REPOST Unconstitutional, but not immoral. by: ANTONIO P. CONTRERAS This mantra is one made in the context of the recent unanimous ruling of the Supreme Court declaring certain crucial portions of the Development Acceleration Program, otherwise known as DAP, as violating the 1987 Constitution. It is a voice that is composite of a larger coordinated defense, both through the formal and official channels of Malacañang, and the informal channels, in tweets and posts in social media of its allies and defenders. What is unconstitutional is not necessarily immoral—this is the gist of the defense of those who support the DAP, and the President. It is a nice attempt, but it simply doesn’t do the trick. The deployment of this defense has the purpose of branding as morally-righteous those who attack the DAP on moral grounds, as if to be morally righteous is an “F” word. In the same breath, some of those I have directly come across in social media debates argue that it is not fair to doubt the President’s moral compass, considering that he was sincere and he acted in good faith. This gives the impression that it is fine when we accord the President moral righteousness, but not fine to accord the same to his critics. Some apologists further deploy the argument that equating unconstitutionality with immorality, particularly in a deeply flawed system, is simply dangerous, which begs the question: To whom is it dangerous? In fact, what is dangerous is to hold the opposite, that what is constitutional is not necessarily moral, since it opens the floodgates for self-righteous politicians and public officials to ignore the Constitution using their moral ascendancy as their sole justification. I have come across an argument that laments the difficulty that a President has to deal with to do what is right and good, some of which come in the form of roadblocks that emanate from limits provided by the Constitution. This view is what is dangerous, for it reduces the Constitution to just a piece of paper that can be dispensed with if it becomes an inconvenience for the attainment of some moral good. I have personal problems with this Constitution myself. In fact, I find it too verbose, and there are many constraining or vague provisions. But there is a legal, and moral, way of addressing the issue. Amend it. Revise it. And for a President who controls both Houses of Congress, it would be easy. If votes can be mustered to oust a sitting Chief Justice who has become an inconvenience, it would have been also easy to mobilize the same votes to amend a Constitution that has already also become an inconvenience. To paint as dogmatic those who call to task the DAP by questioning its moral grounds, some allies and defenders of the President argue that this would have the effect of turning the Constitution into a religious icon. In doing so, the faithful defenders of this Administration have tried to paint its critics as closed-minded bigots in placing too much faith on the Constitution. These voices of the defenders of the DAP and the apologists of the President are simply mind-boggling for their selective amnesia. They conveniently forgot that it is this President who turned politics into a morality game, and elevated the moral discourse into a political mantra with his Daang Matuwid. It is his demonization of “wang wang politics,” his predecessor and all who disagree with him that ushered in a period where the complexity of our political structures and processes has been reduced into a Manichean opposition between good and evil, and simplified politics into a black and white movement. Of course, it is understandable that they would not equate unconstitutionality with immorality for the simple reason that they would like to give logic to their use of good faith as a defense. They know that in order for good faith to be considered, that one has to also take into consideration the moral dimension. After all, it is to people who have strong moral groundings that we can easily attribute good faith. Hence, in order for a political action to be redeemed by any appeal to good faith, more so if that action has been declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court, we have to take into account morality by asking the question of whether the act was designed to promote what is good. After all, and simply, to be moral is about doing what is good. But insisting that an unconstitutional act could still become moral has dangerous implications. Doing so may have the effect of decoupling morality from constitutional politics. To suggest that attacking the DAP on moral grounds is nothing put partisan politicking would demean the potent arguments of those who equate the moral with the constitutional. In their earnest desire to shield this President from any culpability, his apologists would not even care that they in effect deny the Constitution its moral fiber. They think that the President’s moral compass and, by implication, theirs are all above the confines of the Constitution. And these are people who live, breathe and eat Daang Matuwid as a mantra for governance. What is then revealed is a blatant kind of moral elitism—that it is correct for this Administration to appropriate morality, which in fact it recently did when it denied Nora Aunor the title of National Artist on the basis of her alleged questionable morals, and it is wrong for its critics to label its acts as immoral. When its allies unleashed the most vitriolic attacks against its enemies on the issue of the PDAF, the moral high ground was appropriated with gusto. But now that the tables are turned, and that it is their allies that are the ones now being put to task in the case of the DAP, the President’s critics are denied such moral high ground. This is patently selective. This is hypocrisy, to say the least. We all witnessed the almost messianic theatrics from the white side of black and white politics, in the halls where congressional investigations were held, and on the streets, and in cyberspace, all condemnatory and spiteful of Napoles, and of the triumvirate of Enrile, Estrada and Revilla. Now that the four are in prison or in the other prison, otherwise known as a hospital, the efforts to make the corrupt accountable seemed to have stopped. There is no more sign of any congressional investigation in the horizon of the Daang Matuwid despite the clear indication that there are many others like Napoles, and there are many more senators, congressmen and other government officials involved; no more issuances of summons to witnesses; no more holding of press conferences parading whistleblowers wearing bulletproof vests; and no more widespread rallies demanding accountability. And the silencing of the political theatrics is becoming even more odd considering that the magnitude of DAP in