“The route to success often has a pariah phase along the way” wrote Steven Magee, an American technocrat.
Senator Chiz Escudero,a veteran politician and lawyer, is probably treading dangerously at this phase of his career. His patriotism now is writ large over his little head over the continuing political brouhaha on the impending impeachment trial of the vice president.
His latest announcement that the trial is postponed, again, for another day, has already prematurely enshrined him in the hall of pariahs in Philippine politicics. Some predict his career , seen at its apotheosis, is now doomed after this newest decision.
In the first place, this is not the first postponement. Last February, when most everybody who knew the 1987 Constitution, especially its framers who are still alive and kicking, expected him to follow the provision of the Charter. The Senate, which is mandated to do the impeachmen trial as a court, is asked to proceed with it. It must do it forthright, even if a reasonable delay is read into that sense of urgency.
Escuder o has since defied , or screwed, if you will, people’s expectation. He came out with a much delayed schedule for the impeachment trial, making almost a mockery of the mandate. His latest decision to hold it close to a holiday on June 11 has given up hope that the impeachment will proceed at all.
The last attack against him is: is she afraid of Virginia Wolf who is having a good time celebrating her birthday with the president sister senator in the Hague. Escudero was supposed to have the prosecution team of the House of Representatives read the impeachment charges and, thereafter, a summon sent to the vice president.
His timing appears to be impeccable. His schedule for the reading falls a day before independence day. It is possible, again, that a postponement will be done. And mind you, the next schedule will fall again on a date close to the adjournment of the present Congress.
Now comes the latest opinion from an outgoing senator that the impeachment trial cannot cross over to the new Senate, where more Duterte allies will fill the Upper Chamber of the old, not necessarily the wise.
After hope, there is now fear. The impeachment trial may not take place at all, No one can intervene, not even the Supreme Court who has the final word on what the Constitution says.
Outgoing Senator Koko Pimentel has read the Duterte allies’ mind.TheY want to acquit the vice president, but they do not want to confront the evidence against her. The shortest distance between two lines is the straight line. No impeachment is the shortest way, Besides, there is the future to consider, and the trial will expose their fidelity, to the Constitution which they swore to uphold or the coun try they swore to serve., It’s too risky.
The senators could have respected themselves by respecting their constitutional mandate and voted to their heart content either way. Pimentel reminded them that the constitution does not forbid an acquittal or conviction. It simply requires an faithful adherence to its letters.
This early, many are showing their reactions the postponement and have telescoped the possible scenarios. Right now, there is a foreboding sense that an uprising again on historic EDSA will happen again, It can be a number, odd or even, but it may revive the SpErt of Edsa in 1986 that toppled the first Marcos presidency. Meaning, anything is possible, including the end not only of the current Senate presidency but the rest of his political career .
The latest survey shows that more than 81 peercent of the fiipinos or eight for every ten, want the trial to proceed,even if it crosses the new Congress,because Senate is not for part-time gofers but true-blue public servants, and is a continuing body.
The public deserves to know if the charges levelled against the vice president, ranging from betrayal of public trust and graft and corruption, are baseless and merely the figment of dirty politics, which the president senator sister has already prejudged. Talk about political color
Will the Senate, old or new, let the presented pieces of evidence speak of themselves, including the apparently fraudulent and faked names of recipients that daringly besmirched the name of known prominent public figures?
What is the senate really afraid of: the indisputable evidence against the crimes of a high public official or the possible presence of two well known legal luminaries and legit opposition in the prosecution team?
Their intimidating possible presence in the public hearing is palpable when Escudero down played their value by suggesting that their comments now are yet still insignificant because they have not been named yet as such.
His promising status as a potential patriot in the ongoing debate over the impeachment case against the vice president is high. His being a potential pariah is leaving its tell=tales in the process. There must be” a time of redemption, which is not necessarily easy.
“There are dread secrets that none may know but may yet have peace”, E. Hoffman Price, an American writer of popular fiction, said. The proverbial l lull before the storm in the current impeachment public conversation hangs like darks clouds in the atmopsheric,
But there are secrets that render whosoever knoweth them aliens to the tribe he belong into, that causes shim to walk alone on earth , for he who takes, pays, “ he adds.
This is Escudero’s choice or dilemma as it were: to be a patriot or pariah,
