of the administrative management of PDEA, has created another firestorm of criticisms from the usual detractors. One such critique is a recent FV post by our colleague, Ding Gagelonia, calling the President “Czarina” and derisively characterizing her actions as “damage control” in connection with “the latest manifestation of mis-governance”.
Without going to the issue of whether the DOJ vs. PDEA dispute is truly a manifestation of bad government requiring damage control, the nature of the controversy demands decisive action
that only the president has the ultimate, effectual power to take within the bounds of legality and constitutionality. As Chief Executive, she has the power and the duty to impose precautionary and/or preventive measures that, in her best discretion, she calculates would bring about justice and fairness not only to both contending parties but also to the general public. Simply put, the President cannot allow respondent-prosecutors accused of bribery to continue exercising their functions until she is assured that no damage to the public will be caused by such continuance. By the same token, she has the right and the duty not to allow the same personnel to continue calling all the shot at PDEA until charges of unconstitutional law enforcement practices against them are resolved in their favor.
Unlike a criminal respondent, an accused public servant in the context of administrative law cannot (unless enabled by “due process” considerations, if any) automatically invoke “presumption of innocence until proven guilty” as a shield. Rather, the principle that a public office is a public trust is the governing doctrine.
The President is invariably blamed and taken to task for every allegation of malfeasance, nonfeasance or misfeasance committed in her government, as though she is the keeper of the conscience of each and every government worker. “The buck stops here” may be a great slogan by Harry Truman but highly hyperbolic and impractical. In the first place, the President has no control over the actions of the members of Congress and the Judiciary, among others, who are no less part of the “Arroyo government”. So when anti- Arroyo groups (usually leftists) make a blanket indictment of the government of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, they usually don’t care if she, herself is personally blameworthy. If she acts decisively and try to cut through the usual “red tape”using the prerogatives of her office, insinuations, if not outright accusation, of fascism usually follows. If she waits for the “rule of law” and due process to take their course, she is deemed part, if not the mastermind, of the alleged venality. She is damned if she does and damned if she does, either way.
Popularity: 1% [?]
then when it is the person they endorse, they have the guts to write this:
Inconsistencies do not make one a credible blogger.
Atty. Ben,
Such is the burden of power and leadership. But the Catch 22 issue becomes more profoundly evident when a leader’s assumed legitimacy and moral ascendancy have been eroded and political capital in deficit.
I previously commented in this forum that government should act judiciously and swiftly before drug lords consolidate their hold of government functionaries and turn us into narco republic with a note: “GMA please listen.” Thank you madam President. I support your action 100%.
ding, must you always take refuge from that tired, stale, illegitimacy mantra to justify unfair criticism of the president for everything she does or does not? i was hoping that you would offer a reasonable, albeit arguable, basis each time you find fault for her actions. continuing to demonize the president this late in the game, i think, is counterproductive and inimical to the interest of the country. why don’t you people give her a break?
Bencard,
I shall propose a hypothesis to explain why the President suddenly found it necessary to appoint herself to a position that she had previously given to Tito Sotto (her losing Senatorial ally in 2007) and for which General Santiago appears to be trying to do a good job.
The President’s own extraordinary action of appointing herself “Drug Czar” speaks volumes. By why not Bribery Czar? For one thing it emphasizes her decision to go after the drug problem itself and not alleged corruption in her Justice Department. Notice that her very first official act as Drug Czar was to order drug tests in all schools and universities nationwide. Is that her brilliant priority strategy for solving the drug menace? And what will she do with those who test positive? Counsel them? Expel them? Imprison them.
I find this quite strange and perhaps suggestive of true motives on the part of the President because there was no news really in the fact that some young punks from Alabang are peddling pills that make you fall in love with the bar furniture. Such criminal delinquency has been well known. What WAS news was the allegation of bribery and corruption at Justice in a high profile case that has PDEA up in arms over the junking of their case.
Why does she decide to emphasize the drug problem which is serious but old hat?
Why Drug Czar? Why not Bribery Czar?
Drug addition is a mental disease of epidemic proportions that has however probably been around since Neolithic discoveries of the psychoactive properties of certains plants, roots and berries. Thus it is like the Battle between Good and Evil to which she appoints herself General.
Truth be told the real money in drugs is in mass distribution of shabu to bus, jeep and trike drivers, prostis, bold stars and entertainment mavens and moguls.
Who controls that trade is why she has made herself Drug Czar. My opinion lang. She can’t afford to let Santiago and Tito Sotto and those Magdalos turned law enforcers like Ferdinand Marcelino start going after the cronies of her cronies and their lucrative businesses. First they could shut down the drugs, then its the jueteng, then smuggling, crooked deals in govt…where would it end??
She has to nip this dangerous trend in the bud now. What better way than becoming Drug Czar to make sure the Magdalo doesn’t gain resurrection in Marcelino. If anyone is to do anything dramatic on drugs, the president has decided she will steal that thunder (being drug czar means many photo ops). Just to make sure it’s always bunch of Chinese who don’t speak anything but omerta that are apprehended.
