THE curtains of his bed were drawn aside; and Alan Peter, starting up into a half-recumbent posture, found himself face-to-face with the unearthly visitor.
“Are you the spirit, sir, whose coming was foretold to me?” asked Alan Peter.
“I am!”
The voice was soft and gentle. Singularly low, as if instead of being so close beside him, it was at a distance.
“Who and what are you?” Alan Peter demanded.
“I am the Ghost of Impeachment Past.”
The Spirit touched his arm, saying: “Rise! And walk with me!”
“I am a mortal,” Alan Peter remonstrated, “and liable to fall.”
“Bear but a touch of my hand there,” said the Spirit, laying it upon his heart, “and you shall be upheld in more than this! As the words were spoken, they passed through the wall and stood upon a monstrous pile of stone and concrete, raised above the damp flats of Pasay City by the side of the sullen Manila Bay — a place where the sea breeze brought no freshness, but only the heavy, salt smell of stagnant water and old mud.
The Spirit stopped at a door to the edifice, and asked Alan Peter if he knew it.
“Know it!” said Alan Peter. “I served my first term here as senator!”
They went in. At the sight of an old gentleman with a deeply lined face and a sharp gaze behind thin-framed eyeglasses. Sitting atop the raised dais, the 88-year-old senator held court like an old-world magistrate. In a booming, gravelly voice, he asked his fellow senator-judges to explain their votes.
Alan Peter cried in great excitement: “That’s Manong Johnny! This was the impeachment trial against Chief Justice Renato Corona!”
Alan Peter’s former self, a clean-shaven man of 41, rose briskly to speak.
“Why do we complicate what is so simple? Why do we make the simple, complex?” the younger Alan Peter said, explaining his vote to convict. Alan Peter argued that the issue was straightforward: a public official is mandated by the Constitution and law to declare all assets in their statement of assets, liabilities and net worth.
The younger Alan Peter disagreed with Corona’s defense that foreign currency deposits were protected by absolute secrecy under the Foreign Currency Deposit Act or that co-mingled funds justified nondisclosure.
“Technicalities should protect the rights of people, but somehow in this country, it is being used to protect people who plunder this country,” he continued.
Alan Peter argued that corruption was a “cancer” affecting the country. He challenged all public servants to sign unconditional bank secrecy waivers to establish a new standard of integrity, offering his own waiver as an example.
For myself, I will do that. If I’m investigated by the Ombudsman, I’ll agree to open all of my accounts. I’m OK with a waiver. There is nothing to fear if you’re not hiding anything.”
Addressing the court, he declared:
“If your client cannot explain, I cannot abstain.
“If you did not disclose, we have to depose.
“And if you are not fit, you cannot sit.”
“Therefore, Mr. President, I vote guilty.”
The older Alan Peter, now sporting a full beard, recoiled at his own words.
“Leave me! Take me back. Haunt me no longer!” he implored the spirit.
But as he staggered back to his bed, Alan Peter knew what his words as a younger man would mean for the impeachment trial in which he was now sitting as senator-judge again, 14 years later.
His political benefactor, Vice President Sara Duterte, could not explain, did not disclose — and definitely was not fit to sit. So, how could he now vote to acquit?
