While not totally striking out Justice Secretary Leila de Lima’s testimony on the alleged irregularities in the Corona-led Supreme Court’s issuance of the controversial temporary restraining order (TRO) involving Rep. Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s attempt to leave the country last November, which were revealed by Associate Justice Ma. Lourdes Sereno in her separate opinion; Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile dismissed the Secretary’s comments as hearsay. For this reason, he admonished his colleagues not to regard the Secretary’s testimony regarding Justice Sereno’s revelations, although he allowed the said testimony to remain on record.

The Senate President’s admonition may have represented what I think is the prevailing mood of the senator-judges, which is, well, to disregard hearsay testimonies despite the fact that, as the Senate President acknowledged, hearsays are actually admissible as evidence in impeachment proceedings. The ballistic Senator Miriam Defensor-Santiago, a recently-elected judge of the International Criminal Court, for instance, even went as far as to suggest that Secretary de Lima’s testimony be  stricken out entirely. The more sober Senator Panfilo Lacson, on the other hand, suggested that the prosecutors move to subpoena a court stenographer who may have been present in the justice’s deliberations and could therefore verify Justice Sereno’s disclosures.

But, as congressman-prosecutor Raul Daza correctly pointed out, court employees are actually covered by the Supreme Court’s Valentine’s Day gag order. There is no way, therefore, for the Senate to determine the Chief Justice’s guilt regarding Article Seven of the Impeachment Complaint, which alleges that the Chief Justice betrayed public trust by being partial to Arroyo in granting the TRO and by distorting the Supreme Court’s decision “on the effectivity of the TRO in view of a clear failure to comply with the conditions of the SC’s own TRO.”

This is the latest hurdle,  laid down by the Supreme Court itself, against the Senate Impeachment Court. Perhaps most observers would agree that the Supreme Court’s gag order was more political than judicial: It was meant to insulate itself from legitimate congressional inquiries in general and impeachments in particular. Indeed, its use of the doctrine of judicial privilege appears to have been drawn straight out of Arroyo’s playbook.

Judicial privilege protects the Judiciary from interference by the other two branches of government in its execution of its duties. It classifies internal court deliberations as privileged communication, and therefore not subject to scrutiny, since confidentiality in decision-making preserves the “integrity of the administration of justice.” The idea, in my understanding, is to protect judges from legal liability on what they say or write when deciding a case, thereby encouraging uninhibited discourse and exchange of ideas among the judges. This is similar to executive privilege, which protects state secrets and encourages open and frank discussions among the President and his agents when they formulate policy. Arroyo cleverly invoked executive privilege in order to dodge congressional inquiries regarding the corruption scandals that plagued her nine-year illegitimate presidency.

But judicial and executive privileges are not codified in the Constitution or in any other laws. They are merely jurisprudential that are assumed to be part of the residual powers of the said two branches. Therefore, as Justice Sereno stated in her dissenting opinion against the Valentine’s Day resolution, judicial privilege, while needed by the Judiciary to function well, should weigh less compared to the value of accountability of public officials, which is enshrined in the Constitution. It’s merely “a qualified, not an absolute, privilege.”

“Judicial privilege cannot be invoked to impose a general or absolute gag order on Members and officials of the Judiciary.  Neither can it deny the Senate Impeachment Court and the public in general ‘informations [sic] on matters of public concern,’ by draping a complete cloak on the Court’s records,” writes Justice Sereno.

Indeed, if the current Supreme Court’s strict interpretation of judicial privilege is to be followed, then there’s no way for the Congress to impeach any member of the Judiciary on the basis of behaviors during deliberations of a pending case that constitute betrayal of public trust. In short, the Legislative’s impeachment power is enfeebled. This, in effect, distorts genuine checks and balance system among the three branches of government.

As an institution known for its history of asserting its independence, I’m sure the Senate would not want its impeachment powers, its genuine constitutional check against the other branches of government, to be rendered inutile. What, then, should be its recourse? Coming from a purely political, as opposed to legal, perspective, I think there are three:

Firstly, the Senate can consider Secretary de Lima’s hearsay testimony. Sure, doing so is probably perceived to be anathema from the perspective of legal due process; but the senator-judges must think beyond their Lawyer’s Umwelt. The sui generis Impeachment Court is not just a judicial body but a policy-making body as well. Its function is not only to determine the guilt or innocence of the impeached, but also to determine whether his continued stay in office is beneficial for the country or not. Doing the latter, like any other policy-making action, is more political than judicial; therefore, it should not be boxed by technical legalese. Besides, considering a hearsay testimony is not really against impeachment due process in the first place.

Secondly, the Senate can reverse its earlier ruling not to serve subpoena on members of the Supreme Court. As I understand it, the said ruling was given by the Senate on its own volition in order to respect a co-equal branch. But based on the Supreme Court’s temporary restraining order (TRO) against the Senate’s subpoena on the Chief Justice’s dollar accounts and the Valentine’s Day gag order, it seems that the Supreme Court is not inclined to return the courtesy. Of course, this option could provoke a constitutional crisis, since the gag order would prevent the justices from honoring the Senate subpoena, which in turn could force the Senate to cite the justices in contempt. But the Supreme Court is bound to lose in the event of such a crisis.

Thirdly, the Senate can send written interrogatory questions to Justice Sereno, and consider her answers as evidence. Senator Antonio Trillanes IV has already moved for the Senate to do this, and the senator-judges will take his motion up in a caucus on Monday. If Senator Trillanes’s motion is carried, the Senate would be able to take up the issues in Article Seven without relying on hearsay testimony, and without reversing its earlier ruling not to compel Supreme Court members to testify. Still, however, this may clash with the Supreme Court’s gag order and could also again pit the Senate against the High Court.

Having no legal training whatsoever, I cannot say if these three options are legally sound. Moreover, these could be very difficult for the Senate to undertake. But politically-speaking, the Senate as an institution– and all the country’s political institution, including the Supreme Court, in general–has more to lose if it doesn’t do any of these.

The strict interpretation of judicial privilege is another symptom of judicial supremacism that has characterized Philippine politics since the enshrinement by the framers of the 1987 Constitution of an encompassing judicial review power and the subsequent judicialization of political issues which the public, cynical of politicians and in awe of men in robes, has long encouraged. Thanks to Arroyo’s corruption of the Supreme Court, it has become clear that this judicial supremacism is a glaring political illness, from which the Philippines–if it wants to complete its transition to a modern, viable democracy– must begin curing itself from.

