By Romeo T. Capulong

A week ago the lawyers of respondent Joseph Ejercito Estrada held a meeting with their client to discuss their defense strategy in the impeachment trial. The defense lawyers were worried that the most important client of their career would not follow the script meticulously laid out by them or, worse, would not be able to fully grasp the defense theory before the start of the trial. At the end of the long meeting, one of the defense lawyers asked the client if he wanted to comment on the lawyers’ presentation.

Exuding extra-ordinary optimism and self-confidence, the client, in his characteristic one-liners, asked: why do we have to go through such an elaborate and complicated defense? We already have the numbers in the Senate. If I can have my way, I will adopt only one simple defense. Then he quickly added ‘Justice delayed is justice denied.’ What do you mean by that, Mr. President? one of his lawyers asked. Simple lang, the President quickly retorted. Kayong mga abogado ko, delay lang kayo ng delay. Ako naman deny lang ng deny.

This may just be a typical Erap joke. Nevertheless, allow me to use its essence as my take off point. Incidentally this joke is original and is mine.

Since a few weeks ago, when it was still hazardous to make a prediction about the outcome of the impeachment trial, I have been making public comments about the impeachment process-- or what President Estrada and his drum-beaters love to call the constitutional process”-- as an effective means to oust an unfit or guilty President. Allow me to reiterate them here.

1. Given our political system, it will be the height of naivete to believe that the impeachment process per se can be an effective remedy or option of the Filipino people to oust or remove a President from office no matter how serious the crimes he has committed or how unfit he has become to govern the nation. I said per se because this mode of removing or ousting an incumbent President will be effective only if it is supported by strong and sustained mass actions such as protest rallies and marches, nation-wide workers’ strikes, pickets, walk-outs, boycotts, transport strikes, welgang bayan and civil disobedience. A colleague in the private prosecution panel in the impeachment case recently commented that the Estrada impeachment trial should now be viewed merely as “in aid of the Erap Resign-Movement.” This comment has substance and validity, coming as it did from a seasoned trial lawyer and sharp political analyst. My view is that the impeachment trial and the mass movement calling for Estrada’s ouster or removal from office mutually reinforce each other.

2. It was not pure coincidence that the political forces in the broad tactical alliance calling for Estrada’s ouster are represented to a certain degree as complainants in the impeachment complaint. The leaders of the anti-Estrada movement, the complainants’ lawyers and the members of Congress who initially endorsed the impeachment complaint agreed on this and either tacitly or categorically accepted the validity of the position that Estrada’s removal from office by impeachment is a mere illusion without a strong people’s movement behind it.

3. Indeed, an analysis of the present balance of forces and political alignments in the Senate will readily confirm what a squeaking self-righteous lady senator recently boasted about that President Estrada has a critical mass of eight senators committed to ensure his acquittal. After all, President Estrada did not have any difficulty in building stable relationships with eight women, or in buying or building eight mansions, or in coddling eight cronies or eight smugglers, or in maintaining close friendship with both sides in the impeachment trial have been loudly proclaiming that they will vote according to the evidence, according to their conscience and according to the national interest. Some senators even resorted to the transparent gimmick of resigning or taking a leave of absence from the majority coalition to prove their “integrity and independence of mind.” In the November 14 rally in Liwasang Bonifacio the audience composed mainly of workers, peasants and urban poor readily identified these eight pro-Estrada senators when I said that three were former Marcos cabinet members, two were jueteng balato beneficiaries, the sixth was a former comedian linked to a drug lord, the seventh was a notorious coup leader and the eighth was the squeaking self-righteous lady senator herself. As I watched our Honorable senators taking their oath of office in robes last Monday to perform their most solemn constitutional duty I could not help but wonder: Is the Philippine Senate really capable of rendering impartial justice as they had pledged to the 75 million Filipinos or are our Honorable Senators merely trapos in robes whose votes and judgment in the impeachment trial of Joseph Ejercito Estrada will be dictated by narrow personal, political or monetary considerations?

4. Soon after our people started marching in the streets demanding Estrada’s resignation in the aftermath of the jueteng payola and tobacco excise tax kickbacks exposed by Gov. Chavit Singson, Malacanang started conditioning the minds of the public that the impeachment process is the only solution to the current economic and political crisis. Estrada’s propagandists would want us to believe that mass actions are illegal and are hurting the peso and the stock market and should be stopped for the sake of the country. Nothing can be further from the truth. And no line of reasoning can be more deceiving and more dangerous to us who are seeking the ouster or removal from office of President Estrada than this formulation. And no matter how popular or appealing this line especially to us lawyers and the middle class, we should be able to expose it as a mere ploy to weaken the oust Estrada movement, to divide our ranks and to invoke it as a “legal” excuse to 5. Indeed, the problem of respondent Estrada at this early stage of the impeachment trial may no longer be one of being able to present a good defense or of being able to demolish the overwhelming weight of evidence against him. I believe his handlers are more concerned and pre-occupied now with the problem of how to make the impeachment trial credible and how to package the judgment in a manner that would be acceptable to our people.

In one of our meetings with the complainants and the pro-impeachment congresspersons before the articles of impeachment were elevated to the Senate, I ventured the view which was validated by subsequent events that President Estrada would not block the impeachment process in the House of Representatives or in its Committee on Justice. He could have done so if he wanted to. But he opted not to do this because he knew that the dismissal or termination of the case in the House of Representatives was politically disastrous for him. May I now add that the election of my good friend Aquilino Pimentel, Jr. as Senate President with or without any secret deal between him and President Estrada was part of the grand plan of Malacanang to project the Senate as a fair, impartial and credible impeachment body. The same is true of his eloquent nomination by a respected independent minded senator who happens to be an in-law and protege of President Estrada’s balae.

My friends and colleagues, I have taken pride in saying that I have devoted a great part of my professional life and skills in the defense of the rights of the exploited and oppressed sectors of our society. My long experience in human rights lawyering taught me the important lesson which you all know that the system of justice in our country is heavily tilted in favor of the rich and the powerful. By the same token I have learned from my long experience as a people’s lawyer that the legal battles of the poor can be won only if we have a strong, united and militant movement supporting these battles in the legal fora.

We are now engaged in a legal and political combat against the most powerful official of the land. Let us engage him in the arena where the people are strong and where we will win: in the streets, in the work places, in the churches, in schools, in factories, offices and everywhere where all patriotic Filipinos can freely express their will and fully exercise their highest sovereign authority to oust or remove a leader who has lost his moral and legal right to remain in office. But let us not forget that our victory in ousting or removing from office Joseph Ejercito Estrada is just one not so small step towards building a just, humane, democratic and sovereign Philippine society.