Zero credibility

Hilario Davide, Jr., and not Renato Corona, should have been the first chief justice of the Supreme Court (SC) to be impeached, thus San Beda Graduate School of Law dean Fr. Ranhilio Aquino was too charitable in his characterization of Davide in his May 4 column.

In that piece, Aquino admitted though that Davide and his fellow members of the Citizens’ Peace Council (CPC) were Malacañang's “conscripted allies”. thus their recommendation to Congress to pass the BBL was to be expected and should be scrutinized thoroughly.

To call a spade a spade, Davide is a Malacanñang rah-rah boy for the BBL and his being a former chief justice does not imbue with any legal weight the views he expressed last week on the BBL before the House, where he displayed an air of legal expertise that was too contrived to be believed.

Davide has lost any and all claim to credibility when he escaped impeachment in 2003 by the skin of his teeth over his highly questionable use of hundreds of millions of pesos of the Judiciary Development Fund (JDF). Remember Davide’s kurtina (curtains) scandal?

The murmurs then were that two lady presidents  had to work behind the scenes to massage members of congress into not impeaching Davide. However, that endeavor failed when 86 members of the House still voted to transmit the articles of impeachment against Davide to the Senate.

What happened next was Davide’s own SC saved him from ruin by declaring the impeachment complaint as unconstitutional on a mere technicality – on it being the second such complaint filed against Davide within the same year.

And now, Davide wants the people to believe that he has the credibility to push the BBL? What Davide  doesn’t realize is that he is already damaged goods, and that his pretensions as a former CJ are clear for everyone to see. 

The BBL is a thinly concealed attempt to carve a Muslim sub-state from Mindanao as a precursor to secession.  Davide cannot tell us otherwise.  -end-