Unfortunately, doing so is not only difficult; it could be very costly as well.

SEE ALSO: My blog post on the Supreme Court’s TRO in favor of Arroyo and its defiance by Secretary de Lima.

The Senate itself holds some sort of a middle ground: It says that the Supreme Court can exercise judicial review in interlocutory matters, but it has no jurisdiction on matters pertaining to trying and deciding an impeachment case, since the Senate has the sole constitutional authority on such matters. In my opinion, however, this middle ground opens a Pandora’s Box that could lead to either the dilution of the Congress’s exclusive impeachment powers or an outright constitutional crisis.

I’m afraid this dilemma represents a defect in the country’s 1987 Constitution, a document that may have over-reacted to the excesses of the Marcos dictatorship. Since I have no formal training in the field of law, my thoughts on this debate is framed on a purely political perspective, although it’s inevitable for me to venture a little bit into the legal domain.

Political questions.

In the United States, from which much of Philippine jurisprudence is based, there is no such debate. The Americans hold that the court’s power of judicial review does not cover the impeachment process in Congress. Any questions regarding the process should be resolved not by the Judiciary but solely by the Congress. One of the reasons for this, as the landmark Nixon vs US ruling states, is that, since impeachment is the Legislative’s tool to discipline the Judiciary, it would be absurd for the judges to interfere and tell the lawmakers how they should be disciplined. In other words, the impeachment process is a purely political question.

A political question is one that can’t be resolved through judicially-discoverable standards and should therefore be adjudicated outside judicial forums. In Baker vs Carr, five other standards of what constitutes a political question were also enumerated, among them: the existence of a textually demonstrable constitutional commitment of the issue to a coordinate political branch; the impossibility for a court independent resolution without expressing a lack of respect for a coordinate branch of the government; and potentiality of embarrassment from multifarious pronouncements by various departments on one question.

In the Philippines, it is unmistakable that the framers of the Constitution viewed impeachment as a political question that is beyond the scope of judicial review. This can be seen in the transcript of the debates of the members of the Constitutional Commission. For instance, when Commissioner Felicitas Aquino, who pushed in vain for the granting of the power to try impeachment cases to the Supreme Court instead of the Senate, was asked if she was proposing that impeachment be subject to judicial review, she flatly answered “No.”

Indeed, contrary to those pushing for the strict application of rules of evidence in the trial of impeached Chief Justice Renato Corona, Constitutional Commision President Cecillia Munoz-Palma had actually made it clear that the intent of the framers is to “liberalize the impeachment process.” Of course, as Commisioner Rustico de los Reyes said, this liberalization is a reaction to the frustrating impotence of the impeachment provision in the 1973 Constitution, which failed to hold then President Ferdinand E. Marcos accountable for his wrongdoings.

Judicial review as a duty of courts.

Jurisprudence, however, has apparently deviated from this otherwise clear intent.

In 2003, ousted President Joseph Estrada filed an impeachment complaint against then Chief Justice Hillario Davide that was eventually dismissed by the House Committee on Justice. Four months later, one-thirds of the members of the House of Representatives endorsed an impeachment complaint against Davide filed by congressmen Gilberto Teodoro and Felix Fuentebella. Such an endorsement would have warranted the transmittal of the complaint to the Senate, but Davide’s camp claimed that the complaint was unconstitutional on grounds that the Constitution says that the House may only initiate one complaint per year. House leaders claimed that Estrada’s complaint was not an “initiation” by the House and should therefore not be counted, prompting Davide’s supporters to bring the matter before the Supreme Court.

In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court declared the impeachment complaint unconstitutional. Further, it reversed the earlier consensus that impeachment is a purely political matter that is exempt from judicial review. The ruling, penned by then Associate Justice and now Ombudsman Conchita Carpio-Morales, states that judicial review applies on impeachment since, unlike in other “truly political questions,” there are judicially-discoverable standards on which to adjudicate legal questions relating to impeachments. These standards are the limitations imposed by the Constitution on Congress’s impeachment powers.

The Congressional leadership at that time contended that these legal questions—in this case, the interpretation of what the word initiate means in the context of impeachment—should be resolved not by the Supreme Court but by the Congress, as is the consensus in American jurisprudence. But the Court would have none of it. The Court’s stance is premised on an innovation in the 1987 Constitution that requires courts to exercise judicial review on all actions by any instrumentalities of government. My understanding is that, in the United States, the concept of judicial review is not really codified but rather assumed to be merely part of the residual powers of the Judiciary. In the 1987 Constitution, however, judicial review is not only enshrined as a power of the Judiciary but a duty as well. This, according to Constitutional Commissioner and former Chief Justice Roberto Conception, is a reaction to the tendency of pre-1987 courts to be too timid in exercising judicial review, citing the political question doctrine as an excuse.

Judicialization of politics and judicial supremacism.

The said 2003 ruling, argues Franco Aristotle Larcina in an interesting 2006 study published by the UST Law Review, has paved the way for greater judicial interventions in the impeachment process. Since the premise of the ruling is that judicially-discoverable standards invite judicial review, it should follow that the Court may also determine the validity of the decisions of the Impeachment Court in cases of, say, treason, bribery, and graft and corruption. These offenses, after all, have concrete legal meanings that can serve as judicially-discoverable standards to adjudicate questions regarding whatever ruling the Impeachment Court makes on such cases. In short, while Carpio-Morales insists that the matter of her 2003 ruling was case-specific, Larcina argues that it actually opens the door to judicial review even on impeachment decisions themselves, among other things.

But despite what he identifies as its “imperfections,” Larcina generally thinks that the 2003 ruling is not totally undesirable. He sees it as merely a part of the “judicialization” of contemporary Philippine politics, where the public routinely asks the Supreme Court to resolve even questions that are political in nature– perhaps due to the Judiciary’s heretofore reputation as an unassailable bulwark of democracy or, as undersecretary for communications Manuel L. Quezon III thinks, the superstitious awe that men of the robes inspire. Indeed, Larcina even sees this judicial activism as a “stabilizing factor.”

Obviously, however, much has happened since Larcina published his thesis. Specifically, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo happened. During much of her illegitimate term, Arroyo fended off threats to her political life and in the process undermined many of the country’s institutions. Taboo after taboo were violated, for instance; even the tool of martial law was used for political ends. And in her efforts to dodge post-presidential prosecution, she stuffed vital institutions like the Office of the Ombudsman and the Supreme Court with her loyal minions. As a result, for instance, the country does not have a Chief Justice with impeccable moral ascendancy anymore.

