Babe's Eye View article

Former president Corazon Aquino’s statement saying “sorry” to Joseph Estrada during the launch of JDV’s book last week caught a lot of people by surprise, especially those who participated in EDSA Dos, expressing disappointment and feeling betrayed. However, at the end of the day, everyone is entitled to his or her own opinion and I believe Cory said that not as a joke as her publicist later explained, but more out of her personal dislike for GMA.

Erap has always been known as a ladies’ man with his charm. I am told Cory has always had a soft spot for him because of the way he treated her especially when he was still in Malacañang, always escorting Mrs. Aquino to her car whenever there was a function, even giving her a bouquet of roses when he first invited her to visit the Palace. Even to this day, Joseph Estrada would regularly send Mrs. Aquino fruits especially after she was diagnosed with colon cancer.

Dick Gordon is not sorry for what happened in EDSA Dos. He may say the right motherhood statements but perhaps this stems more from personal reasons. The story I’m told is that he and Joseph Estrada were very close friends, until the time Erap made a movie in Subic. The former president who is a smoker threw a cigarette butt, for which Dick admonished him saying they don’t do that in Subic. That trivial incident cost their friendship, and at the first opportunity, Joseph Estrada got rid of Dick Gordon by replacing him with Tong Payumo as SBMA chairman.

There’s a song that goes, “sorry seems to be the hardest word,” but in this country, people have become sorry for so many things and usually for personal reasons. There’s the famous “I am sorry” of GMA after the “Hello, Garci” controversy broke out in 2005. Shortly after that, the “Hyatt 10” especially former Social Welfare secretary Dinky Soliman said she was sorry for serving in GMA’s cabinet. Ironically, just a couple of weeks earlier she was holding hands with the president and singing “If we hold on together” with matching tears in her eyes. Of course, there’s JDV who’s sorry he lost his position as Speaker after his son exposed the ZTE-NBN deal.

But what people should be sorry about is what transpired in the past, resorting to shortcuts and not allowing the system to work, aborting the impeachment process to which Joseph Estrada had already submitted himself. And learning from that mistake, GMA will never allow herself to go through an impeachment, making sure that any impeachment complaint would be dead-on-arrival in Congress.

In both EDSAs, the Catholic Church played a major role, which consequently made the separation between the Church and the State very unclear, making it so difficult to pass important legislation like the Reproductive Health Bill. The fact of the matter is, shortly before EDSA Dos, an unimpeachable source told us that the Vatican under Pope John Paul II had already instructed the local Church hierarchy through the papal nuncio to keep away from politics.

After EDSA Dos, the Supreme Court during the time of Chief Justice Hilario Davide came out with a new legal doctrine called “constructive resignation” to justify installing GMA as president, putting more doubt into the Constitutional process. And to confirm the “conspiracy theory” of Estrada administration allies—Davide was later rewarded with an ambassadorship to the United Nations.

As we look back, we should realize the consequences of violating the tenets of democracy and resorting to extra-constitutional measures when we did not allow the Constitution—flawed as it was—to work via the impeachment process. In fact, Time magazine had described what ensued as a conspiracy and nothing short of “mob rule.”

Today, people are “sorry” because we have a president who would sit for nine years, having disrupted the Constitutional term limit with EDSA Dos, and will now have the opportunity to appoint all the 15 Supreme Court justices by the end of her term. But the fact of the matter is, that is the prerogative of a sitting president as provided for in the Constitution.

I and many others believe we need to amend the Charter to make it more practical, more attuned with the changing economic times, more precise and less ambiguous. But it is extremely difficult to do so at this time because of underlying fears and suspicions that it will be used to extend the term of incumbent officials especially the president. In fact, Chit Pedrosa who has been a staunch advocate of Charter change asked me—Why can’t Congress debate the matter now? I completely agree with her that they should, and they can—but there’s a cloud of doubt hanging over the issue, putting us in a classic Catch-22 situation. There’s also the additional question on whether the right process is through a Con-Ass (which the Senators will not allow without their concurrence), or through a Con-Con.

The bottom line is that resorting to any kind of extra-Constitutional measure and not following due process will only make us all sorry in the end. Resorting to quick fix solutions has brought us to the “sorry” state we are in today—and that is what we should all be sorry about.