A Warped Sense of Justice!

    The 144-page  Ombudsman resolution charging former election chief Benjamin Abalos and SSS Administrator Romulo  Neri with anti-graft law violation in connection with  the botched $329 Million ZTE-NBN broadband project while exonerating other most likely key players was a typical “out of the box” resolution,  predictable and foreseeable and nary  a soul should be surprised about the concoction.  The mighty and the powerful are always above the law and are immune from prosecution though our people remain as clueless as before.

          The Marcoses and their cronies were back in circulation after their grand plunder of the treasury and former President Joseph Estrada (Erap) is rearing for a comeback in Malacanang after being given a furlough for his own plunder.  These are grim reminders that justice in the country is meted out only to the powerless plebeians or expendable pawns of the powerful.  Secretary Neri and Ex-Chairman Abalos are lesser officials in this big power game. If someone is somewhat delighted that the Ombudsman came up with two people to charge with the purported offense, he will find that elation ephemeral, for in the labyrinth of judicial process, these seemingly deserted and lonesome pawns can eventually get cleared, or if misshapen mishap does occur, what is there to prevent  the new administration to extend them a “pardon?”.  But for now, we cheer or jeer depending on where we are in this great political divide at this crudest form of charade and entertainment.

       We are incorrigible gullible of the subtlety of court proceedings and have a fantastic   aberration for due process while other cultures, would resolve matters of this nature  through the ballots or in a more honorable way of “hara-kiri” or quitting the office.  Apparently we cannot trust the electorate to punish these deviant creatures in our bureaucracy because we keep electing them back to office.  Do not look now, but you may have Erap again as President  or Bongbong Marcos as your Vice President.  We cannot trust our politicians too to do a “seppuku” or simply resign the office because it is not part of our psyche  that we appease public outrage by doing the most honorable thing to do, quit our privilege position or end our shameful life.

       The motley of charlatans in our bureaucracy will swear to the bible that the uncharitable characterization of their persons were “trump-up” and “totally baseless” and would like to clear their names in a proceeding where honorable prosecutors and/or magistrates preside. Some good public servants suffer the same humiliation because of the perception that they all belong to the same genre of crooked office holders.   The prosecutors and the judges that will process those haled to court are themselves corrupt.  This provides  constant paradox that amazes us no end. If you were unlucky to find a corrupt prosecutor or judge that is looking into your case, you will be lucky enough to find that his virtue of predictability can work in your favor.

          In another sense, those who wanted the crooks in the government punished,  are not sinless angels with impeccable credentials either.  One, is a scion of a Marcos regular during martial law whose elder was dethroned from speakership and another who have milked the government too of some small change in the past who decided to make it big but for the sharing-of-the-loot  equation that went tawdry. They enlisted the support of a score of nuns and yes, bishops too,  to end  the rule of a very rapacious regime and offer substitute in the likes Erap, Escudero, Villar of the C5 fame or even a  Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.  Our concept of justice is an unending paradox.  We want a set of brigands punished by bringing them to court or to public ridicule so we can replace them with another set of brigands.

        Look at this as another paradox:  Erap was found guilty of plunder and the Marcoses were perceived to be plunderers.  Mssrs. Abalos and Neri were allegedly attempting at plunders.  Erap  and the Marcoses are riding the crest of public adulation while we excoriate Neri and Abalos for their attempt at plunder.  Our sense of justice is warped and we are very funny people!

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Judicial and Bar Council: A Malignant Tumor That Must Be Excised

       You have heard it. Supreme Court Chief Justice Reynato Puno would not add up any candidate to its short-list  of Supreme Court Justice aspirants. This is a blatant usurpation of the appointing power which the constitution vests in the President and placed the error of such appointment to a group of persons who are not accountable to the people, the  Judicial and Bar Council (JBC).  The council was envisioned to broker the well-intentioned aspirants to the judiciary by going into the labyrinth of the judicial gauntlet as way of recruiting the cream of the legal profession.

 

       The concept of screening judicial appointees through the JBC to ensure that only the good and the most fit are commissioned to serve is a myth.   After 22 years of its existence, the JBC had only succeeded in recruiting the most inept and the most corrupt in the judiciary.  You have only to look for the fund diversion of the Supreme Court which had been the subject of an impeachment in the House against its previous Chief, Hilario Davide, Jr., or the Meralco-GSIS row which resulted in a couple of heads rolling in the bastion that is supposed to be the stellar for dispensing justice, to find out that the JBC was an abject failure.