In short, the public can no longer “rely on the wisdom of the Supreme Court to exercise its awesome power of judicial review in a judicious and circumspect” manner, as Larcina wrote in his thesis. In this context, judicialization is no longer a mere stabilizing factor but a tool that can be used to undermine the constitutional checks and balance system itself. I call this judicial supremacism, where the Judiciary can check the Executive and the Legislative, but not the other way around.

Clash of values.

Therefore, the clash between the values of upholding the predominantly political nature of impeachments versus that of upholding the duty of the Judiciary to exercise judicial review has become more pronounced. This is a clash that the framers of the 1987 Constitution apparently failed to anticipate, and this is a clash that the Philippines must confront as part of its long-term transition into a modern, viable democracy.

In my view, the best way to resolve this is to go back to the American paradigm. The Judiciary must continue to view judicial review as a duty, but impeachment—particularly impeachment of a member of the Judiciary—must be an exception.

The clear intention of the Constitution when it enshrined judicial review as a duty is to protect the constitutional rights of citizens. On the other hand, ensuring accountability among public officials is the intention behind the provision on impeachment. If the latter gives way to the former, the latter’s value would be gravely compromised. If, on the other hand, the former gives way to the latter, the harms would not be as grave.

For instance, even without judicial review, any abuses on the part of the Legislative in the exercise of their impeachment powers can be checked by the electorate who could choose to penalize their representatives in an election. On the other hand, the public is without recourse should the Judiciary commits abuse in its exercise of judicial review over impeachment processes. Indeed, as columnist Manuel Buencamino wrote, assuming that there could be “impartiality from Supreme Court justices when one of their own is being impeached… defies reason. It goes against human nature.”

More importantly, unlike in a criminal trial where what’s at stake are the rights and liberty of the accused, in an impeachment case what’s at stake is merely the impeached official’s privilege—not even a right—to hold public office. Clearly, in the scheme of things, the privilege to hold public office is subordinate to the State’s right to rid itself of erring officials.

ELSEWHERE: Very impressive compilation of information related to impeachments and judicial review, including transcripts of Constitutional Commission debates, here.

Last week, Hashimoto’s political party, the Osaka Restoration Association (Osaka Isshin no Kai), promulgated a list of goals that it said it would pursue should it enter national politics. These goals include the removal of pension for rich retirees; the abolition of grants from Tokyo to local governments and its replacement with direct local government taxation; the abolition of the House of Councillors; and, as if these weren’t bold enough, the direct election of the Prime Minister. In short, Hashimoto’s clique is calling for a shift from a unitary, bi-cameral parliamentary configuration to a quasi-federal, unicameral quasi-presidential form of government.

These bold platforms have gained the support of the leaders of the regionalist movement like Aichi Governor Hideaki Omura and Nagoya Mayor Takashi Kawamura, as well as the former Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) heavyweight and current Minna no To (Everyone’s Party) chieftain Yoshimi Watanabe. Watanabe’s support, which I find a bit surprising, seems like a desperate ploy to use Hashimoto’s energy to reinvigorate his heretofore marginalized micro-party. I wonder if he realizes that Hashimoto’s group is in fact a long-term threat to the Minna no To.

It is interesting to hear what Ichiro Ozawa, the erstwhile shadow shogun and Democratic Party (DPJ) kingpin, has to say about Hashimoto’s manifesto. Ozawa, who has recently made himself busy criticizing Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda’s tax increase proposals, will probably be emboldened by last Friday’s court decision to disregard the only evidence in his pending corruption case and go all out against the Prime Minister and his anti-Ozawa handlers. Recently, Ozawa has been sending feelers to Hashimoto’s camp. Apparently, the power-broker sees Hashimoto as a hedge in his apparently brewing plot to take on Prime Minister Noda.

Of course, there are some differences between Hashimoto’s goals and Ozawa’s vision– Ozawa is on the left in terms of social spending while Hashimoto is quite libertarian, for instance; but the two share the opinion that Japan needs to repudiate the bureaucrats and the current political establishments, and to pursue a more independent foreign policy. These common grounds could be enough for Ozawa, a notoriously savvy negotiator, to strike an alliance of convenience with the popular mayor. And indeed, for Ozawa– and Watanabe for that matter– the incentive to win Hashimoto over is quite high: Tuesday’s poll show that a resounding 53% of the Japanese electorate want neither the DPJ nor the LDP but a third force to form the next government.

The problem with Hashimoto, however, is that his goals are so radical they would need constitutional revisions, which in turn would require two-thirds nod from both houses of the Diet and, ultimately, the public’s approval in a plebiscite. All these require enormous political capital, and it’s even unclear if Hashimoto can maintain his current snowball, considering how short the Japanese public’s political attention span is. Unless Hashimoto is merely raising the stakes so he could strategically negotiate to the middle– a strategy that is not without high risks– it’s quite easy to dismiss Isshin no Kai’s platforms at this point as, for the lack of a better term, delusional.

But one can never really tell. As I’ve said last week, these are interesting times for Japan.

At first glance, the Defense’s accusation—which is based on the words of an anonymous source; therefore, hearsay—looked like a desperate, but largely impotent, act; one that, in the words of legal scholar and Huffington Post commentator Edzel Tupaz, “burned all the political capital the Defense had.” But it appears now that it could have actually been, in fact, a well-thought political gambit that paves the way to the shifting of the main arena from the Senate to the Supreme Court.

It seems that the Defense made the Sunday evening move in order to put the Senate on the spot as it tackled the Supreme Court’s TRO: Should the Senate defy the Court’s order, the public would think that the senator-judges had been bribed. From a purely political perspective, therefore, Monday’s vote seems to have been a knee-jerk reaction by the Senate, firstly, to prove that the senator-judges can’t be bribed and therefore the Impeachment Court remains credible; and, secondly, to gain or maintain its political capital. Note that prior to the Defense’s bombshell, the Senate, or at least many of the senator-judges, had been hinting that they intend to keep the Judiciary from “emasculating” on the Legislative’s impeachment power, despite the fact that the Supreme Court had already ruled in an unfortunate 2003 decision that its judicial review jurisdiction covers matters related to impeachments (more on this in another blog entry).

While Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile insists that the Senate retains the “sole authority” to try impeachment cases and that judicial review of impeachment is limited to interlocutory matters, the Impeachment Court’s deference to the Supreme Court’s orders means that the Defense can now routinely question before the Judiciary every Senate decision that it would deem disadvantageous. The Supreme Court, after all, would have the authority to determine which matter is interlocutory and therefore subject to judicial review and which is not.

This is especially significant since the Defense has now become more vigorous in insisting on judicializing the impeachment procedures to the point of using the standards of criminal proceedings, despite the earlier consensus that the impeachment trial is akin to neither criminal nor administrative proceedings but is sui generis that is more of a political than a judicial exercise. For instance, the Defense is trying to persuade the Senate to disregard the damning information regarding the Chief Justice’s peso accounts by virtue of it coming to light through fake documents, citing the fruit of poisoned tree doctrine, despite the fact that the Estrada impeachment trial had already resolved that the fruit of poisonous tree concept is applicable only in criminal proceedings. Should the Senate reject the Defense’s framing of the proceedings on standards of criminal law, the Defense can take its case to the Supreme Court.

Of course, the Defense’s efforts to block the presentation of evidence and to try to win their case on the mere basis of technical legalese will most likely earn the ire of the public. But the Chief Justice’s camp is probably calculating that any public outcry would be minimal since, firstly, the prevailing public mood seems to favor a resolution of the issue through the institutional arena, and, secondly, Corona can count on the Iglesia ni Cristo to provide, at the very least, substantial cushion in the parliament of the streets, so to speak. Indeed, as Palace communications mandarin Manuel L. Quezon III pointed out in his blog, the Defense has practically “conceded the court of public opinion” and is now attempting to “sandbag the Senate.”

Things could have been better had the Senate President, known for his record of pragmatic politics, prodded his colleagues in a caucus to seek a compromise between the Senate and the Judiciary. For instance, the Senate could have expressly stated that it was not acknowledging the Supreme Court’s TRO but merely seeing it as a non-binding legal advisory that the Impeachment Court would, on its own volition, defer to, as a friend of this blogger has suggested. I’m in no competence to say if such a move could have been legally sound, but from a purely political perspective it could have been a reasonable compromise. The point is that, instead of merely sticking to their dispositions—which range from tying to protect the Senate’s turf, to trying to zealously adhere to jurisprudence, and to trying to avert a constitutional crisis—the senator-judges could have tried to come up with a middle ground that could avert an inter-departmental war or a constitutional crisis without subverting the Impeachment Court.

But unfortunately, the senator-judges, by deciding to defer to the Supreme Court’s TRO, have made the Defense’s efforts to “sandbag the Senate” easier. At best, it has invited further attempts by the Defense to continue seeking interlocutory interventions from the Judiciary. At worst, it could embolden the Supreme Court to grant the Chief Justice’s petition to have the impeachment proceedings nullified on the basis of alleged lack of due process during the initiation of the complaint at the House of Representatives. The irony for these senator-judges is that their Monday vote has not effectively discounted the possibility of a constitutional crisis.

At the end of the day, Quezon’s description of this political drama as being “something of a roller-coaster ride” could probably be an understatement. This whole brouhaha is dangerously testing some of the country’s most important institutions: The Legislative’s ability to check the Judiciary could be in danger of being rendered inutile, while the Supreme Court, by being dragged into this political roller-coaster, could be in danger of undermining its very own instutional legitimacy.

Of course, as a student of politics, I find these bickerings, and the political maneuverings that come with them, very interesting. Fascinating political developments have been unfolding in the country recently. Just as everybody thought that there couldn’t have been anything more dramatic than the ouster of the long-entrenched Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) in 2007, the resulting shadow battle between the reformists and the political establishment, and what everyone thought was a track towards a two-party system; more tectonic shifts are actually occurring: ones characterized by the rise of new political actors, the re-invigoration of previously marginalized political actors, and the corresponding reaction from the traditional political actors. And these shifts have been triggered not from Tokyo but from Osaka, Nagoya, and other regional centers.

Banzai. Toru Hashimoto and Ichiro Matsui celebrate their double victory in Osaka. (Asahi Shinbun Photo).

Local government leaders who have increasingly been binding themselves together to push Tokyo to cede more powers to the prefectures have become, for all intents and purposes, full-fledged actors in the national political scene. While the movement for regionalist devolution has been around for quite a time, never has it reached the heights it currently enjoys. The movement’s popular poster boy, the boyish-looking Osaka Mayor Toru Hashimoto, described by many as a revolutionary, has stunned the country with his bold and cunning maneuvers.

Mayor Hashimoto had served as Governor of Osaka since 2007, where he pushed for several local reforms that were derailed by local bureaucrats and city mayors working to protect their turfs. Among his pet proposals was the merging of the city and prefectural governments of Osaka to create a metropolitan entity similar to Tokyo. But when the then Mayor of Osaka, who was anxious to protect his city’s autonomy, blocked this move, the exasperated Hashimoto resigned as governor, challenged the incumbent mayor in the election, and sent his lieutenant to run for his gubernatorial post. With the highest voting turn-out in history, Hashimoto and Ichiro Matsui won the mayoral and gubernatorial elections, and their local party, the Osaka Restoration Association (Osaka Isshin no Kai), won control of Osaka city and prefectural councils.

Hashimoto’s dramatic victory prompted the creation of a formidable but loose entente among like-minded local government leaders. Among those who have joined the alliance are Aichi Governor Takeaki Omura, Nagoya Mayor Takashi Kawamura and the maverick Governor of Tokyo, Shintaro Ishihara. These leaders have demanded the beleaguered government in Tokyo to cede more powers to the prefectures, with Hashimoto vowing to send political assassins to unseat their members in parliament should the major Tokyo-based political parties ignore his group’s demand. It doesn’t look like an empty threat.

The Governor of Aichi, for instance, is establishing a political training institute that many observers say is a prelude to the creation of his own political party. Mayor Hashimoto’s party, of course, is already a force to reckon with in the Kansai region. The governors of Ehime, Kagawa, Kochi and Tokushima in the Shikoku region have also expressed their intention to form their own regional association and to collaborate with the Kansai regionalists. And no less than Democratic Party (DPJ) kingpin and perennial schemer Ichiro Ozawa, whose political acumen is probably unmatched in Japan, has acknowledged the regionalists’ political rise: Governor Omura has been invited to speak at a caucus of around 100 Ozawa minions in the Diet while the erstwhile shadow shogun is reported to have been sending feelers to Mayor Hashimoto’s camp.

