Staying Alive: Today’s impending arrests

John Boyne 1750-1810. Non-commissioned Officers Embarking for Botany Bay. Print: etching, hand. National Library of Australia. Right-clicked from www.nla.gov.au searched thru www.artcyclopedia.com

JDV has enough to impeach Gloria, enough to stay Speaker for one more day, and a cha-cha plan. But with the presidential husband and sons having recovered from the respite given them by the Senate Blue Ribbon Committee chair, Kampi gathering momentum, and with no pending impeachment complaint against her, a one-year bar up to October 2008, how well did JDV prepare for battle?

Lawyers and big businessmen don’t give any quarters. At all. Before he and his son picked a big fight with FG, did he prepare anything, a contingent, for a fight to the finish? Did he prepare a package of undiscovered evidence, activate in advance well-placed lieutenants, back-channel power blocs, and think the unthinkable? If he had prepared well for this, he had won it before he started it. An impeachment complaint with 70 signatures can be sent out of the House straight to the Senate; and once on the desk of the Senate President, Gloria needs an injunction to stop it; the rules notwithstanding. But did JDV think unthinkable? Did he have the imagination? Or did he miscalculate, the way he does his mass campaigns?

There will be an arrest warrant served on JDV’s former consultant former NEDA chair now CHED chair, Romy Neri. It will be served by members of the Senate security. Presumably, there are not many urgent pending warrants and summons on the desk of the Senate security, so presumably they can attend to the matter right away. There is no procedure for a motion to quash here and the letter for reconsideration does not suspend the effectiveness of the warrant. Of course, since there is no pending hold-departure order against him, Neri can always take the next flight out of the Philippines, but that would be too demeaning now. Aren’t government officials demeaned when they have to take flight like a fugitive from justice?

Once served, he would be “escorted” to the Senate and asked to stay there until he is brought to the Senate hearing. There’s no “bail” not because he is charged with a “non-bailable offense” but because the arrest warrant is for the purpose of compelling him to attend the hearing. The only way he could stop the process is to get an injunction. He has to sit at the witness stand; he may invoke, when the question is propounded, whatever he wants to invoke. If he is criminally indicted in some court, he can invoke the right against self-incrimination. If he is considered a private person and the question pertains to an intimate matter about his person, he can invoke the right to privacy. He might invoke executive privilege and cite Senate vs. Ermita: he is well-advised that in that case, the Supreme Court said that executive privilege can be invoked when the matter pertains to state secrets such as the defense of the state (it has something to do with war tactics, disposition and movement of ground forces, etc.), or diplomatic secrets.

He can choose to save his answers until the final showdown with Malacañang and the tide has turned against the Palace.

At a certain break, it’s not always a choice between Gloria and the trapo equally corrupt and corruptible opposition-politicians.

When the final break occurs, to some: it’s choice between right and wrong. To others a choice between power and oblivion. To those who hold the truth, a matter of life and death. To the many who are tired of closing their eyes, of compromising, leaving the country, of pretending, and hiding and running away: now a matter of honor.