Nov.-Dec. 2000

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Alumni Speech by Sen. Nene Pimentel

Senate President Nene Pimentel

“With God as our guide and you by our side, we cannot go wrong!”

(Speech of Senate President Nene Pimentel at the Xavier University-Ateneo de Cagayan Alumni Homecoming, December 1, 2000)

Fellow alumni:

May I thank Councilor Roy Raagas, our alumni president, and our alumni association for inviting me to speak before our gathering today.

Your kind invitation gives me an opportunity to publicly reiterate and express my gratitude to the Lord and Mary, his mother, and our alma mater, Xavier university, the Ateneo de Cagayan, for having exposed me early on in my teen-age life to the ineluctable need of man and woman to adhere to certain eternal verities like love of God, country and people for life in this world to have any meaning at all. In sum, the years I have spent as a student of the Ateneo instilled in me the Ateneo spirit which in my view sums up the philosophy of being a man or woman for others.

Freshman.

It was in this campus some 52 years ago, to be exact, in 1948, that I had enrolled as a callow youth among the high school freshmen of this institution.

Since then, I have known no other school but Xavier University, the Ateneo de Cagayan, all the way up to law school from which I graduated in 1959. 

No regrets.

Looking back through all the 11 years that I had spent with the university, I must confess that I have had no reason to regret the experience at all.

My high school years introduced me to the wonderful mysteries of our religion which I have tried through the years to believe in even if sometimes I do not fully understand why the mysteries must remain so. And even if some pastors of our church by their lives confuse me even further. The high school years also opened the amazing world of literature to me even if sometimes the meaning of Shakespearean words and sentences eluded my limited vocabulary.

The college years brought me into contact with Virgil’s Aeneid, the Man with the Hoe and the social encyclicals of the popes. And to top it all, I met a pretty girl in the course of our work as volunteers in the Ateneo catechetical instruction league or the ACIL. She would become my wife, the mother of our six children, who has since then been my dear friend, in-house counselor and compassionate critic.

Law school.

Then law school taught me Roman law, civil law, criminal law, and other legal postulates.

This mix of religious instruction, liberal education and specialized legal training by the grace of the Almighty has brought me to where I am now – in the vortex of an impeachment trial that could abruptly cut short the covenant between Joseph Ejercito Estrada, the president of  the republic, and the sovereign people that he should serve us for six years from 1998.

Awesome duty.

As members of the impeachment court, we, senators have the awesome duty under my humble stewardship as senate president to find the president of the republic either guilty or not guilty of the impeachment charges that have been filed against him.

Our decision, however, will have to be based on evidence, not necessarily evidence beyond reasonable doubt that is required in criminal cases but on clear and convincing evidence that in reason convinces an impartial mind that there is some basis to convict the person impeached.

No resignation.

Despite the noisy demonstrations calling for the resignation of the president in Manila and in some major urban centers in the Visayas and in Mindanao, it looks like the president is not going to resign. It looks like he will hang tough and fight the impeachment charges all the way up to the last witness who will be presented against him.

That is why it looks like there is no other constitutional way to test the validity of the president’s clinging to power than by subjecting him to the impeachment trial that the senate is now conducting.

I have previously said that we should conclude this nightmare by the end of December of this year.

More difficult to meet deadline.

While the going gets rougher by the day and it looks like it is more and more difficult to finish the impeachment trial by the end of December as previously estimated, I believe that we should stick to that deadline so that we do not appear as if we are encouraging the delay of the termination of the impeachment trial.

As senate president, I am happy to formally report to you what you already know through the mass media that the senate as an impeachment court had denied last Tuesday, November 28, the motion to dismiss the impeachment charges filed by the president’s counsel.

We denied the motion principally because the defects pointed out by counsel are more in the nature of form rather than of substance. Moreover, as a senate - even if we are acting as an impeachment court – we should probably not lecture our counterparts in the house who are our equals as to how they should discharge their duty to initiate impeachment proceedings.

Had we decided to grant the motion to dismiss, it would have the effect of prolonging the agony of the people who are obviously desirous of ending the impeachment trial soonest.

As the impeachment court, we also denied the motion filed by a lawyer asking permission to intervene in the impeachment trial. We decided that he had no standing whatsoever to legally qualify him as an intervenor in the case.

In any event, the date for the trial of the impeachment case was set for December 7 of this year. We gave the president until December 1 to file his answer should he so desire and the house prosecutors until December 6 to file their reply to the president’s answer if they wish to do so.