Meanwhile, some of the former political bigwigs who had found themselves in the political wilderness after they bolted the LDP in 2007 and formed their own micro-parties, are seeing Hashimoto’s movement as an opportunity for them to again play a bigger role in national politics. In particular, micro-parties Tachiagare Nippon and Minna no To are now presenting themselves as a vehicle for Hashimoto’s entry into the national political stage. An alliance of convenience would most likely loom between Hashimoto and either of these parties. Both would be needing each other: Hashimoto needs these parties’ machineries and national political network, while the parties could use Hashimoto’s energy. Indeed, in a recent TBS poll, seventy five percent of respondents believe that it’s high time for the regional parties to enter national politics while Hashimoto was voted as the most electable official, followed by Governor Isihara and Prime Minister Yoshihiko Noda.

All these are becoming a challenge to the two major political parties, the ruling DPJ and the opposition LDP.

Clockwise: Prime Minister Noda, DPJ power-broker Ozawa, LDP chief Tanigaki and Osaka Mayor Hashimoto. (Asahi Shinbun Photo)

For the DPJ, particularly Prime Minister Noda, this is an added complication to the already difficult situation he is in. His bold moves to trim the Diet and to raise taxes are facing opposition from the political establishment, even from within his own party. Ozawa, who represents the intra-party opposition to Noda, is opposing the Prime Minister particularly on his tax measures, which has always been and will always be a political taboo in Japan. Indeed, former Prime Minister Naoto Kan, who had entered office with substantial public support, lost the Upper House of the Diet to the LDP when he proposed tax increase last year.

In fairness to Ozawa, he has been consistent with his views on the tax issue ever since, and his beef with Noda’s tax policy proposal appears to be principled. He has been going around rallying support against the proposal, even courting the regionalists themselves. If Ozawa, known for his great backroom skills, succeeds in winning over the Hashimoto forces, he would give the Prime Minister some very painful headaches, to say the least.

But the threat to the LDP is actually bigger. After its downfall in 2007, the party, which had led Japan almost uninterruptedly for fifty years, has been gaining brownie points due to the incompetence of successive DPJ governments. Under the leadership of party chief Sadakazu Tanigaki, the LDP enjoyed an increase in popularity ratings, leading to a point where it could have easily regained control of the government had there been snap elections. But this public support represented a vote against the DPJ instead of a vote for the LDP. It won’t be an exaggeration to say that the public’s attitude towards the LDP, whose long rule incubated graft and corruption, remains highly cynical.

The rise of the Hashimoto-led regionalist forces, if they successfully forge tactical alliances with Ozawa and the other national but small parties, could present themselves as an alternative to both the corrupt LDP and the incompetent DPJ. This is why I believe the LDP would probably push the Prime Minister to call for elections as soon as possible, before Hashimoto’s forces could build a substantial political machinery.

Of course, popular as they are, the Hashimoto forces, even with support from micro-parties, will never be able to wrest control of Tokyo on their own. The best they can do, assuming they become able to field enough parliamentary candidates, is to represent a third force that could ensure that neither the DPJ nor the LDP would be able to command majority in the Diet. In such a scenario, it would be exciting to see how Hashimoto, Ozawa, Tanigaki and Noda would play their cards.

Interesting times, indeed.

Update, January 12: Yomiuri Shinbun reports that 2,750 people have applied to be part of Mayor Ishihara’s “political training institute.” Obviously, these applicants want to be on the shortlist when the popular mayor selects his candidates for parliamentary seats in the event of a snap election. Meanwhile, the eccentric Tokyo Governor Ishihara has called on his son, Shintaro, to resign as Secretary-General of the LDP, saying the party is irresponsible. This will surely heighten the apparent rift between the father and the son.

Why the fact that Corona had already acknowledged the validity of the trial at the onset should not have estopped him from lodging this petition, only lawyers know.  But what’s probably clear to both lawyers and non-lawyers alike is that Corona’s petition appears to be a sign of either panic or desperation, or perhaps both.

Corona’s petition was prompted by revelations that he maintains multiple multi-million peso bank accounts amounting to around thirty million pesos, and that he also maintains dollar accounts in several banks. These have shifted the tide of the trial in favor of the inexperienced prosecution team, who had earlier struggled to keep up with the legal acumen of Justice Serafin Cuevas and other high caliber defense counsels.

These revelations expose the glaring dishonesty in the Chief Justice’s Statement of Assets, Liabilities and Net Worth (SALN), where Corona only declared around three million pesos in cash assets. While Corona’s defense has yet to be heard, it appears that disproving the prosecution’s allegations that Corona misdeclared his SALN would be very challenging for the Chief Justice’s lawyers to do.

A graph showing the discrepancies between Corona's SALN and his actual bank accounts. From Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima's Facebook page.

Indeed, when Corona’s defense counsels questioned the subpoena issued by the Senate on Corona’s bank records, the senator-judges voted to uphold the subpoena during their closed-door caucus. This vote, veteran journalist Ellen Tordesillas observes, could be indicative of how the Senate would ultimately rule on Corona’s impeachment. This is why it appears that the Chief Justice is seeking to shift the arena from the Senate to his home turf, the Supreme Court.

This is the height of shamelessness. In his desperate ploy to prevent his inevitable ouster, Corona is pitting the Supreme Court against the Senate and pushing the country to the brink of a constitutional crisis. What’s more, it seems that he has even allowed himself to be used by another political actor, the politically-influential religious sect Iglesia ni Cristo.

Unconfirmed rumors indicate that the influential Iglesia, who counts Justice Cuevas among its members, is siding with Corona on this issue due to its beef with President Benigno S. Aquino III. Intelligence reports by the Philippine National Police indicate that the seven thousand people that protested in support of the Chief Justice at Padre Faura Street yesterday was mobilized by the Iglesia. It is unclear what the Iglesia’s stake on the impeachment drama is, but my speculation is that it has something to do with the sacking of Magtanggol Gatdula, a member of the Iglesia, as Director of the National Bureau of Investigation for his alleged complicity in the kidnapping of a Japanese national. Allegedly, despite the fact that the Iglesia’s support was crucial in his winning the 2010 election, President Aquino, compared with former Presidents Joseph Estrada and Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, has been less accommodating to the Iglesia’s requests.