terms of amount is a lot more compared to the PDAF. Oh, as apologists would wail in protest, but the PDAF is totally different since in its case there was malicious intent to abuse and steal. They would say that good faith could not be deployed as an excuse since there was the deliberate plan to commit plunder. And the DAP is different since it involves this morally upright President, and therefore is above board. When the Supreme Court earlier ruled that the PDAF was unconstitutional, there was automatic and blanket equation of unconstitutionality with immorality, and that every PDAF is a seed of corruption. It is therefore strange, to say the least, that the people who readily said so, are also the same people who now insist that the DAP’s unconstitutionality is not an automatic warrant for its critics to question it on moral grounds. The PDAF was easily demonized as a poisoned tree, and that any fruit it bore was likewise poisoned. What was simply forgotten is the simple truth that the PDAF, while corrupted by Napoles, her ilk and her conspirators in the halls of the legislature and the implementing agencies, had its redeeming side. The PDAF is a natural outcome of, albeit an organic political structure inherent in, a personalistic political culture where ordinary citizens see members of Congress not as legislators but as conduits for the provision of services from the state. In this political culture, a congressman is seen as the approachable face that can give assistance to an indigent constituent to get treatment in a government hospital, or to get a scholarship to go to school. A senator can be a catalyst that can help facilitate the release of funds to a local state college to improve its infrastructures, or to develop its research capacities. Until Napoles was allegedly tutored, and quickly learned the trick of siphoning funds from state coffers and diverting these to bogus NGOs reportedly in cahoots with corrupt legislators and facilitated by equally corrupt bureaucrats, the PDAF was a legitimate pipeline to enable the social contract of the State to deliver services to its citizens through their elected legislators. In fact, it was one time deemed a constitutional act according to an earlier Supreme Court ruling, which was only reversed recently. And those who were honest and used their PDAF to deliver services to their constituents, without getting any commissions, were in fact those who can rightly declare that they acted in good faith. They were in fact those who can also claim that while the Supreme Court later declared the practice as unconstitutional, that what they simply did was not necessarily immoral. Yet, when the PDAF was declared unconstitutional, we only heard a sheepish protest from the Executive, which was later drowned by the massive condemnation of PDAF, as immoral, and the calls to prosecute those who abused the PDAF. There was no concerted effort to mouth the mantra of “unconstitutional, but not immoral” coming from Malacanang, and echoed in social media by its allies and defenders. DAP, to be fair, may have indeed a noble intention, except that its execution was tainted by its sheer violation of the principle of separation of powers, and by Executive abuse when it went beyond what was allowed by law and by the Constitution. It is interesting to note that the PDAF was already in existence, and have had several incarnations across several Congresses. It was simply pork barrel by a different name. It was an open practice, and widely accepted both by Congress and by the public, until such time that it was declared unconstitutional. Problematic as it may have been, and corrupted as it may have become, it was a process that was already part of the public discourse. This is something that could not be said about the DAP. It is odd that a program with a noble intention of accelerating development by allowing the President to release funds to agencies and legislators to finance projects for their constituents should be shrouded by a cloak of secrecy. This is uncharacteristic for an administration that is in the habit of bannering its accomplishments, and demeaning that of his predecessor. The DAP is supposed to be an attempt to reinvigorate and pump-prime an economy that was allegedly drained by years of corruption under Gloria. It would have been a perfect venue to once again contrast the straightness of this Administration’s path compared to Gloria’s. However, it was only when Senator Jinggoy Estrada squealed on the DAP that the public has come to know of the existence of this program. This begs a lot of question. Why the secrecy? Why keep the public totally in the dark about it? Why should Senator Drilon issue a private and confidential memorandum to legislators to solicit proposals for funding under it? Why the attempt to deny it at first, or forget? How can you not vividly remember when the amounts involved were in the hundreds of billions? And how can you keep secret a program with a noble intent and firmly based on a strong moral grounding? Unconstitutional, but not immoral? Really? Indeed, the DAP may have noble goals, but we can’t blame those who attribute to it some other sinister intentions now that it has been revealed. It is because it was treated almost like a state secret. And the last time I checked, an act of good faith is one that you do not hide, and one that you are transparent about. It is one that you are proud to tell people about from the beginning, and not just disclose and admit later only because you have been found out. One can therefore no longer claim an act to be in good faith it there was a plan to hide it from public scrutiny. In this blighted and unconstitutional corner of Daang Matuwid, the palace apologists and defenders are now left with no other option but to keep hanging on to a discursive mirage of insisting that the President remains on a moral high ground. They will keep on repeating this “unconstitutional, but not immoral” mantra. For the only other option for them is to admit that the President adhered to the old adage of the end justifying the means. However, they would not dare say this, for this would turn them to become the new Machiavellians. This would be a terrible thing to say relative to a President who has built his political house of cards on moral high grounds. Indeed, a new Machiavellian adage that would replace “the end justifies the means” has just been born. It is found in the mantra “constitutional, but not immoral.” The author is a former dean of De La Salle University. The views expressed in this article are those of the author ... LikeLike · 3 people like this. Aurora B. Mangubat Unconstitutional but not immoral but still , such should not
Posted on: Fri, 25 Jul 2014 05:10:14 +0000
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