TRIVIA 0030: SOME  VIEWS ON THE PRESIDENT’S SPEECH AT THE JUSTICE  SUMMIT, 05 DECEMBER 2011.

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JUST AN OBSERVATION:

Many, mostly lawyers, lambasted the President for the things he said during the Justice Summit. But it appears that the common people  rejoice. Of course they would not dare to criticize  or attack the Supreme Court for pain of contempt. But one can easily observe that deep in them they have this pent-up, boiling  anger and contempt towards the Supreme Court. When President Noynoy spoke at the Justice Summit, they seem to savor a great relief. As if they found their spokesman who can give vent to their boiling anger without fear of being cited in contempt.  In his face and voice as he spoke,  trembling words cascaded as clear peals of   anger  and contempt which the common man also feels but just keeps to himself.   

IT IS TIME TO REFLECT.

When we tell the common man “do not criticize or attack the Supreme Court otherwise there would be no more rule of law”, he would ask: “why no more rule of law?”. He cannot understand because his concept of “rule of law” is just simple.   To him there is no rule of law when a government official  steals millions from pcso funds and get away with it; or uses fertilizer funds as campaign money and get away with it; or steals votes and win elections and get away with it; or uses his  office or powers to amass wealth, waste government resources, coerce, maim, kill and get away with it. And there is no rule of law when those whose work is to implement the law or interpret the law help those who broke the law “to get away with it.” That is why during the saga at the airport, the common man was quite worried. To him  had GMA been allowed to leave then most likely “she would have gotten away with it” and no more rule of law as far as GMA is concerned. This explains the thundering applause Secretary De Lima  and President Aquino reap up to now. Because to the common man, the DOJ Secretary and the President saw to it that there is rule of law.  But now Secretary De Lima  faces contempt. And President Aquino  might face impeachment. The common man is puzzled and asks: “why? Is it not that they made certain that the rule of law prevails by doing what they did?” Perhaps you, reader, know the answers.

BELOW ARE SOME POSITIVE VIEWS ON THE SPEECH TO BALANCE THE NEGATIVE VIEWS OF THE “LEGAL EXPERTS”.

When the President criticizes the Supreme Court

By: Randy David
Philippine Daily Inquirer

11:09 pm | Wednesday, December 7th, 2011

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In a political system like ours where governmental power is exercised by three co-equal and autonomous branches, disagreements are to be expected. That is how the system works.  Each branch of government functions as a check on the others. But the manner in which this check is to be carried out varies from one branch to the other.

The legislature can impeach a president or a justice of the Supreme Court. In turn, the Supreme Court can restrain any action of the legislature or the executive. Wielding the power of the purse, the executive can trim the budgets of the other branches, or delay the release of allocations. But, again, actions of the executive can be questioned by the legislature or before the courts.

In many instances, we may hear a president criticize Congress for not acting fast enough on priority measures like the budget. But, it is not often that we hear a president publicly criticize Supreme Court justices. I suppose this is because we put magistrates, especially of the highest court, on a pedestal, as an expression of our commitment to the rule of law. In return, we expect justices to stay above politics and to manifest virtue in their personal lives.

Staying above politics, however, has not been easy, particularly for the justices of our Supreme Court.  Each one of them is appointed by the president based on a list submitted by the Judicial and Bar Council.  In a society like ours, debt of gratitude to the appointing authority cannot be ignored. Often, it outweighs professional considerations. This is even more so when the appointing authority handpicks choices for sensitive positions with an explicit eye for their proven personal loyalty.

In modern societies like the United States, Supreme Court justices are chosen not only for their sterling professional qualifications but also for their perceived ideological leaning. Although the latter is neither officially avowed nor required, people do take it into account when they assess the suitability of a nominee.  We don’t do that here. For us the main concern is always the capacity of an appointee to rise above personal gratitude and affinities. This reflects an acute awareness of the persistent dangers posed by personalistic norms to modern institutions.

At no other time in our nation’s history, except perhaps in the period of martial law, were our institutions more engulfed by politics than during the presidency of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. This stemmed from her dubious accession to the presidency in 2001 after the ouster of the duly-elected president, Joseph Ejercito Estrada. The Supreme Court found a way of legalizing the removal of Estrada, but Arroyo continued to be beleaguered by challenges to her legitimacy. Instead of putting these challenges to rest, the massive fraud that attended her reelection in 2004 only further weakened her claims to the presidency. As a result, throughout her term, she became preoccupied with political survival and acceptance.

Wielding her appointing powers and her broad control of the budget as tools of patronage, GMA generously rewarded political lackeys and apologists with cushy positions in government corporations. She named individuals who had been loyal to her to high offices, including the Supreme Court. She controlled the military by naming favorite generals to senior positions in the armed forces, and by packing the Cabinet with retired military personnel. She dispensed public money like largesse to favorite local government officials. She coddled provincial warlords like the Ampatuans who complied with her every whim by manipulating electoral outcomes. She did not care that what she was creating in the process was a bonfire of the nation’s institutions.