It remains to be seen if the Iglesia factor would affect how the Senate would ultimately decide on Corona’s impeachment. What’s clear is that the Senate as an institution has traditionally been protective of its own turf, and it would never allow the Supreme Court to, in the words of Senator Teofisto Guingona III, “emasculate” its “exclusive constitutional mandate of impeachment.”

Indeed, as Raul Pangalangan notes in his Inquirer column today, when Senate President Juan Ponce Enrile denied the prosecution’s motion to subpoena Supreme Court justices as witnesses in the impeachment court on grounds that, out or respect to a co-equal branch, the Senate should “scrupulously stick to its own turf” and shouldn’t ”venture into the Court’s;” he was actually telling the Supreme Court that the Senate “expects the same deference in return.”

“The Senate decision not to issue subpoenas to the Court is a classic pre-emptive strike. The Supreme Court should read between the lines of the Senate order and, having done that, see the writing on the wall,” writes Pangalangan.

Should Corona’s colleagues grant his petition to stop the impeachment trial, the Senate would almost certainly ignore the Court’s order. This would cause a deadlock between the two political institutions. If such deadlock results in actual defiance of each other’s orders, the country will be in a constitutional crisis.

But in the event of such a crisis, where two institutions are issuing conflicting orders, the real arbiter would be the person who has the mandate to execute the State’s police power. That person would merely choose which of the conflicting orders to carry out. And unfortunately for Corona, that person happens to be his nemesis, the President of the Philippines.

The Democratic Progressive Party (DPP), an advocate for Taiwanese independence, had clearly wanted to reverse President Ma’s pro-China policy; although its standard-bearer, Tsai Ing-wen, framed her campaign on socio-economic issues that resonated well with the ordinary Taiwanese. For his part, President Ma argued that continued friendship with the Mainland is more conducive to development. Tsai called this view naive, saying closer integration with the People’s Republic is dangerous.

Re-elected Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeo (AP Photo)

Not surprisingly, both China and the United States supported President Ma’s candidacy. There is a variety of factors behind America’s support for the President, the most important of which is the fact that the United States cannot afford any complications in China-Taiwan relations at this time. This is especially because, despite their recent attempts to assure their Asian allies of support on the South China Sea dispute and to reach out to Myanmar, the Americans are still trying to co-opt China into the international order by seeking its assistance in a variety of multilateral initiatives.

The reasons behind China’s support, on the other hand, is quite obvious. And indeed, these reasons form the premise of the arguments of those saying that President Ma’s re-election could mean instability in the status quo of China-Taiwan relations.

The stability of the said status quo is contingent on a 1992 consensus, forged by the Communist Party of China and President Ma’s Koumintang (Nationalist Party), stating that both sides acknowledge that there is only one China, to which Taiwan belongs; although both sides are free to define what that one China means. In short, both sides agreed to shelve any discussion on the political status of Taiwan to the back-burner. President Chen Shui-bian rejected this consensus and pushed for independence during his eight-year term, leading to a very unstable China-Taiwan relationship; but President Ma reversed him, allowing Taiwan to forge economic ties with Beijing without jeopardizing its political status, as agreed upon in the 1992 consensus.

However, closer economic integration between the two Chinas means that Beijing, being the larger economy, could gain greater leverage over Taipei. This leverage, coupled with the perception that the Mainland-born President Ma is accommodating to Beijing, could encourage China to abandon the 1992 consensus and raise the issue of Taiwan’s political status with the government in Taipei. This could mean pressuring President Ma to agree to a formal cross-straits negotiations on a One China, Two Systems formula. Such a formula would almost certainly lead to Taiwan becoming a special administrative region of China just like Hong Kong and Macau, something that, according to polls, most Taiwanese reject.

Even if Beijing doesn’t immediately push for a One China, Two Systems formula, some observers think that the Mainland might still pressure Taiwan to succumb to a number of demands in the short term. In an essay on this week’s issue of the journal Foreign Affairs, for instance, University of Southern California (USC) Associate Professor of International Relations Daniel Christopher Lynch argues that, with China’s expectations raised after President Ma’s re-election, “Beijing might call upon Taiwan to stop purchasing weapons from the United States, phase out its institutionalized military ties with Washington, and formalize the 1992 consensus into law.” Professor Lynch admits, however, that such demands would not “appear on the immediate horizon, partly because China itself is currently tense with anticipation of this year’s coming leadership transition.”

Indeed, I don’t think any pressure from China on Taiwan to take their relationship to the next level would come during the duration of President Ma’s second term. Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping, who is set to succeed President Hu Jintao this year, would most likely need all the time and political capital he can get to consolidate his hold on power, so he would therefore be busy with domestic affairs. But one can never really tell. In light of the alleged rise in the influence of the conservatives among the ranks of the People’s Liberation Army (PLA) in the aftermath of the recent power struggle between President Hu and former President Jiang Zemin, and its perceived link to the dramatic change of China’s East Asia policy from one characterized by “peaceful rise” to one of assertiveness, one can no longer discount the distinct possibility that perhaps going hard on Taiwan would be a requirement for the next Chinese president to consolidate power.

Therefore, without jeopardizing the gains made from the normalization of cross-strait economic ties, President Ma must be prepared for any Chinese pressure, should it come. As Professor Lynch wrote, nothing less than the future of one of Asia’s most advanced democracies is at stake.

Thankfully, the Israeli government is aware. In fact, in 2009, it erected an impressive monument, called The Open Doors, honoring the Philippines and President Quezon at the 65-hectare Holocaust Memorial Park in Rishon Le Zion. I’m not really sure if the offsprings of the late Commonwealth leader has also been invited to plant a tree in Israel’s Avenue of the Righteous Gentiles, an honor generally reserved for “righteous men” who had saved Jewish lives during the Holocaust; if not, an invitation should be forthcoming as well. I’ve actually written about this interesting Philippine-Holocaust connection back in 2008, but for some reasons I could not locate the said article; so I guess I would have to write about the story again.

Manila Jews.

Temple Emil, the synagogue that served Manila's Jewish community during the 1930s.

There had been a sizable Jewish community in Manila in the 1930s, composed mostly of businessmen and socialites. Among the most prominent of the Jewish families are the Freiders, who count President Quezon and American High Commissioner Paul V. McNutt among their friends.

The Freiders followed with concern the meteoric rise of Adolf Hitler and his anti-Semitic National Socialist German Workers’ Party (Nazi) to power in Germany. Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933. When German President Paul von Hindenburg’s death in 1934 resulted in a power vacuum that allowed Hitler to combine the chancellery and the presidency and become the Fuhrer of Germany, the Freiders knew that their fellow German Jews were in grave danger.

