CEBU CITY — “You’ve stayed in this place too long, and there is no health in you. In the name of God, go.” It was not President Benigno Aquino who lobbed that barb at Ombudsman Merceditas Gutierrez.
With that stinging order, Oliver Cromwell sent England’s “Rump Parliament’ packing in 1653. Gutuierrez didn’t tarry to discover if an impeachment court would slam her with a 21st century version of “Ironside” Cromwell’s boot.
The lady instead jettisoned months of fire-breathing defiance. At a hastily-cobbled Malacanang meeting Friday, she informed President Aquino that she’d go “— to swipe a line from poet Dylan Thomas — “gentle into that good night. “
As Pnoy watched, Gutierrez signed her quit letter . “I am resigning my office effective May 6,” the key sentence read. The rest is blather about national interest.. “Even as a private citizen, I will still support efforts of government in stamping out corruption”
Until Friday’s meeting, “Gutierrez refused to go quietly into the night,” Viewpoint noted in “Toga Or No Toga” (PDI/March 29). “If presidents or ombudsmen can not be virtuous, then the threat of impeachment should, at least, make them nervous.”
Indeed, there was much to fidget about. Aside from a steep drop in conviction rates, “performance and trust were undermined by Ombudsman’s action — or inaction — on high profile cases,” Philippine Human Development Report noted.
Embalmed cases included the Commission on Elections’ P2 billion purchase of automated election counting machines from Mega Pacific; former Justice Secretary Hernani Perez, $2 million bribery case Perez, “Joc-Joc” Bolante’s P728 million fertilizer fund scam and the ($328 ) million NBN-ZTE broadband deal.
Add to that the “Euro generals scam” and murder of Ensign Philip Pestano — roundly trashed by the UN Commission on Human Rights. Political interests of then President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo and Consort were inter-twined in these cases.. .
“The Ombudsman’s slide in performance and credibility ( stems) from the undoing of the very reforms, (instituted by Ombudsman Simeon Marcelo) that previously strengthened the organization,” PHDR adds.
Yet, few realized how jittery Gutierrez had become. Why?
The Ombudsman’s spokespersons masked crumbling of Gutierrez’s bulwarks. So did the strident defense for Gutierrez by GMA partisans, like Reps. Simeon Datumanong, Mila Magsaysay and allies . Arm-twisting by religious and other groups, was hush-hush. Iloilo’s Rep. Niel Tupas, Jr. pinpointed Iglesia Ni Kristo as one such lobby.
“Straws and feathers tell us from which point of the compass the wind comes,” the old proverb says. Gutierrez’s newspaper column “The Essential” provided subtle signals. These were overlooked.
“There is much darkness for me now, despite the brave front I construct,” she wrote a few days before bailing out. “‘Resignation is supposedly the better of few options available to me today..” And she fretted over “the shame of being the first Ombudsman to have been forcibly removed from office.”
One can sympathize with this personal anguish. In the event, Gutierrez tossed in the towel barely a week before senators, clad in magenta-colored togas, set off by gold sashes, were to begin hearings on Articles of Impeachment. These were transmitted earlier by a lopsided Lower House 212 to 46 vote.
“An overwhelming vote amounts to a ‘censure’ or ‘soft impeachment’, former Senator Rene Saguisag wrote in San Beda Law Journal four decades back. That makes “trial and conviction superfluous”.
An ombudsman can lose moral authority “to be credible, acceptable, legit and effective,” he stressed in this 20-page essay. “Resignation may be the patriotic option.”
Gutierrez was been subjected to “trial by publicity over the past year,” former president Arroyo insisted. “.We respect her decision to resign” , she added. ‘
Look beyond the rhetorical handwringing, former Special Prosecutor Dennis Villa-Ignacio suggested. Evidence at an impeachment would have led, beyond Gutierrez, to former President Arroyo’s doorsteps.” Resignation is a strategic move of survival on the part of GMA”. The former president bought time. GMA refuses to go into the night, just yet.
Scuttling of the trial regrettably denies to citizens an invaluable tutorial on governance in start-to-finish media coverage. Reportage on the aborted Joseph Estrada impeachment “gave the public a gripping education in democracy,’ Inquirer’s Conrad de Quiros insists. Price tags fail to capture the value of such instruction.
At the tailend of Aniano Desierto watch, only 5 percent trusted the Ombudsman. That soared to 28 percent, following reforms instituted by Simeon Marcelo. (Revelations of Armed Forces comptroller sleaze, for example, came from Marcelo’s fielding of now COA commissioner Heidi Mendoza.
Under Gutierrez, that plummeted to 4 percent in 2009 . It has probably crashed through the floor, since the scandal of Armed Forces comptroller plea bargains and House Resolution 1089 on impeachment. Gutierrez exits from a gutted institution.
We were had twice by flawed Ombudsmen. This battered nation simply can not afford a third screw-up.
President Aquino ought to invite the broadest participation of civil society and religious groups in picking the next Ombudsman. And whoever is chosen must, as a first task, bring closure to all those pickled cases — even if the trail results, as many foresee, to Gloria Macapagal Arroyo finally going into the night.