Friday, October 26, 2007 Editorials: Suing President Arroyo
TIMES that spawn desperate moments sometimes need desperate answers.
During desperate times, people do come up with unusual notions in approaching the moment.
This is obviously the case with President Arroyo’s political detractors.
Complaint
Former vice president Teofisto Guingona and a group of civil society activists, at a loss on what else to do to drive Arroyo out of Malacañang, have come up with a “brilliant” idea.
They filed a criminal complaint against the President.
They accused her of “violating the anti-graft law for dereliction of duty and obstruction of justice” based on the quashed NBN project awarded to China’s ZTE Corp.
In the process, Guingona and company crossed the threshold of a long-held democratic tradition enshrined in our Constitution that a sitting President should be held immune from any suit.
Guingona’s complaint is a test of our fundamental law.
Will the Ombudsman accept the complaint even if its filing is already a violation of a long-respected constitutional provision?
Mandate
That the group did not hesitate to ignore a mandate of our Constitution indicates that it could not be any better than the object of its ire.
It is employing any means just to be able to achieve its objective, even to the extent of foregoing, too, with the deep respect that the post of president decidedly deserves.
While presidential immunity from lawsuits does not make an incumbent president infallible, our democratic way of life needs to be preserved regardless of what the detractors of an incumbent president may hold.
Untenable
It should thus be with grave trepidation that our courts should allow anybody or any group, much as its claim for the justness of its clause maybe, to defile the long held practice of immunity from lawsuits of a sitting president.
For to allow so would subject the occupant of the post to such threats from anyone or any group with vested interests.