This fear was confirmed when Hitler mandated a systematic persecution of Jews and other “subhuman” races as his first order of business. His rubberstamp Reichstag passed the notorious Enabling Act, institutionalizing anti-Semitism and racism and leading to that infamous orgy of violence called the Kristalnacht. Jewish businesses were either sequestered or destroyed, synagogues were burned or vandalized, and Jews were forced to wear badges bearing the Star of David; and, as everyone knows, those were just the beginning.

Escape to the Philippines.

At that point, thousands of Jews were already fleeing Germany for their lives. In Asia, Shanghai became a favorite refuge. The influx of Jewish refugees in Shanghai prompted the Manila Jewish community to raise money to support the escapees, but it turned out that money was not needed yet so they reserved it for emergency. Meanwhile, Japan began adopting confrontational stance against China, culminating in an outright invasion in 1937. Afraid that the Japanese, as a German ally, might adopt anti-Semitic policies as well, the Shanghai Jews began packing their things again. But most countries, including the United States, would not let them in. So they looked for alternatives: Costa Rica, Dominican Republic, Mexico and the Philippines.

This is where the Freiders began using their connections and friendship with High Commissioner McNutt and President Quezon in order to help their fellow Jews. Taking advantage of the fact that the Philippines still had no immigration law at that time (indeed, there were thousands of Japanese spies posing as immigrants, but that’s another story), President Quezon ordered that the country’s gates be opened to Jewish refugees. Around 1,200 came to Manila from Shanghai, Austria and Germany. The President himself donated parts of his personal estate in Marikina to be temporary residence halls for Jewish refugees.

President Quezon also urged the Philippine Assembly to pass a law allowing the entry of at least 1,000 Jews to the Philippines, and plans were drawn up for a Jewish settlement that could cater to at least 100,000. With the support of President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s administration, President Quezon even went as far as to announce his willingness to open Mindanao, then an under-populated new frontier, up for Jewish colonization, provided the Jews be naturalized as Philippine citizens. The Quezon plan proposed a sprawling settlement in the southern Philippine island that could cater to around 30,000 to over a million Jewish residents. It was hospitality beyond the usual.

Jewish refugees during the inauguration of their Marikina residence halls.

Beyond altruism.

But it appears that altruism might not be the only motive behind President Quezon’s Mindanao plan for the Jews. Local geopolitics played an equal, if not greater, part. Former American High Commissioner Francis Sayre, a son-in-law of Woodrow Wilson, even called the President’s Mindanao proposal a “scheme.”

Allegedly, President Quezon’s invitation to Jews was part of his plan to ease Muslim dominance of Mindanao and to prevent the possibility of Moro secession. At that time, the government had been systematically and strategically re-settling people from Luzon and the Visayas to Mindanao, which explains why Visayan Christians, not Moros, comprise the majority in the south today. A surge of Jewish migration to Mindanao could have stimulated economic growth in the area, thereby attracting more non-Muslim Filipinos from Luzon and the Visayas to move there.

In a way, it appeared that President Quezon intended to use the Jews as a buffer against Muslim animosity towards Filipino Chrsitians, and even against Japanese infiltration brought about by the alarming increase in Japanese migration. Some feared that this could lead to anti-Semitism in the Philippines as well, prompting Washington to disagree with Quezon’s “grandiose plans.”

The State Department said that the project was too ambitious and that Mindanao’s climate and infastructure is not suitable for white men and their European lifestyle. The American mandarins also doubted the Jewish people’s ability to adapt to the Philippine culture. Further, they feared that if the Philippines would take in such a huge number of Jewish immigrants, other countries might excuse themselves from doing their own part in saving the Jews.

‘Failed to rescue.’

Finally, anti-Jewish sentiment grew in the Philippine Assembly and opposition leaders kept on delaying the progress of the Mindanao project, saying that President Quezon was too hasty in offering Mindanao for Jewish colonization. These delays plagued the Mindanao plan and became the source of frustration for the Jewsih community. In the end, the Japanese invasion of 1941 totally doomed the project.

On this failure, American historian Bonnie Harris, an authority on the Holocaust whose doctoral dissertation was about President Quezon’s efforts to save the Jews, wrote:

“Mindanao was the last hope for a mass resettlement strategy aimed at aiding the tens of thousands of Jewish refugees victimized by Nazi Germany.

“At the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, Hitler’s plan for massive Jewish deportation mutated into one of extermination, which was executed over the next three years. With the failure of the West to provide a successful mass rescue operation for Europe’s Jewish population, ‘thousands of Jews entered the cattle cars bound for Auschwitz, under the impression that they were being resettled in the East.’

“The irony of the ‘Final Solution‘ lies in its mimic of the Western World’s failed attempt to rescue through resettlement. ‘The decision to murder followed directly from the failure to resettle.’ Mindanao ended a long list of resettlement schemes considered at one time by the international community that failed to rescue.”

Israel's Open Doors Monument commemorating the Philippines' Open Door policy for Jewish refugees during the Holocaust.

Still, this failure did not come until after President Quezon had already saved about 1,200 Jews.

The Japanese, who occupied the Philippines from 1941 to 1944, did not pursue Nazi-style anti-Semitism. But their brutality was equally notorious. This ironic story of escaping persecution only to be exposed to terror and infamy was the theme of a 2008 book by Frank Ephraim, a Philippine Jew, entitled Escape to Manila: from Nazi Tyrrany to Japanese Brutality. 

After the war, the State of Israel was established and most of the Philippine Jews left the Philippines for their new homeland. Manila, for its part, became one of the first Asian governments to recognize Israel.

The acquittal of former Deputy Prime Minister Anwar Ibrahim of his second sodomy charge may have been a legal victory for the opposition leader, but politically it was, to a considerable extent, a set-back. Indeed, the acquittal is another proof of the remarkable– and surprising– political acumen of Prime Minister Najib, who had previously been regarded more as a grey technocrat than a cunning politician.

Acquitted: Malaysian Opposition Leader Anwar Ibrahim (Reuters Photo)

First of all, Anwar’s acquittal puts his assertion that the sodomy charge were politically-motivated in serious doubt. Throughout the trial, the opposition has been asserting that the government is bent on co-opting the judiciary in order to derail Anwar, who engineered the opposition’s impressive run during the 2008 general election. This rhetoric resonates well with the Malaysian public and the international community, who had seen how then autocratic Prime Minister Mahatir bin Mohammad used trumped-up sodomy charges to throw Anwar, then widely seen as his natural successor, to prison in 1998. But now that the court has exonerated him, Anwar’s allegations of judicial dependence has been, in effect, proven wrong. And Mahatir himself is now trying to earn some brownie points for the ruling coalition by pointing this out.

