TRICKY TSIS finally assumes the post of presiding officer of the Senate as the impeachment court to initiate the trial of Misfit Sara. But Tricky Tsis is not worthy of public trust and respect. He bungled the handling of the Articles of Impeachment, which 240 members of the House of Representatives have signed and sent to the Senate for appropriate.
Tricky Tsis was the reason for the four-month delay of her impeachment trial. Despite being trained as a lawyer, Tricky Tsis wrongly interpreted the impeachment provisions of the 1987 Constitution. He relied mainly on the erratic legal views of an infamous colleague in Francis Tolentino. They were both publicly crucified.
Although he has cultivated an image of a cunning and amoral lone wolf, Tricky Tsis has changed gears when he saw the emerging public opinion against his erratic views. Rather than being perceived as a lapdog of the Dutertes (Rodrigo and Sara), Tricky Tsis softened his stand to allow the Senate to convene as an impeachment court to try Misfit Sara.
In their unsuccessful misadventure, Tricky Tsis relied on Tolentino, a loser in the last senatorial elections, to sell the perverted view that the Constitution does not allow any crossover of unfinished impeachment issues from one Senate to the next Senate. Retired Supreme Court Justice Adolf Azcuna amply corrected his erroneous interpretation, saying that, as one of the 49 framers and the one who authored the provisions on the impeachment, the Senate, as a continuing institution, allows the crossover.
Tolentino, who lost despite spending nearly P2 billion in campaign ads, assailed Azcuna’s views, but the venerable magistrate hardly took him seriously. Even his colleagues in the Senate did not take him seriously. Eventually, they have decided to convene the Senate as an impeachment court with Tricky Tsis as its presiding officer.
As the presiding officer of the Senate impeachment court, Tricky Tsis holds enormous powers to hasten or impede the trial of Misfit Sara. He can issue any memorandum-circular, order, resolution, or any written documents to define, refine, or reformat the trial of Misfit Sara. Through these orders, he can protect or send Misfit Sara to political oblivion and prison.
His power of recognition is most important. As the presiding officer, he can ask any person or groups of persons to testify, speak, condemn, or explain against or in favor of the issues raised in the Articles. He can unilaterally stop any person from appearing in any hearing of the Senate as an impeach court. He can implement the Rules of Procedures to his personal liking. Tricky Tsis is very powerful indeed.
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ACTUALLY, it was not difficult to know and understand the complicated issue of the impending impeachment trial of Misfit Sara. Despite its glorious past because it nurtured towering intellectual giants like Claro Recto, Jose Laurel, Lorenzo Tanada, Jose Diokno, and Jovito Salonga, the Senate has virtually abandoned its task to become the forum of different ideas by its failed attempt to renege on its duty as an impeachment court.
Despite his evasive moves and double talks, Tricky Tsis, for instance, has unveiled his not so politically healthy hidden agenda. He did not want the Senate to convene as an impeachment court and subject Misfit Sara into a trial because she does not have the facility of expression to disprove serious allegations of wrongdoings and violations of the 1987 Constitution. Moreover, Misfit Sara does not have the proof to counter the plethora of evidence in the Articles of Impeachment.
A trial by the Senate as an impeachment court on the alleged crimes committed by Misfit Sara could be as messy as Tricky Tsis could imagine. But what he and his bunch of pro-Duterte lawmakers were avoiding was the emerging situation, when they could no longer control the flow of much information, including the introduction of evidence to prove beyond reasonable doubt that Misfit Sara is a criminal, who deserves disqualification to any public office.
Their objective: Protect Misfit Sara at all cost. They hardly mind the adverse consequences of this worthless objective to the national interest and to their political careers. So long as they protect Misfit Sara, anything is fine to them. The rising public opinion finally put a brake on them. The public did not support them.
Tricky Tsis and her allies could have seen the damaging consequences of the 2012 impeachment trial of the Supreme Court Chief Justice Renato Corona and probably learned a lesson or two from that political spectacle. Corona was confident that the Senate, as an impeachment court, would exonerate him of the charges, as many senators were allies of then President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, who was his political benefactor.
As pieces of evidence were introduced one after the other during the course of the tumultuous five-month impeachment trial, the supposed friendly senators turned hostile to Corona and, at the end, found him guilty as charged, voted against him, and removed him from office. Corona hardly recovered from the impeachment until he died of a heart attack in 2016.
This is not all. Tricky Tsis and pro-Misfit Sara senators could have observed how the lawmakers allied with the President Rodrigo Duterte avoided any impeachment trial by the Senate on then Chief Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno. They invented a patently unconstitutional way to kick Sereno out from her office.
They capitalized on the envy and bitterness of senior justices, who met a career deadend upon appointment of a junior magistrate in Sereno to become the chief justice of the Supreme Court. Duterte’s minions lead by his Jose Calida, his solicitor-general, who was notorious for being a fixer in many court cases, created a wedge between Sereno, who did not have political patrons, and the unscrupulous justices, who were supported by Duterte and even GMA.
They knew that Sereno’s removal from office through the unheard and untested quo warranto proceedings was constitutionally wrong but they persisted and succeeded anyway. Sereno did not have the heart to fight against those bitter melons in the High Court. In Misfit Sara’s case, her defenders were still in the process of finding a way to escape any impeachment trial. But what happened to Sereno could not be applied to Misfit Sara.