       The inability of the JBC to address the very issue it was envisioned to perform argues for its abolition. Like a malignant tumor, it has to be excised  from the body and rid its atrophied part from metastasizing.  The good intention in recruiting only the wise and the honorable in the judiciary is not assured by putting it in the hands of people who by nature belongs to  the same corrupt body politics in the approximation of a mob organization where enlistment of new members must be of the same mold and orientation of the people who recruited them.  New members of the judiciary must symbolically kiss the hand of the Mafioso ring leader and pledge allegiance to the preservation of the organization’s culture of corruption. Senator Miriam Santiago had put it more succinctly when she refused to subject herself from this hand-kissing ritual known as “JBC job interview” and thereby forfeited her opportunity to become justice of the Supreme Court, an entity she curtly described, the “old boy’s club”.

        If one examines the composition of the JBC, one would not fail to notice that it is a separate power enclave of the Supreme Court where the voice of the Chief Justice reigns supreme.  The Chief’s latest pronouncement that no more candidates for the Supreme Court coming from the President will be added to its “short-list”,  highlights this point. The JBC is a constitutional fiat which is  anathema to constitutional government.  The power to appoint justices and judges of inferior courts belongs exclusively to the President.  Providing her with a “short-list” from whom she can appoint a justice of the Supreme Court effectively short-circuited this power of appointment.  The JBC arrogates a power never intended by the framers of the constitution.

          Under the old set-up, the Commission on Appointment in Congress cannot provide the President a “short-list” from which she can appoint a justice of the Supreme Court and judges of inferior courts.  Congress is free to reject whoever is submitted by the President for confirmation but it is never allowed to determine which candidate the President must submit to Congress for confirmation.

       And while Congress can put a monkey-wrench on the appointment of the President for justices and judges, such behavior is tolerable under the principle of “check and balance” and the concept of accountability  enshrined in the constitution.  Members of congress who are stubborn and unreasonable in putting partisan politics over the common good are directly responsible to the people comes election in the same way that the President is held accountable for appointment of corrupt government officials and for her own corruption.  This  concept of accountability is lost on the JBC  because its members do not seek the mandate from the people during elections  and yet it exercises a tremendous power than can even hold the President’s appointment power hostage by sheer arrogance.  Make no mistake about it.  No group of particular government functionaries enjoy moral superiority than others.  George Washington makes a wise counsel: “ the love for power, and the pronness to abuse it predominates in every human heart”.

     The endemic corruption in the judiciary is never blamed on the JBC  and if ever it is blamed for it,  the people are powerless to tell its members to go and look for another job.  If the people must remain sovereign, any contrivance in the constitution that seek to create a mini-branch of government that is outside the oversight of the people must be excised and expunged.  There is little doubt that Cha-Cha proponents can wear their moral armor in splendid color fighting for the abolition of the JBC in the constitution.

       The greatest constitutional government of all times,  the United States of America, has not adopted in her constitution a parallel outfit as the JBC because she remains faithful to the concept of the Republican form of government where check and balance is in place and accountability of government officials is demandable by the sovereign people.  Under the submission that the JBC is a power-chute of the Supreme Court which is outside the sovereign will, Thomas Jefferson’s observation about the Supreme Court acquires a new dimension:

     “To consider the judges as the ultimate arbiters of all constitutional questions is a very dangerous doctrine indeed, and one which would place us under the despotism of an oligarchy. Our judges are as honest as other men, and not more so. They have, with others, the same passions for party, for power, and the privilege of their corps. Their maxim is “boni judicis est ainpliare jurisdictionem,” and their power the more dangerous as they are in once for life . The constitution has erected no such single tribunal, knowing that to whatever hands confided, with the corruptions of time and party, its members would become despots”.
 

 

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Why Are Pinoys So Stressed Out?

                Everyday, Pinoys are confronted by stress mostly brought about by the economy.  Food prices and cost of services go up.  Added to this stressful situation is the increasing number of Pinoys who have no work, not that we are lazy, but work opportunities are simply not there. 

As if this unfortunate situation is not enough, that the politicians who offered solution to this sad state had not only broken their promise of deliverance but had even caused more grief by robbing the Pinoys blind and distributed the largesse of government contracts to their cronies or friends.  Politicians bled the  treasury dry, the courts are corrupt and the mainstream Pinoys suffer.  The promise of good life is only for those who have access to powers and their very few fortunate extensions.

Services are too poor that some of our “kababayans” do not even have clean water to drink and electricity to light their homes.  If water and electricity are available, chances are, most Pinoys could not afford their costs. Garbage and pollution is all over Metro Manila, but the greater pollution that saps the strength most Pinoys is the brigandage in the bureaucracy.  This pollution so stink that lately,  high court magistrates were sacked for indiscretion and most government contracts are padded with nauseating commissions.