The thing is, unlike the first sodomy trial where the clear objective is to vanish Anwar from politics, it appears that the goal this time around is not to incarcerate the opposition leader but to merely buy time for Prime Minister Najib. Unlike the ruling United Malay Nationalist Organization (UMNO) and its Barisan Nasional (BN) coalition partners, the opposition Pakatan Rakyat (PR) coalition is not as well-organized; it relies largely on Anwar’s personal support-base. Therefore, when Anwar became pre-occupied with his two-year sodomy trial, the PR coalition suffered from a leadership vacuum of sorts and lost the ability to effectively maintain the momentum it gained in 2008. Meanwhile, Prime Minister Najib vigorously addressed the many institutional challenges within the UMNO and subsequently raised the party’s morale. In other words, the sodomy trial made Anwar and the opposition busy while the UMNO took the time to recover from its 2008 losses and strengthen its machinery.

Secondly, Anwar’s acquittal cemented Prime Minister Najib’s new-found reputation as a serious reformer. In effect, he has sent a message that under his regime, there will be greater judicial independence and the government will refrain from engaging in character assassination of political opponents. Already, some in the international community are impressed. Australia’s former Prime Minister and current Foreign Minister Kevin Rudd, for instance, commended the Prime Minister, saying that the acquittal is just the latest in the series of impressive and significant reforms that the Malaysian leader has been implementing,  which include the overhaul of election laws, the easing of media censorship and restriction on freedom of expression and assembly, and the move to abolish the draconian Internal Security Act and Emergency Ordinance– laws that had long been used by previous autocratic governments to stifle political dissent.

Ever since last year’s massive pro-democracy protests in Kuala Lumpur, Prime Minister Najib has been trying to differentiate himself from his predecessors– the autocratic Mahatir and the politically weak and largely ineffective Abdullah Ahmad Badawi– by packaging himself as a progressive reformer with steady and able hands, and Malaysia and the world is taking notice. This has deprived the opposition, who has long championed civil rights and reformasi, of an important rallying cry against the ruling regime. By making reformasi not mutually exclusive to the opposition, the government has framed the political debate solely on the question of which among the two coalitions is more capable of leading the country. In effect, Prime Minister Najib is telling Malaysians to stick with the devil they know rather than the devil they are not familiar with.

The burden is now on the Pakatan Rakat coalition to prove that, in terms of governance, they are more capable than the long-entrenched UMNO-led Barisan Nasional. It would be a very heavy burden, indeed. Clearly, Anwar’s persecution complex and personality-based politics will no longer be enough for him and his hodgepodge opposition coalition to wrest control of Putrajaya.

At the end of the day, it’s a score for Prime Minister Najib. The ball is now in Anwar’s court.

Update, Jan. 21: The prosecution has appealed Anwar’s acquittal, according to a report by New Strait Times.

Archbishop Jose Serofino Palma of Cebu, who was appointed in October 2010, has been bypassed for the second time. It was understandable that he was not made cardinal in last year’s consistory, since the Pope seemed to follow an unwritten rule which states that a new bishop of a cardinalate see should not be made cardinal until his predecessor has reached the age of eighty, perhaps in order to avoid according one diocese the unfair advantage of having two cardinal-electors. When Palma was appointed archbishop, his predecessor, Archbishop Emeritus Ricardo Cardinal Vidal, was still an eligible elector. But Cardinal Vidal would have turned eighty the week before next month’s consistory, which means that, this time around, Palma is already eligible. By not naming him as a prince of the Church, is the Pope demoting the Archdiocese of Cebu to a non-cardinalate see?

The other Filipino who has been bypassed is Manila’s new archbishop, Luis Antonio Tagle, the charismatic theologian who many observers have identified as a possible papal contender. Vatican commentators point out that the Archbishop Emeritus of Manila, Gaudencio Borbon Cardinal Rosales, would not turn eighty until August this year; and thus, per the unwritten rule of no two cardinal-electors for one diocese at the same time, the Pope did not give Tagle the red hat. But it must be pointed out also that the newly-appointed Archbishop of New York, Timothy Dolan, gained the Pontiff’s nod despite the fact that his predecessor, Archbishop Emeritus Edward Cardinal Egan, has not yet turned eighty. The same is true with Archbishop Dominic Duka of Prague, a Dominican, whose predecessor, Miloslav Cardinal Vlk, is only seventy-nine years old.

Perhaps the reason Tagle was not given the red hat is not really the no-two-cardinal rule but the revelations regarding his involvement with the progressive School of Bologna, whose controversial liberal interpretation of the Second Vatican Council earned the ire of many Vatican conservatives. It maybe that the Pope has opted to make Tagle wait until the storm has died down, in a classic exercise of so-called Roman prudence. I have written extensively about the controversy regarding Tagle’s connection with the Bologna school, and the possibility of him not becoming cardinal this year, in a previous blog entry.

Aside from Palma and Tagle, also conspicuous is the absence on the list of Archbishop Jesus Ruben Salazar Gomez of Bogota, Archbishop Ricardo Ezzati Andrello of Santiago and Archbishop Damiao Antonio Franklin of Luanda, the leaders of some of the leading archdioceses in South America and Africa. Indeed, most of Pope Benedict XVI’s new cardinals are either Italian, European, North American or Curial officials. The only non-Western prelates who made it are the Indian Arhbishop of Syro-Malabar Church, an Eastern Syrian Rite church that is in full communion with Rome, and the Chinese Bishop of Hong Kong. Is the Vatican reversing the trend of making the College of Cardinals less Eurocentric and more international? Indeed, did the Pope really had a free hand in making this list, or is it really, as the scuttlebutt implies, a baby of Secretary of State Tarcisio Cardinal Bertone, who apparently favors more Italian and Curial cardinals?

The notable omissions of Tagle and, most especially, Palma means that the Philippines, the world’s third largest Catholic country, will be left with no cardinal-elector this year, unless the Pope calls for another consistory, which is unlikely. Similarly, another major Catholic country, Colombia, will be left without a cardinal-elector. This would most likely upset many devotees in both countries.