Known versus unknown

Known versus unknown We can only speculate if, at present, there are enough votes in the Senate to convict Vice President Sara Duterte. Whether there will be enough votes to convict at the end of the impeachment trial invites even more speculation. There is more than one article of impeachment, which means the Vice President could be acquitted on all, or only some, and if only some, it would follow that she would be convicted for at least one, and that is all it takes to be removed from office. Whether she would also be permanently disqualified from holding future office would still remain at the discretion of the Senate, which has to impose a permanent disqualification from office as a penalty. Then again, the Senate could decide not to convict, but instead, censure the Vice President, a symbolic slap on the wrist. Which is another way of saying that everything going on now is aimed at the court of public opinion even as it is formally about the goings-on in the impeachment court, and that includes inviting former Supreme Court justices to share their opinions on impeachment and the Constitution’s provisions on it. As I’ve pointed out in this space, the Vice President has lost her aura of invincibility, whichever way you measure it: in terms of being able to mobilize intimidating public demonstrations (she can’t) or relying on political allies (they are all vulnerable or too mercenary); what she retains is the possibility of a loyalist vote capable of defeating any conceivable opponent or combination of opponents—but her ratings suggest the loyalist cohort is showing signs of shrinking. The President, for his part, is modestly improving in his ratings, but more significantly, proving the durability and effectivity of denying the Veep political oxygen: as she was filing for bail and complaining of persecution, she had to share column inches and media time with former Speaker Martin Romualdez, reducing both of them to being targets of the powers-that-be, diminishing both. His allergy to excitement also means that not only is political hysteria avoided, but both the unaligned public and his detractors keep confusing his steamroller tactics with laziness, stupidity, and timidity, or all three: only for him to up the ante every time but on his own terms. Whether this is due to good or at least ruthless advice is beside the point: I’ve also argued that only a president can bring him or herself down; ultimately, any advice depends on whether a president accepts or rejects it to have an effect. Whatever the outcome of the impeachment—a conviction or an acquittal—the real problem is that many see the prexy vs veep as a fight to the finish that can only be resolved by the 2028 presidential election. You could argue that the story of the Fifth Republic would become two coalition fights: the traditional dynasties versus the people power reformists from 1992 to 2022, personified by the Marcos-Macapagal-Estrada coalition versus the Aquino coalition, and the coming 2028—? showdown between the Old Guard versus the New Barons, personified by the Marcoses versus the Dutertes, with the remnants of reform trying to maintain relevance by deciding the balance of power. Here, the factor of the Ombudsman has to be considered. Unless he becomes chief justice, the current Ombudsman will remain in office until 2032. And if he becomes chief justice, the next Ombudsman will hold office even longer. At the start of his term, I identified the President’s threefold objective: first, to achieve absolution through election, thus vindicating his family name; second, to exorcise the legal causes haunting his family, and here the chief justice’s reflections on the importance of the principle that justice delayed is justice denied provide a key to understanding both the staying power and accumulating legal successes of his family’s defense; and third, to ensure the election of a successor who will not engage in vendetta against himself or his heirs, and here, the selection of an Ombudsman as shield and threat is something friend and foe alike will consider significant. There’s that wonderful paragraph-long sentence by Donald Rumsfeld, who was an old hand at government but was so cocksure he colossally bungled the occupation of Iraq: “Reports that say that something hasn’t happened are always interesting to me, because as we know, there are known knowns; there are things we know we know. We also know there are known unknowns; that is to say we know there are some things we do not know. But there are also unknown unknowns—the ones we don’t know we don’t know. And if one looks throughout the history of our country and other free countries, it is the latter category that tends to be the difficult ones.” A Duterte restoration, on the other hand, is such an unknowable unknown when it comes to the extent and ferociousness it would represent, that what it would have in store for the country is … unknown. —————- Email: mlquezon3@gmail.com; Twitter: @mlq3