She has much to account for now that she no longer enjoys immunity from criminal prosecution. But having anticipated a moment like this, she had made sure she would be fully covered. She stepped down from the presidency, but retained political power as a member of Congress. People who benefited from her patronage are everywhere, quick to come to her defense. But, in the middle of all her legal troubles, she now finds herself turning as a last resort to the magistrates she appointed to the Supreme Court, most of all, Chief Justice Renato Corona.

Corona’s midnight appointment by Arroyo was an incredible act of political brazenness. No one believed she would press it. The Constitution barred her from making any appointments, except temporary ones in the executive branch, two months before the next presidential elections until the end of her term as president. The seat of the chief justice would not be vacant until May 17, 2010, or six days after the election, when the new president would have already been known. But Corona’s patroness went ahead and appointed him anyway, defying the letter and spirit of the law and going against all the norms of courtesy and delicadeza. Not surprisingly, the rest of the Arroyo court sustained her.

It is in the nature of our culture that we bristle at personal slights, but seldom take offense at the systematic damage done to our institutions. P-Noy took a different route the other day. At the great risk of appearing discourteous, he gave vent to his deep frustration with Arroyo’s magistrates in the presence of Corona himself.  It is an encouraging sign that the public seems to side with President Aquino, whose shaking voice betrayed not only anger but a certain discomfort at having to tell people to their faces that they ought to be ashamed of themselves.

public.lives@gmail.com

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There’s The Rub

Face of tyranny

By: Conrado de Quiros
Philippine Daily Inquirer

11:11 pm | Wednesday, December 7th, 2011

The justices, says Midas (In Reverse) Marquez, almost walked off the stage when P-Noy was delivering a stinging rebuke of them at the Justice Summit. But they judiciously held their peace. “It’s not very difficult to do that (rise in protest), but then we don’t want the people to suffer.”

Later, though, the justices issued their own rebuke of P-Noy. While it is the prerogative of the President to speak his mind, they said, “we find it quite disturbing (that he should do so) at an event that was meant to foster cooperation and coordination. It is not at all unusual for the executive branch to disagree with the judicial branch. But what is considerably unusual is for the Chief Executive to look down on members of the judiciary in public … and to their faces denounce the court’s independent actions.”

Marquez added the Court’s favorite mantra: While the Aquino administration was popular, “no one branch of government has an overruling influence over the other. The accumulation of all the powers in the same hands, whether one, a few or many, and whether appointed or elected, may justly be the very definition of tyranny.”

Well, to begin with, if they had walked out of P-Noy’s speech, the people would not have suffered, the justices would. The people would have cheered lustily—not their gesture of protest but their disappearance from their sight. Which they probably knew anyway, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo’s justices, in particular. They are not liked, they are not wanted. They may show their faces before the public only at the public’s sufferance, not at their pleasure. You truly wish they had done as they had plotted. Then would they have known exactly in what esteem they are held by us.

But of course a branch of government that arrogates all the powers of government poses a tyranny. But Marquez misses his target by a mile. That is not true of P-Noy, that is true of Renato Corona. That is not true of Malacañang, that is true of the Supreme Court.

At the very least that is so because there is no institution in society today, let alone branch of government, that is utterly without accountability more than the Supreme Court. Or at least utterly without accountability to the people, Arroyo’s justices are perfectly accountable to her, being the hand that anointed them, being the hand that feeds them. P-Noy is an elected official, one who won the elections in ways that were not unlike the people exercising People Power all over again. Corona is a midnight appointee, one who got to where he is by imitating his appointer’s capacity for shamelessly, and illegitimately, clinging to power. Between the two of them, who has the right to wield power to begin with?

When government issues a patently unjust decree, the people may challenge it and bring the case to court. When the Supreme Court makes a patently unjust ruling, what can anyone do about it? What can the flight attendants do after the Supreme Court decided to reopen a case it had ruled upon with finality three times in their favor because of a letter from Estelito Mendoza importuning it to do so? Legally at least, the flight attendants know that the resolution of their case—if it ever comes to that—rests on the same Court that has been screwing them.

Indeed, when the president issues an unjust decree, the justices may rebuke him by decreeing it unconstitutional. When the Supreme Court makes an unjust ruling, what can the president do about it? Ultimately he has to bring it before the court of last resort, the Supreme Court, which is the same Court that has been screwing everyone. It’s a Catch-22. Or a Gordian knot, a puzzle seemingly without a solution. Well, Alexander showed us how to solve a Gordian knot: slice it with a sword.

And P-Noy shows us how to deal with Arroyo’s justices: insult them to their faces. They complain that they have been humiliated before the public because of their independent actions? There is nothing independent about their actions. Being berated like truant schoolboys is the least they deserve.

But far more than that, the Supreme Court hasn’t just banished accountability from its office, it has banished fallibility from its utterances. The Supreme Court is the new priesthood, a near-mirror-image of the religious one.

Until Martin Luther came along, the Church saw itself as the ultimate diviner of God’s will, the sole interpreter of God’s word, as contained in the Bible. Its divinations and interpretations were beyond question. Those divinations and interpretations might little reflect the way people normally saw right and wrong and justice, but it didn’t matter. The Church officials themselves might be corrupt to the core, but it didn’t matter. Their word was, quite literally, law.