My hypothesis: she wants to make sure Magdalo doesn’t start up the anti-corruption message. Real victories by soldiers like Marcelino over real drug pushers could create a fresh platform to expose or at least denounce bribery and corruption in her govt.
Bencard,
I think it is also fair for me to ask what particular powers of the Presidency she intends to bring to bear on the drug problem and that must be personally wielded and exercised by her? What in other words does she intend to do personally that all the law enforcement agencies of her own government have already been tasked to do?
Or is this all a tawdry and cynical side show and morality play as some suspect?
we bloggers have the liberty to mouth everything we want and offer our punditry as the solutions to our problems. GMA appointed herself as drug-czar because she sees it as one problem that is affecting the youth. bribery is as old as prostitution and while it too has to be addressed, its priority is not as urgent as the “drug-trafficking” problem.
djb, fair enough question. i think, as chief executive and commander-in-chief, pgma can ensure proper enforcement of the laws, to her OWN satisfaction, through direct management, given the allegations against the people to whom she entrusted the task. after all, she gets all the blame, doesn’t she?
i think, the direct management is temporary, just until she is satisfied that those people would be doing their job the way they should.
djb, i didn’t see your earlier comment re “bribery czar”. i think jcc provided a good answer. setting aside your conspiracy theories (you are entitled to your own paranoia), but isn’t pgma entitled to believe that her alter ego, the doj, could handle the bribery charges properly and expeditiously? unless there is hard evidence of bribery, e.g., marked money, it is all ALLEGATION, which is hardly probative that a crime has been committed (corpus delicti). in a case of law enforcement constitutional violation, there is usually an official record of the action that is alleged to be unconstitutional for all to see. i think pgma was correct in making this distinction, assuming she did.
re drug testing of students, in case you don’t know, drug testing is routine in the u.s. for job applicants and seekers of public office (including politicians, i think). the exercise of the constitutionally – acknowledged police power of the State does not translate to being a “police state”. the drug menace is an evil that the State has the power and the duty to crush.
as to what to do with those who are found “users” of prohibited drugs, have you ever heard of “drug rehabilitation”? you see, it can be done, either inside or outside penal institutions. and, btw, usually in the world of drug addiction, “users” eventually graduate to being “pushers”.
and, oh, btw, pgma doesn’t have to “appoint” herself “general” or “czarina”. she is already that, and then some, subject only to the ultimate ruler in our scheme of things – the Law and/or the Constitution).
Bencard,
The restatement of tautologies, such as that drug testing is legal and that the President IS the chief executive under the Constitution empowered to supervise that department, does not address the issue of policy I have just raised: she wants to solve the drug problem personally and directly (in addition to all other measures which I am not questioning and you have irrelevatnly defended), rather than put priority to solving the alleged bribery issue.
This really places the cart before the horse and president motivations into serious question, because it is surely going to take the concerted effort of more than one grandstanding president to solve the drug problem. Her principal duty is to fix her own department so it can do that job properly.
It is this observation of her strange ordering of priorities that invites suspicion upon her motives.
I invite you to try and explain this instead of giving us (again, Civics 101).
BTW, I don’t mind telling you that I lived in the US for longer than most here have been alive, so there is no need to suggest you know more than those in the archipelago about Democracy, manong. Been there and done that, Bencard. I know why you are there. It’s safe. Here you make one mistake, you are dead. There your car is insured, your wife is insured, your life is insured, your insurance is insured. Although now you owe a ton of money to the big investment bankers, thanks to those pseudo Republicans that turned their back on conservatism. And don’t forget to take the garbage out tonight after doing the laundry and worrying about your taxes.. It’s cold out so put on the Kmart hat and gloves and say a lil prayer for GMA. She’s on her way to the bar, the Bar of Justice.
Poetic justice that is.
Yay, Barack Obama! He the man. US Constitution. Corrigibility.
is that so, djb? sorry i didn’t know you have a direct line to the president’s way of thinking. since you already have the “answer” why still ask me? pray, tell me. what measures did i “irrelevantly defended? didn’t you raise the issues of drug testing in schools and what to do with those who are found “users”?
oh, about the hat and gloves, thanks. i have a few from brooks bros. which i got for christmas from my kids and clients. i don’t think i got some from k-mart but i don’t mind using them if i did (lol). and i do take the garbage out but i don’t do the laundry. my wife wouldn’t trust me to do it right.
keep wishing for that “poetic justice” of yours. you will need more than one djb to make that materialize. re barack, i sincerely hope he succeeds for my own good, if for no one else. but the trial has not even begun.
Still nothing on the main hypothesis? GMA focusses on drugs because it’s a safe issue. She calls for drug tests that most schools are already doing, unbeknownst to you in the burbs of Middleburg. But Bribery in the executive department that is the radioactive issue she must divert attention from, considering it is already part of a pattern in her administration–no need to mention the predicate litany for a future plunder case.
But here is a precioussss image: you in your Brooks Brothers hat-n-gloves taking the garbage out. Buy K-Mart. The missus knows better: Cheaper. Better. Less pretense.
