Impeachment is supposed to be more of a political procedure than a strictly judicial one. That is the reason the power to impeach is lodged in the political branches of government, rather than in the courts. If impeachment were intended to be judicial, then the Constitution would have assigned the task of impeaching a chief justice of the Supreme Court to another court, like the Sandiganbayan. Similarly, the impeachment of a president would be tried not by the Senate but perhaps by the Supreme Court itself…

In what way then is impeachment a political exercise? It is political in the sense that, as a form of discourse (or as a way of seeing and communicating), its goal is to arrive at a policy decision that binds the whole society. In this it is governed by a separate code. Whereas Law is guided by the distinction between legal and illegal, Politics is steered principally by the distinction between majority and minority, and between government and opposition. These two sides of the political divide are supposed to represent competing conceptions of what is good for the nation. That is the essence of politics. Thus, with regard to the on-going impeachment, the political question is: Will the removal from office of Chief Justice Renato Corona be good for the country or not?

What is the difference between a politician and a statesman? Here are some answers: (1) A politician thinks of the next election, a statesman thinks of the next generation. (2) A politician thinks of himself first, a statesman thinks of the country first. (3) Anyone elected to office is a politician; a statesman promotes the public good with integrity. Statespersonship conveys a quality of leadership that organically brings people together; and of eldership, a spirit of caring for others and for the whole. (4) A statesman is ever governed by the following principle: I must do what is best for the people as a whole. His job is political probity, even though he may face horrible conditions for carrying it out. (5) A politician makes the possible necessary, while a statesman makes the necessary possible. (6) And my favorite of all: A politician talks the talk; a statesman walks the walk.

How could a bonsai live so long, outliving even the person who planted it? I wondered. It must be keeping a secret… Aha! The bonsai tree’s secret is not a secret after all: simple living…So everything is up to me after all. My life and death are things that I can control somehow. Yes, death is inescapable, but it can be delayed. I can actually live a longer, healthier and maybe happier life if I begin to reorient my diet, stop smoking and stop drinking.

Under pressure from the growing clamor for him to run for president, Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III recently indicated that he was considering seriously to heed the clamor. He told reporters that it was no longer a secret that he was considering a possible run for higher office in 2010 and promised to make his decision soon. But he added:

“There are three factors that I’m really trying to resolve and the biggest is the ability to guarantee to the people that there would be changes, not just try to change things. That’s the most difficult.

“Will I be increasing the frustration of the people and adding to a sense of desperation? Or will I really present, in my way, the changes that are meaningful for the society and country?”

The two other factors were logistics and the sentiments of his four sisters, he said.

The question is: Do we need a Benigno Aquino Jr. prototype to lead the country in the post-Arroyo years?

Of the 193 countries recognized by the United Nations, only 14 qualify to be in the Impunity Index, a list compiled by the US-based Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). Inclusion in that index signifies that “journalists are killed regularly and governments fail to solve the crimes”; and qualification requires that a country has to have at least five unsolved journalist work-related murders within the period Jan. 1. 1999-Dec. 31, 2008, where “unsolved” means that no convictions have been obtained.

In other words, it is a list that names and shames. And the Philippines is on that list. This year, which is the second time the index has been constructed, we rank sixth out of 14, with a rating of 0.273, which is the number of unsolved journalist murders per million inhabitants. Shame.

I started to worry for the students. Who would be their Cory?

Days after that rainy Tuesday, I realized that perhaps the answer to that question consisted of two seemingly incongruent ideas: One, there will never be another Cory and, two, the next generation will have to create their own Cory.

I don’t know which is worse, Imelda explicitly claiming to be the handmaiden of the true, good and beautiful, which are the hallmarks of art, or Arroyo implicitly doing so. Imelda at least had the external trappings of beauty, even if her and her husband’s rule was uglier than the portrait of Dorian Gray. Arroyo doesn’t even have that. Her own rule has become only, well, the artistic representation of all that is not true, good and beautiful. For her to decree who should be national artists is for her to decree who should be national heroes.

That’s not just a Carlo Caparas fantasy, that’s a delusion.

EDSA was the former Highway 54 built by the Americans after Liberation so that war supplies and troops being trucked north and south of Manila skirted the narrow Rizal and Taft avenues. When a name was sought to replace Highway 54, the political leaders of Rizal insisted that it should be named after an outstanding citizen of Rizal Province.

Epifanio de los Santos was a revolutionary leader, a contemporary of Rizal, Bonifacio, Marcelo H. del Pilar, Antonio Luna and the others. He was a teacher, journalist and a librarian. He wrote in Spanish and Tagalog. After the Philippine Revolution, he became the first director of the Bureau of Public Libraries. The former Highway 54 was named after him.

It was here, in the stretch between Camps Aguinaldo and Crame, that the people massed in 1986 to protect Enrile, Ramos and the other rebels from the tanks and troops unleashed by Marcos, and where Corazon Aquino appeared at the corner of EDSA and Ortigas Avenue to cheer the people on.