INQUIRER.net Eleksyon 2007

Gonzalez’s gaffe may cost him his job

Inquirer

Amando Doronila

MANILA, Philippines -- Justice Secretary Raul Gonzalez compromised himself after he offered on April 22 to give P10,000 to each barangay (village) captain in Iloilo City who could deliver a 12-0 vote for the administration’s senatorial candidates in the May 14 election.

It was an act Gonzalez would soon regret. It could cost him his job. It has not passed unnoticed. It instantly sparked a political tempest and calls for his resignation or at least suspension in the closing weeks of the election campaign.

Worse, the offer, made in the heat of partisan passion to win the election at all costs, has prompted the Commission on Elections to start an inquiry into whether the government’s highest judicial official has violated the Omnibus Election Code.

The investigation started a legal process that could not be reversed without opening the Comelec to accusations of a cover-up on behalf of Gonzalez.

No matter how reluctantly Comelec Chair Benjamin Abalos ordered the investigation, the controversy has not only rapidly blown up into a major political issue but it has also acquired a life of its own. It has put Gonzalez’s job on the line, and has put the entire Arroyo administration itself and the Comelec on the spot.

Aware of the serious implications of Gonzalez’s promise, Abalos was at first evasive on whether Gonzalez had broken the law, but he directed Renato Magbutay, the Comelec director in Western Visayas, to start an inquiry.

Definition of vote-buying

In reply to reporters’ questions, Magbutay was more forthright. He said “the giving of money is prohibited during the campaign period. If the promise is consummated, this would constitute violation of the Omnibus Election Code and could be considered vote-buying.”

The code is explicit in defining “vote-buying” as among “prohibited acts.”

Section 261 (a) of the code states: “Vote-buying and vote-selling (1) any person who gives, offers or promises money or anything of value, gives or promises any office or employment, franchise, grant, public or private, or makes or offers to make an expenditure, directly or indirectly, or cause an expenditure to be made to any person, association, corporation, entity or community in order to induce anyone or the public in general to vote for or against any candidate or withhold his vote in the election, or to vote for or against any aspirant for the nomination or choice of a candidate in a convention or similar selection process of a political party.”

Another Comelec director, Ferdinand Rafanan, was even more emphatic when he told ABS-CBN on Thursday that under the election code, “there are three acts considered crimes -- the act of giving, the act of offering and the act of promising. That’s why the mere act of promising money is already a crime …”

The law cannot be any clearer. It sufficiently provides a reasonable basis to non-lawyer citizens to make a political judgment on whether or not the secretary of justice has broken the law. This issue is a matter for public opinion more than a legal issue. We have to leave the legal issues to the lawyers and the courts of justice to decide.

Gonzalez and his colleagues in the administration appear to realize that he is in trouble and that he has dug his own hole with his reckless inadvertence. Gonzalez has tried to wiggle himself out of the hole by citing irrelevant explanations.

Reckless inadvertence

Not denying he made the offer, Gonzalez said, among others: The offer was an “incentive” or a “prize,” so there is no vote-buying; he did not promise public funds, as he could back the promise with money which would “just be equal to one harvest from my wife’s poultry farm.”

Following public calls for Gonzalez’s dismissal or suspension, President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo did not come to Gonzalez’s defense, leaving the issue to be resolved by the Comelec, and leaving him to boil in his own stew.

Things were made worse for Gonzalez by Executive Secretary Eduardo Ermita, who put up the lame defense that Cabinet members were not prohibited from electioneering. That is not the issue. I have not seen any Philippine secretary of justice who has been more blatant and overt in his partisanship than Gonzalez.

As the controversy gained intensity, there were signs Gonzalez was being muzzled, and had become a political embarrassment and liability, in the midst of the election campaign, over a whole range of his provocative remarks over the administration’s abominable human rights violations record.

These arrogant remarks have earned widespread hostility for the country from the international community and have alienated a broad sector of the population.

Of all Cabinet members, Gonzalez has become the most controversial. He has become the lightning rod of rising public dissatisfaction with the administration. According to Palace insiders, Gonzalez’s latest gaffe has forced the President to consider sacking him if the controversy gets out of hand.

Outrageous statements

Gonzalez has increasingly offended many for his outrageous statements -- that the extrajudicial killings were the “collateral damage” in the war against the communist insurgency; that the US Peace Corps volunteer Julia Campbell was to blame for her murder because she was “careless”; and that UN human rights rapporteur Philip Alston has no right to meddle in investigating the killings in the Philippines because he is merely a “muchacho” (an underling) at the United Nations.

He has gotten away with this exuberance. This time, Gonzalez has gone over the edge. The Comelec investigation of his possible breach of the election code raises the issue whether his continued stay in the justice department is compatible with his sworn duty to ensure a fair, impartial and just administration of justice to all citizens.

Gonzalez is under fire because of this incompatibility, less because he is damaging the administration’s election campaign. His position has become untenable.

His latest fiasco has forced the President to make a choice between Gonzalez and protecting the integrity of the administration of justice in this country.

The obvious logical option is that Gonzalez has to go.

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