If the president does not file any answer, the case will proceed and the impeachment court will receive whatever relevant and material evidence may be proffered for our consideration.

Senators will meet responsibility.

Despite the brickbats of intrigue, the spate of innuendoes and the wave of outright malice that are thrown to or directed against us, I still believe that the senators will rise up to the demands of the responsibility that has been thrust upon our shoulders.

The rulings of the impeachment court denying the motion to dismiss the impeachment resolution and the motion to intervene are, at the very least, indicators that the senators – as they have sworn - are about to discharge their duty to deliver impartial justice in the impeachment trial of the president.

I am proud of the unanimous rulings of the impeachment court last Tuesday because they underscore the fact that the senate as an impeachment court will not brook any attempt to delay the impeachment proceeding.

The rulings also show that the senators acting as judges in the impeachment court –even those who had previously been marked as diehard partisans of the president - are able to transcend or rise above their personal, political or social connections with the president.

For as senators sitting in the impeachment court, our duty is to search for the truth of the impeachment charges that had been filed against the president by the house of representatives.

Evidence needed.

Our duty is to find the president guilty if the evidence so warrants. Our duty is to find him innocent if the evidence presented by the prosecution falls short of being clear and convincing as our respective consciences see it.

Other people may have already prejudged the guilt or innocence of the president. We, as senators, who sit in the impeachment court cannot do that. For the senators – to repeat – have taken an oath, individually, to render impartial justice in the impeachment trial.

People’s judgment.

Aside from the oath that we took as judges in the impeachment court that obligates us toconsider the evidence that will be presented before the impeachment court, we are  also aware hat in turn, our judgment in the impeachment court will be judged by the people, themselves. If in the eyes of the people our decision is correct, they will probably applaud us. If in their judgment, our decision is wrong, they will certainly punish us.

In either case, there will be people who will be pleased and there will be people who will bepained by any decision that the senate will impose in the impeachment trial.

Trial must be fair and just.

That is the added reason why it is most important that the impeachment trial be, in fact, done fairly and justly by the senate and is seen by the people as being done fairly and justly. 

It is only by our being fair and just that we can face the people and tell them that we have done our best to render impartial justice in the impeachment trial.

Incidentally, it is for that reason that I expressed elation and happiness over Koko’s decision to resign from the board of directors of UCPB even if had he stayed, it would not move me an inch from what I have to do as a senatorial judge in the impeachment trial of the president.

Final decision.

Perhaps, it may interest you to know that the senate’s decision in the impeachment trial is final. There is no appeal from it to the supreme court or any other government tribunal.

Because the senate’s decision will be final for the reason that there is no appeal to any tribunal set up by law, it is all the more vital that we be as impartial as we can be in the impeachment trial.

Lesson to be learned.

Before I end, may I state that despite the pain and anguish that we, as a people, feel resulting from the impeachment trial, I believe that there is a positive lesson to be learned from this nightmare.

And the lesson is that as a people we must internalize the meaning of democracy that Lincoln had defined years ago as a government of the people, by the people and for the people. For after 102 years as a putative and a working democratic republic, I am not certain that as a people, we realize that the rule of law must prevail in the country so that no man or woman is above the law and that every man or woman – high or low - is subject to the law.

Democracy at work.

The judgment of the senate in the impeachment trial will show the world whether or not we are a working democracy or that we only have the façade of democracy.

The job of holding the impeachment trial of the president is an awesome responsibility.

It is a terrible duty to bear, something that we cannot do alone. To do the work of delivering impartial justice in the impeachment trial of the president, the senate requires the support of the people no less.

Work doubly difficult.

But people are shouting on the streets demanding that we convict or acquit the president.  People are pressuring us from all sides verbally and in writing. People continually cast doubt on our ability to deliver a fair and just decision in the impeachment trial.

Thus, our work has become doubly difficult.

I think I echo the sentiments of the senate – that instead of hectoring us, you should probably pray for us; that instead of intimidating us, you should probably keep watch over us; that instead of harassing us, you should probably support us.

Then and only then can we freely perform our duty to do what is right for our country and people in the impeachment trial of the president on the basis of our conscience working on the evidence that is brought to our attention.

We won’t disappoint you.

With God as our guide, with you by our side, with our oath writ large in our hearts, we will do our best not disappoint you.

May the Ateneo spirit ever be with us throughout the new millennium.

Congratulations again to our school, our alumni, and friends of Xavier University, the Ateneo de Cagayan.

Thank you.