The cannonball run

For all the mockery that greets the term “military intelligence,” Sen. Panfilo Lacson saw what was coming and tried to warn the public. But when he speculated that the Senate might choose not to act on the articles of impeachment, everyone fell over themselves denouncing him.

He was being too smart. It’s apparent now he wasn’t broaching his own idea but giving forewarning of a hypothetical scenario, under a different Senate majority than the one to which he currently belonged. Still, he accomplished what he set out to do: neither the House of Representatives nor the public stopped in their tracks in impeaching Vice President Sara Duterte and accepting the results.

As it turned out, the House impeached the Vice President by more than a three-fourths majority, which means it was the overwhelming decision by the Lower House on a level that would have exceeded even the high bar to success imposed under the unamended 1935 Constitution. We are a political culture that respects majorities, the more major, the better, and approaching 80 percent is as unanimous a decision as you can ever hope to achieve among politicians.

Deputy Speaker and National Unity Party Chair Rep. Ronaldo Puno, who knows a thing or two about politics, had said his party was disinclined to support impeachment, but they ended up voting for it after the evidence was summarized in open hearings. This tells you why Sen. Ronald dela Rosa had to make a fast break and muscle his way past agents of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) to the Senate session hall. There, the frustrated attempts to topple Sen. Vicente Sotto III finally achieved success.

Sen. Alan Peter Cayetano, who doesn’t lie (he is simply not on speaking terms with the truth), seemed surprised by it all. No coup was afoot, he’d previously said; indeed, who could say there was one? There was a cannonball run down (or up) the Senate fire escape, and with Dela Rosa, the human cannonball barging into the Senate, it must have been the Holy Spirit that descended upon the senators, convincing them to form a new majority.

Indeed, no one is beyond redemption. The new Senate majority may be a Coalition of the Charged (Sen. Francis Escudero, Sen. Jinggoy Estrada, Sen. Imee Marcos, Sen. Joel Villanueva, Sen. Camille Villar, and Sen. Mark Villar all bear the honor of belonging to the club of the actually indicted or soon-to-be charged on their own or by affinity; Sen. Loren Legarda, being the mother of one in the House; Dela Rosa is charged by the International Criminal Court (ICC); and Sen. Bong Go is probably going to The Hague, too), but they are acting innocent until proven guilty.

When people weren’t busy rolling on the floor after watching security cam footage of Dela Rosa’s cannonball run up the Senate stairs (accompanied by “The Benny Hill Show” theme song), they were remarking on the picture of Marcos and Sen. Pia Cayetano accompanying Legarda taking her oath as the new Senate President Pro Tempore—and looking every inch like they knew what they were doing, which was burying what’s left of Legarda’s political reputation. Maybe you can’t grin, but you can bear it. They have the example of former Sen. Ramon Revilla Jr., who couldn’t “budots” his way to reelection; when you’re politically expired, you must brazen it out.

Still, leave it to Alan Cayetano to take a noble principle and pervert it. Dela Rosa has barricaded himself in his office, betting that the time-honored tradition of legislative premises being exempt from invasion—for whatever reason—by armed agents of the executive, is beyond the pale. Which only means a waiting game, since neither tradition nor the Constitution grants legislators the privilege of exercising impunity when it comes to being tried for serious crimes.

Some argue Alan Cayetano was the victim of misdirection. Over the weekend, the ICC was asked if a public warrant had been issued, and it said no, which might have emboldened Dela Rosa to stop being a mole man, hiding underground. Turns out the warrant had been issued last November, except it was not public. And no one expected the NBI to move fast, with former Sen. Antonio Trillanes IV acting as its volunteer running back. So Dela Rosa cast his vote, but now it’s a question of when, not if, he will be bundled off to The Hague. His problem is that he sprinted past the NBI, but the ICC warrant is now a matter of public record since he made his reappearance after going into hiding last November. His lawyers have run to the Supreme Court, but there is the precedent of Pangilinan v. Cayetano to suggest even the Supremes will have to grant that the ICC warrant must be served.

Could the Coalition of the Charged become a Coalition of the Camping? Because if the Ombudsman and the courts were to throw the book at the vulnerable senators (and representatives), the temptation to barricade themselves in the Senate premises would be irresistible. At least until June 6 to July 26, the next scheduled adjournment.

Tomorrow is another day; a motion to declare all positions in the Senate vacant can, after all, be made at any time by any member. Alan Cayetano can’t even be a copycat of Escudero because “forthwith” may still be elastic, but no longer infinite. Meanwhile, something has changed in the public mood not seen since 2001 and before that, 1986: Legarda can remember what people chanted on the steps of the Edsa Shrine. Or how Doroy Valencia ended up greeted with the song, “How Much is that Doggie in the Window?” in a hotel lobby by angry citizens in 1986.

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Email: mlquezon3@gmail.com; Twitter: @mlq3

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