THE Senate is fortunate  nay, the entire nation  in having Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile at the helm of the impeachment court in the trial of Chief Justice Renato Corona.

Enrile’s pivotal role is crucial in this most trying period in our  “maturation as a democracy,” to borrow the words of former Senate President Aquilino Pimentel Jr.  In fact, it is difficult to imagine any other presiding officer in Enrile’s place, save perhaps Senator Nene Pimentel himself.

Even keel

Since the beginning, Enrile has kept the impeachment court on an even keel, a task made even more difficult by the dual nature of the impeachment process itself as defined by the Constitution. In the words of Sen, Miriam Defensor-Santiago, the impeachment process is “quasi-judicial, quasi-political in nature.”

This duality of function is a product of the process itself.  Senators, like congressmen and the President, belong to the political branches of government, meaning elected representatives of the people. This differentiates them from to the judiciary, the third great branch of government, which is tasked with the judicial function, or the interpretation of the laws passed by Congress and implemented by the President.

Repugnant

This separation of powers, and the corollary principles of checks and balances, form the basic tenets of our representative republican democracy.  The great powers of government are deliberately divided among three co-equal departments to prevent the dangerous accumulayion of power in any single branch. And this principle is rooted in the basic idea that a dictator is not only repugnant to a free people but eventually leads to the death of democracy itself, as history has shown repeatedly.

The situation becomes even more complicated when the Constitution, in exceptional cases like the impeachment process, melds both the legislative of policy-making power with a quasi-judicial power in the hands of a political branch.

The basic idea behind this complex process is that impeachment is an exceptional power made available to remove from office only a select group of high government officials, and then only for a select cluster of  “high crimes” like culpable violation of the Constitution, treason, bribery, graft and corruption, and betrayal of public trust.

Strict requirements

Each of the specified crimes have strict legal definitions, except perhaps for betrayal of public trust, which is a recent addition in the 1987 Constitution and for which there are no known  parallels in other countries.

The select group of high officials who are impeachable include the President, Vice President, justices of the Supere Court, members of constitutional bodies like the Commission on Elections, and the Ombudsman, the government’s chief prosecutor in graft cases.

Aside from these reasons, the importance of the impeachment process is further emphasized by strict  constitutional provisions on its implementation.  In initiating impeachment, the House of Representatives is constitutionally mandated to follow strict legal procedures such as the determination of probable cause or “sufficiency in form and substance.”  While the House is empowered to adopt its own rules on impeachment, the rules of evidence and procedure are largely made available as “suppletory” guidelines.

Similarly, the Senate as an impeachment court is guided by the Rules of Court and rules of procedure and evidence in addition to its own rules.  In acting as judges, the senators take an additional oath to “act impartially according to the Constitution and laws.”  And to further emphasize the importance of this job, the Constitution requires a two-thirds vote (16) to convict an impeached official.

Immense responsibility

The immensity of this responsibility was crystal clear to Enrile when he began the impeachment trial in January.  In his opening statement, he said:

“As jurors, it is our obligation and responsibility to closely and diligently examine the evidence and the facts to be presented before us, to determine whether such evidence and facts sufficiently and convincingly support the charges, and ultimately, to decide the fate of no less than the Chief Justice of the Highest Court of the land, and the head of a co-equal branch of our government....

“While it has often been said that, by and large, the trial in an impeachment case is political in nature, nonetheless, such is neither an excuse nor a license for us to ignore and abandon our solemn and higher obligation and responsibility as a body of jurors to see to it that the Bill of Rights are observed and that justice is served, and to conduct the trial with impartiality and fairness, to hear the case with a clear and open mind, to weigh carefully in the scale the evidence against the respondent, and to render to him a just verdict based on no other consideration than our Constitution and laws, the facts presented to us, and our individual moral conviction.

Call to ‘civility’

“...I therefore urge everyone to fully cooperate in the orderly conduct of these proceedings in accordance with the rules, to demonstrate civility and to observe the decorum that is required for us to carry out our respective duties with dispatch, with honor and with dignity....

“Although the ostensible respondent in the trial before us is the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, we cannot escape the reality that, in a larger sense, the conduct of this trial and its outcome will necessarily have a serious impact on the entire nation. Its success or failure to achieve the purpose for which the Constitution has provided this mechanism as part of our system of checks and balances and of public accountability, may spell the success or failure of our democratic institutions, the strengthening or weakening of our sense of justice as a people, our stability or disintegration as a nation, and the triumph or demise of the rule of law in our land,” Enrile said.

The trying times ahead will put to the test not only Enrile’s mastery of his craft but his statesmanship as well. He has an opportunity given by circumstance to a very few:  he has a date with history.