Until P-Noy came along, the Supreme Court saw itself as the ultimate diviner of the people’s will, the sole interpreter of the people’s word, as contained in the Constitution. Its divinations and interpretations were beyond question. Those divinations and interpretations might little reflect the way people normally saw right and wrong and justice—which was the case during Arroyo’s time, and which is the case up to this time, decreeing as they did the justness of executive privilege and the unreality of Edsa. But it didn’t matter. Arroyo’s justices themselves might be corrupt to the marrow of their bones—which was the case then and which is the case now, the poisoned tree bears poisonous fruits. But it didn’t matter. Their word was, quite literally, law.

But of course a branch of government that arrogates all the powers of government practices tyranny. But of course a cabal that usurps the powers of heaven and earth mounts tyranny.  Look at Renato Corona’s Supreme Court, and know:

That is the face of it.

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As I See It

Faulty decisions encourage corruption

By: Neal H. Cruz
Philippine Daily Inquirer

9:57 pm | Thursday, December 8th, 2011

I don’t agree with those castigating President Aquino as “rude” when he criticized Chief Justice Renato Corona and members of the Supreme Court in his speech at the Justice Summit. He should not have done that, they said, because the objects of his criticism were present. But when else, when their backs are turned? Wouldn’t that be cowardly?

Perhaps they were shocked from their comfort zones because nobody has done it before. The Supreme Court has so scared people that nobody dares criticize it to its face. Even law practitioners railing against “unfair” decisions of the high court do it before their colleagues but not before the Court itself. Some lawyers who did that were disbarred, like Ateneo law professor Alan Paguia.

But Supreme Court justices are not infallible like the Pope. They have feet of clay like the rest of us who make mistakes. The Court has indeed made contradictory and confusing decisions, as the President said.

What did P-Noy say in his speech? It is this: Recent decisions of the Court, such as declaring unconstitutional the creation of the Truth Commission and the quick issuance of a temporary restraining order (TRO) against the watch-list order (WLO) of the Department of Justice against former President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, to cite just two cases, have substantially hindered current anti-corruption efforts.

To put it more succinctly, within the context of the current tussle between the executive branch and the judiciary, faulty dispensation of justice is itself an injustice. In effect, it not only tolerates but actually causes corruption because it sends the message that crime does pay.

The trouble with these critics is that they have the misguided belief that politeness should always have primacy over candor. Perhaps in some instances, such as social gatherings, this ought to be observed. However in this instance when the issue is stamping out corruption and holding accountable those who have betrayed public trust, declaring obvious truths and being straightforward in expressing valid criticism are certainly justifiable.

Was P-Noy justified in his decision to publicly criticize the high tribunal? Definitely. Because he, as head of a co-equal branch of government, had the duty to do so.

Criticisms are healthy. It lets the object of the criticism know that he is doing something wrong so that he can correct it. That is democracy in action. That is when you know the checks and balances among the three branches of government are working. As dean Amado Valdez of the University of the East College of Law said, the President’s action was in accordance with the principle of checks and balances between two co-equal branches of government.

Can you imagine what will happen if Congress and the judiciary always agree with the chief executive and vice versa? That is how dictators are born. That was how Ferdinand Marcos became a dictator; the members of Congress were his allies and the Supreme Court supported him all the way.

That was what happened to Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo. The members of Congress were her lackeys and the Supreme Court twisted the law to make her actions legitimate. When she ousted President Joseph Estrada from the presidency, there was no constitutional justification for it, so the Supreme Court came out with a decision that Erap had resigned, although there was no letter of resignation in existence. Neither did he resign orally.

But the tribunal headed by Chief Justice Hilario Davide, in a unanimous vote, declared that Erap had resigned on the basis of the diary of an official, which was never presented to the Senate or to the Court. The ponente of that decision, Reynato Puno, was rewarded by GMA with an appointment as chief justice. Davide was rewarded with an appointment as ambassador to the United Nations after he retired from the high court.

That started the culture of impunity in the GMA administration, resulting in the massive cheating during elections and the many cases of graft and culminating in the Maguindanao massacre. Because there was neither a Congress nor a Supreme Court that checked the abuses of the executive branch.

Going back to Valdez, he said, “I think this (the President’s criticism of the Supreme Court) will strengthen our system of checks and balances. The President has to do what he has to do. He has to articulate the sentiments of the people.”

Although Valdez acknowledged that while the judiciary is independent from the Executive, the Court’s decisions “must still reflect the sentiments of the Filipino people.”

He added: “The Supreme Court has the responsibility to reflect the collective intuition of the people. The Supreme Court is not just a decision-making body, it has to capture the conscience of the people.”

Those who still believe that P-Noy was wrong in criticizing the high court in the manner he did should not complain when grafters in government—past, present and future—are able to get away with their loot.

I would rather have a leader who can sometimes be perceived as “rude” for being straightforward, than one who is gracious and polite but who robs the people blind or stands in the way of efforts to rid this country of its most serious malaise: rampant corruption, which has kept many of our people in abject poverty.