Leave justice to us while you fiddle with the remote.
By the way, not to indulge the diversionary tactic too much, but even the opening gambit of ordering drug tests in the schools is a pretty lame idea. Though there are drug users and pushers in schools the real big money and large number of users in drugs, according to the Arroyo govt’s own stats, is in methamphetamine hydrochloride (shabu) for working stiffs like drivers of puvs (buses, jeeps, trikes, ferry boats and airplanes); entertainers and sex industry workers; media and other late night 24/7 professions. That business is not controlled by young punks from Ayala Alabang or DLSU, again according to govt data and some published academic studies.
Also, it may interest you to know that the LTO has required drug tests for drivers licenses and other ID, and that most large companies and institutions, public and private already conduct drug tests, including random unannounced ones. Yet there are ten million addicts or users–surely a vast underestimate in the data.
To solve the problem everybody says interdict supply and curb demand. I agree. And may I add: Make sure the law enforcers and the prosecutors are clean at all times. Otherwise it’s all eyewash anyway.
And here is the toughness test.
It took no guts at all for the President to announce she would be Joan d’Arc against drugs. But to admit there has been bribery she cannot do. As with the gift bags incident, the fish has apparently putrefied from the head.
now, now jdb. let’s be a little rational here, o.k.? how can the president admit to an ACCUSATION without an iota of evidence other than bare allegation and speculations by people with axes to grind? obviously, she is giving these people a chance to produce the evidence, which is why she had to ask the accused prosecutors to go on leave. wouldn’t it be laughable if your neighbor ADMITS you are an illegal alien in the u.s. because you look like one?
wow, she is now joan of arc after being “czarina”. is that a promotion?
Bencard,
No one asks the president to admit to an accusation. Even with evidence we cannot expect that of her. Her actions however, speak louder than mere words of admission. It is not I who accuse her but her her own motions observed.
If she is damned it is by her own hand, by what she does and what she doesn’t do.
As a simple blogger I have no axe to grind against Gloria. I can say that in all honesty. That she has inspired mainly suspicions, discouragement, incredulousness, dismay and disdain in me, says something if you will grant my claim to be a largely impartial observer in the sense of one being willing to be impressed or convinced by someone in the highest offices of the land.
It cannot possibly be because I am intellectually dishonest or am deceived by others who are.
She’s been a Bad Girl Bencard. It’s nothing to do with me or you.
djb, at the risk of being accused of unnecessarily prolonging this little exchange, i just can’t let this pass.
is that what you regard the sitting president of the Republic of the Phillippines – a “bad girl”? since you are an admitted american-born u.s. citizen, living in the u.s., how do you think filipinos worth their salt (whether or not gma supporters) take that kind of epithet from a foreigner, regardless of racial origin? one good thing i know about filipinos is that they can fight with, and insult each other, amongst themselves, day in and day out, but they will not take it kindly from an outsider who insults one of their own, let alone a symbol of their nationhood.
this is typical..
most filipinos living and working in the US and those who were born or became US citizens, they always have the guts to criticize the phils and the filipinos…like they are the freaking experts and we are the morons…because they thought, being a US citizen or just living and working in the US made them superior than those who stayed in the country…
Langaw na pumatong sa kalabaw..akala niya ay kalabaw na din sya…
very typical.
I take back my support to GMA on her anti-drug stance. From what I have seen so far, there is nothing dramatic that can be expected to come out of her being the anti-drug war czar. Parang moro-moro lang.
Nego supositum Bencard. I lived in the US exactly half my life. But since the mid 90s the Archipelago has again become my home. I’m a natural born dual citizen of both countries. Jus sanguinis. Jus soli. I have degrees from De La Salle, Cal State SF and Harvard University. I am retired from the General Electric Co. Aircraft Engines Division (Evendale, Ohio). I am an astrophysicist (for real!) This is all public knowledge by the way, since I was once regularly published by PDI (8 years).
I have no doubt that I have earned the umbrage and pique of certain types of our countrymen for my ideas and opinions expressed in the public sphere, especially about the leaders and the leading ideas such as superstition, but I have not yet detected a case of xenophobia being directed at me. Murahin ko lang ang ina nila!
My life is an open book but I still cannot wait for the next page. The only mystery about it is what it will amount to in the end.
You?
macapili, why do i think your “support” will not be missed at all?
djb, you don’t have to give your entire autobiography. i really think it’s interesting, if not impressive. but, sorry, i still can’t agree that your bio-data warrants calling a head of state “a bad girl” no matter how much you hate her. calling her that tells much more about you than about her.
me? i didn’t call her a bad girl, did i?
Bencard, bakit, manhid ba talaga?
macapili, hindi naman seguro. marahil, bale wala lang ang suporta mo.
Tama ka, maraming dating kaalyadong malaking tulong sa kanya na binalewala niya. Parang macabebe.
ikaw, malaki ba naman ang tulong mo, o kaparis lang ke cory – walang sinsiredad?
Bencard, tama ka na naman. May tulong man o wala bale wala.