As I previously mentioned, in the United States the big question when a presidential scandal erupts is this: “What did the president know, and when did he know it?” This was Senator Howard Baker’s famous question during the Senate hearings on the Watergate scandal which led to President Nixon’s resignation. The “smoking gun” in Nixon’s cover-up of the 1972 Watergate break-in and many other abuses of his executive power was the audio tapes of the Oval Office conversations with his staff that Nixon himself recorded. When it became apparent that there were more than enough votes in Congress to be impeached by the House and then convicted and removed from office by the Senate, Nixon resigned in August 1974.

If you read the summary of the Watergate scandal, you would see many, many parallels to the current National Broadband scandal in the Philippines. The president, according to her own admission today, was told of bribes and anomalies even before she signed the deal in China. If she was the honest president she claims to be, she should have suspended the people involved, appointed a special prosecutor, and ordered a swift investigation of the affair. This should have led to indictments and prison sentences of those people. And why did it take her five months from the time she learned of the anomalies to cancel the deal? Why did she not appoint a special prosecutor or order a thorough investigation of the matter as soon as she learned of it?

Instead, this has become for her a case of “sin upon sin,” like King David trying to cover up his adultery with lies and murder. She might not be involved herself (hardly believable if her husband was involved), but isn’t knowingly covering up her cabinet members’ corruption illegal and punishable under Philippine law as “obstruction of justice” and “abuse of power”? It gives me the shudders when I read about this scandal, knowing the way the Watergate scandal unfolded and ended. In this case, there seems to be not one “smoking gun,” but several, including her own admission, and the testimonies of other government officials.

What should Filipinos do to right the situation? Flood the streets again to topple another abusive administration? Edsa 1, Edsa 2, Edsa 3 – when will it end? If they unseat Mrs. Arroyo in an Edsa 3, how soon would it take for Edsa 4 to unseat the next lameduck president? To break this cycle of unconstitutional removal of presidents, the rule of the Constitution, not the rule of the mob, should be allowed to take place. Because the Philippine government is largely patterned after that of the United States, it also takes a simple majority in the House and a two-thirds majority in the Senate to impeach and remove a president. It is very evident that even the American Congress votes along party lines, as in the case of President Clinton’s impeachment by the House and acquittal by the Senate. However, in Nixon’s case, six of the 17 Republican members of the House Judiciary Committee voted according to their conscience to impeach one of their own.

If Filipinos take the high road of Constitutional process in this scandal (Romans 13:1-7), the question then is this: Would the members of the House and Senate be honorable and just enough to vote for what is honorable and just? Or would these members of Congress, who are unfitly addressed as “Honorable,” vote as usual, i.e., according to their bank accounts? And if there is Constitutional removal from office, would corruption in high places stop? I doubt it. Not within this generation, or even the next, and the next… generation of Filipino politicians. Maybe a strongman in the mold of President Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore can break the vicious cycle of corruption in the Philippines. Now if only there exists such a Filipino…

I’m writing these thoughts as an outsider looking in, not to be on one side or the other, as I try to be as objective as my subjective mind allows. As I strongly believe in the spirituality of the church, these are my personal thoughts.