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GOD'S HAND IN PEOPLE POWER

[Sharing by NENE PIMENTEL at the Loyola School of Theology, Ateneo de Manila University, February 7, 2001]
 
To believers like me, the presence of God in People Power 2 at EDSA cannot be disputed. People Power 2 resulted in the peaceful ouster of President Joseph Ejercito Estrada on January 20, 2001.

It was probably the only instance in history where a head of state duly elected by an overwhelming mandate was forced to give up his presidency without a coup d'tat being staged, without a revolution being waged, without a shot being fired or without a drop of blood being shed. If the   hand of God was not there, it would be difficult to find it elsewhere.

In my own life in politics in instances, too numerous to mention, I have seen God's guiding hand. To cite an instance, I believe that the Good Lord made the paths of Mr. Estrada and mine cross when he and I were elected as senators in 1987 in the aftermath of People Power 1 in February 1986.

POLES APART
 
Although poles apart in political philosophy, Mr. Estrada and I became friends, not really close but sufficiently civil, in the Senate. By sheer force of its limited membership, the Senate inevitably throws every one of its 24 members into close contact with one another for the six years of our senatorial term of office.

So it was that we became compadres when he asked me to be a sponsor to the wedding of his son, Jinggoy Estrada, while we were senators in 1989. I  returned the compliment when I asked him to be a wedding sponsor to Koko, my son, last year when he had already been elected president and I had been returned to the senate as a candidate in the slate of Mr. Estrada's in the 1998 elections.

I had joined Mr. Estrada's senatorial ticket - upon his urgings - in the honest belief that Mr. Estrada meant his pro-poor campaign slogans.

Soon after our election in 1998, he as president and I, as a senator, I started to have misgivings regarding the sincerity of his purpose in government I began to see warning signs that all would not be well with his presidency. Among the first tell-tale signs of the impending doom of his presidency was his cynically coarse attempt to justify certain unmeritorious appointments that he had made. In answer to the critics who had questioned the propriety of some of his presidential appointments, he replied "weather-weather lang 'yan". This was, of course, a play on words that told his critics "you wait until you are president, then you can do what you want as I am doing what I want."

PERILOUS PHILOSOPHY
 
His retort was a good mass-media sound byte in Tagalog but it expressed a perilous political philosophy that meant that as the president, he felt he could do what he wanted regardless of what the law said.

In addition, I noticed that his mistresses had multiplied contrary to what he had tried to lead us to believe - that they were a thing of the past. Keeping mistresses cost money which the legitimate emoluments of the presidency could never sustain and which could only, therefore, be satisfied with the dirty money of scheming opportunists and confabulating cronies who were constantly oiling their way into his confidence. With the proliferation of mistresses and their predilection for the ostentatious display of their wealth of dubious origins, the road of the Estrada  presidency to ruin was inevitable.

ROLE IN THE UNRAVELING OF THE ESTRADA PRESIDENCY

In any event, my reelection to Senate and Mr. Estrada's election to the presidency at the same time look to me like a Good Lord had wanted me back in the senate so that I could a role in the ultimate unraveling of his presidency.

Without my asking for it, my colleagues in the Senate chose me to head the Blue Ribbon Committee. The committee, as you know, is tasked with investigating official wrongdoing. Two years and a half into my stint as head of the Blue Ribbon Committee, where I had previously investigated and recommended the prosecution of a former president, several cabinet members and a slew of generals who had run afoul with the law, the roguish governor of Ilocos Sur, Luis Singson, denounced Mr. Estrada as a corrupt and venal president. Backed up by witnesses and documentary evidences, his charges eventually found their way to the Blue Ribbon committee for investigation.

From October 10, 2001, I conducted daily and public hearings on the governor's charges that were covered by mass media I tried to be as fair as possible giving no inkling as to whether or not I believed or disbelieved the governors charges.

[Pimentel adds:  The role of Senator Franklin Drilon in the unraveling of the Estrada Presidency cannot be underestimated.]

SERIOUS EVIDENCE
 
The evidence against the President, however, was serious enough to prod the president's political enemies in the House of Representatives to file impeachment charges against him.

By early November, 2000, it was clear that the House impeachment charges would soon be forwarded to the Senate for trial as mandated by the  Constitution.

In the meantime, people were taking to the streets to call for the resignation of Mr. Estrada. Their numbers were increasing and their voices were becoming more strident by the day.

SENATE REORGANIZATION
 
Adding to the heated political atmosphere, the senate president, Franklin Drilon, decided to show common cause with the demonstrators. Senator  Drilon's defection from the ranks of the senate majority supportive of Mr. Estrada upset the balance of forces in the chamber. Then, Senators Jaworski, Coseteng and Revilla who were also previously identified as supporters of the president resigned from the majority coalition in the senate, thereby reducing their numbers and setting the stage for the reorganization of the senate leadership.