Some sectors of Pinoys have long given up the prospect of getting a better life in the Philippines that they decided to seek employment somewhere else.  But with worldwide economic crunch, even overseas Pinoys are still stressed out but not as much as when they were in the Philippines. 

So how do Pinoys overseas deal with stress?  I can only speak for some Pinoys who try to deal with their daily stress in Michigan. Or more specifically, how do we deal with our own stress here.

We have a small Pinoy community with diverse membership due to intermarriages that makes it a point every other weekend before winter time sets in, to go camping. Fish on the lake and play “beach” volleyball had the lake had been the sea.  Half of the afternoon would be spent sitting on collapsible plastic chairs around collapsible plastic table to play card games, sip a can of beer which is kept secret from the camp  guards because drinking is prohibited in the camp. While secretively sipping your beer, you  can engage in loud banter that makes you forget about your car and house mortgages or your credit card payables. 

Or a special weekend is spent in carnival, at Ohio Ceddar Point, a famous carnival hideaway of huge real estate complete with rides that can give you the adrenalin rush of fear or excitement.  In another part of the park is a train track of about a mile slithering through the wooded area and along its track is a panoply of structures to simulate the “Old Old West”, a salon, a barber shop, ironsmith shop, a sheriff’s office and a jail where bandits, cowboys and Indians used to mix it up.  Volley of gunfire would be heard as the train idle its way through this mile ride and you could see cowboys and bandits and other classic characters from human skeletons dressed-coded for the characters they tried to recreate.  The firecrackers to simulate the gunfire must have been lit by humans and not by these skeleton characters along the train’s track.  I told a friend that a “tomahawk” landing on the train wall slightly above our head could have provided a more realistic hair-raising experience.

These weekends escapades provide much needed relaxation from the day to day stress in the workplace; a group interaction, a nap or full night sleep inside the tent can reeve up tired and weary souls so on weekdays these overseas Pinoys can cope with the stress again.

Most local Pinoys would spend time brooding. When they cannot cope up with the stress anymore they would  commit petty to serious crimes that when caught they would offer the tired old refrain that it was out of  “malaking pangangailangan”, ( dire economic needs) that prompted them to commit these crimes.

The difference between Pinoy locals and the overseas Pinoys is quite stark in terms of credit facilities.  Most overseas Pinoys  can avail of credit denied of their local counterparts.  Locals have most of the time would live in squalor or one-room leased for home.  Apartments are expensive while building a home on credit, is even more expensive, if credit would have been available at all.  These are stressors to local Pinoys.

Locals have to depend themselves in public transport because few can afford cars considered in some place as common possession and necessities.  In Detroit, known as the “motor city” of the world, public transport was not developed and only few percentage of the populace is dependent on it.  And quite admiringly, despite the battered economy in Michigan, Pinoys do not make use of public transport, unlike California or New York,  where trolleys, bus and trains serve the populace of all ethnic groups.

Let us go back to the campsite. Our group would eat Pinoy food of adobo, fried “daing”, “tortang talong”, fried tilapia or “bangus” “pansit”  or “dinuguan”.  No nitrate and sodium rich hamburgers and sausages.  Americans who married Pinoys are quite accustomed to eating  “dinuguan”, which they more vividly described as “chocolate meat” savored best with white “puto”.

The camping ground is hundred acres of tall trees,  huge inland lake, hills, grassy grounds and several buildings  serving as bathrooms and restrooms.  It is rural all right but the campers brought the amenities of the home they left behind.

Inside colorful tents are air beds, flashlights, coolers full of your favorite drinks and beverages and even portable heaters.

I dreamt of being able to lit a fireplace with flint stone, brew a coffee in run down caldron and drink it in a chip off porcelain cup or aluminum G.I. canteen which would make the environment rustic and more rural, but even that yearning for real mountain adventure is denied of you because people simply would like to enjoy and bring the convenience of the home to this far place called camping grounds. So the camp is complete with lighters, plastic cups, coffee brewers, water jugs, collapsible kitchen sink and even  patches of instant cold or hot compress.

I would like to feel mounds of pebble and light touch of sand on my belly or back as I retired inside a tent but that is not even possible because of the air-bed in the tent.

These regular weekend camp adventures rejuvenate one’s tired body and mind.  Stress was gone to face another yet workplace stress when Monday comes. I can only wish that our local Pinoys can find a ubiquitous camping ground or carnival spot that are affordable soon.

September 22, 2008
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