HOTSPOT
It has gotten tough to react to current events these days, since everything is no longer as predictable and everything we used to view as permanent can now easily go away.
This week, 215 members of the House of Representatives signed and endorsed the impeachment complaint against Vice President Sara Duterte. One-third was enough, but the House members doubled down on the requirement. The President’s son, Rep. Sandro Marcos, was the first to sign and endorse the complaint.
Nobody could have predicted this in 2022 or even in 2024, when the House made fascinating discoveries on how millions in confidential funds were spent by the Office of the Vice President.
The big rally by a religious sect and the President’s own statements on impeachment have proven to be futile. The Vice President has been impeached.
Senate President Francis Escudero has said that the Senate would take action only after the midterm elections. But he also said that he won’t stop anyone from making the case for the Senate immediately convening into an impeachment trial court.
Those who studied the Constitution would be familiar with the uniqueness of the Senate as a continuing body. There are always half of all senators in office to guarantee that there will always be members of Congress ready to exercise powers. One such power, which belongs only to the Senate, is the power to try an impeachable official already impeached by the House.
This is an argument any senator or representative could use to press that the Senate start with the trial. If suasion and persuasion through the court of public opinion won’t work, it is not impossible for impeachment petitioners or constitutionalists to sue the Senate before the Supreme Court.
Of course, the President may also call for a special session of Congress. That is a presidential power and prerogative.
If Congress can convene in special sessions for visiting dignitaries, then it should convene in a special session for a local dignitary sought to be impeached — especially since it is the constitutional process to hold that dignity to account.
Elsewhere in government, a food security emergency has been declared due to an “extraordinary” spike in rice prices, according to a Philippine News Agency report.
The declaration comes six years after the enactment of the Rice Tariffication Law in 2019, which promised lower rice prices, among others.
The Metropolitan Manila Development Authority also shocked commuters in the metro after proposing the removal of the EDSA busway. The Department of Transportation meanwhile said it would work to keep the EDSA busway as a key part of the mass transportation system.
Abroad, the Trump administration is doing and saying a lot of what many would describe as “impossible” a couple of years back. Entire agencies are on the chopping block, starting with the US Agency for International Development and, reportedly, the Department of Education.
Trump has also withdrawn the US from not just the Paris Agreement, but also from the World Health Organization, and the United Nations Human Rights Council. He has also said that he wants to get Greenland, the Panama Canal, and Gaza.
This is a time when deeply-held beliefs or assumptions are turned on their heads, and directly challenged. Liberals, liberal democrats, social democrats and progressives have their work cut out for them.
The job of the columnist is to help readers make sense of an event or events by offering sound analysis, remembering historical precedents, and opining about how various social forces may be at play. It may not always be as objective as news, but more importantly be as fair, as open-minded, and as courageous as the readers of this column and this paper especially in these dystopian times.
Whatever may happen, this columnist is committed to do this as my weekly (and hopefully more often) contribution to the making of this paper which celebrates its 125th anniversary and which has provided me a place for 11 years now.
The times may be tough. The Manila Bulletin is tougher.