To make a long story short, I got elected president of the senate without my entering into any compromise with Mr. Estrada or with the then vice president, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who had earlier thrown her support for the demonstrators seeking the resignation of Mr. Estrada.

If one who were to use the logic of the word, I cannot see how I, as the only PDP Laban senator in the upper chamber could ever become the Senate President under the prevailing circumstances.  Thus, when I look back at the event, I see it as another manifestation of the Lord's hand that was creating a situation were, unworthy as I am, I would play a central role in the impeachment trial of Mr. Estrada.

I was elected the president of the senate on November 13, 2000. In a matter of weeks, the impeachment trial of Mr. Estrada began.

CHIEF  LIEUTENANT
 
Pursuant to the Constitution, the Chief Justice presided over the impeachment trial of the President. And as President of the Senate, I would act as his chief lieutenant.

I did just that - acting as mother hen to the 20 other senators (one, Sen. Robert Barbers was then undergoing treatment in the US and two other seats are vacant). Whenever a contentious issue would arise, I tried to vector the senators into a consensus. My purpose was to prevent the chamber from breaking up into factions and reduce its effectiveness as the forum to handle the impeachment trial or worse, destroy the credibility of the senate as an impeachment court so early in the proceedings.

But on the fateful day of January 16, 2001, I could no longer prevent the happening of what we, Christians, might call a "felix culpa", a happy fault. The issue was whether or not we should open Envelope No. 2 that allegedly contained evidence incriminatory of Mr. Estrada.

REGRETTABLE DECISION
 
I had suggested a caucus by the senators in the confines of our conference room outside the glare of television klieg lights or photo news cameras before we decide on the issue publicly. They wanted an open vote in front of the people in the section hall of the Senate. It was a decision that they would rue and regret to this very day.

Eleven of my colleagues voted to keep Envelope No. 2 closed. Nine senators voted to open it. After asking for the Lord's guidance I voted with the losing side, raising our numbers to 10 votes. We had lost the vote. 11 senators by their vote kept the envelope closed but our 10 votes opened the eyes of the people to inadequacy of the impeachment device as an institution of government.

[Nene Pimentel adds, I could have simply abstained and issued in the newspapers a 4-page ad with my picture to explain my decision.]

Four days after that historic vote, Mr. Estrada stepped  down from office and  Ms. Macapagal Arroyo succeeded him as president of the republic.

For purposes of our discussion, it might be good for us to discern what  people power - I and II - is all about. After we shall have done that,  then we can proceed to discuss how we can sustain it.

SEARCH FOR JUSTICE
 
In my view, people power - one and two - is about our people's direct  search for justice when the institutions of government no longer sufficed to provide them a redress for their grievances.

In 1986, people power 1 was a statement of popular outrage over the  failure of Mr. Marcos' martial law government to curb abuses in the form of, among other things, graft and corruption, electoral cheating as in the  1986 presidential election, the torture of political prisoners, the jailing of perceived enemies of the state and the outright killing of  political enemies of Mr. Marcos as in the case of Ninoy Aquino in 1983.

FURY AGAINST HEDONISM
 
This year's people power 2 was likewise the explosion of Popular fury -  albeit peaceful - over the failure of Mr. Estrada's government  particularly in curbing graft and corruption by his cronies and members of  his extended family. People power 2 was also about popular indignation against the hedonistic life style of Mr. Estrada that in the eyes of  people knew no bounds. People were simply aghast, appalled and horrified that mansions fit for the Shah of Iran or the emperors of the Roman Empire were being built to house his mistresses while squatters of Payatas die buried in their hovels by landslides of garbage.

Incidentally, I suppose that if Rome had television, radio, newspapers,  and cell phones when Nero fiddled as the city burned, he would have been  ousted too by Roman people power.

In brief, the scandalous greed - unbridled, uncontrollable, and insatiable  - of a select few associated with the Estrada government who appeared to  be untouchable even by the long arm of the law fuelled the people's disenchantment that culminated in the people power 2.

VOTING WITH THEIR FEET
 
The people had sought justice through the institutions of government,  particularly in through the constitutional device of impeachment but it  failed to provide a redress for their grievances.  to EDSA - the historic sense of people power 1 - by the tens of thousands  and provided themselves with the remedy that government institutions could  not provide: they ousted the Estrada government.

No other people have done what our people had done in two people power  demonstrations. And I doubt if any other people can duplicate the way we have sought justice for our grievances at EDSA on two occasions, 1986 and  2001, that wrote finis to governments that seemed impregnable by the standards of the world I think we can justly claim that only the hand of  God guiding our people made people power 1 and 2 possible.