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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Filipino Voices Is Shrilled Over HR 1109!

Writing at Filipino Voices  (FV)  is a time-consuming endeavor and I do not have the time.  But glancing at FV does not require so much time and glancing at it lately, I was shocked to find the collective “Voice”  shrilled and frayed over HR 1109,  a resolution that some say is a precursor to the extension of the reign of the queen at Malacanang. 

The conundrum of voices  at  FV over the resolution that convenes the lower house as a constituent assembly to propose amendments to the 1987 Constitution of the Republic of Tralala sent tremors to my self-absorbed activity and self-imposed furlough, and brought me back to punch my keyboard at the expense of my personal endeavor that requires my full and undivided attention.  I can only look with envy at some prolific contributors at this site  that can mass-produce literary pieces on a coffee-break, or others that can churn out articles after articles with classic  theme of “beating around the bush” and mindless of the footprint their masterpieces leave on the minds of  the readers.  I look at the readers with respect and studied caution and thus would think a while before I smoke my keyboard.

The Constitution is the law of the land.  Some say it is like the ark of the covenant, too sacred to be touched and must be viewed with sanctimonious reverence.  [Thomas Jefferson, (1743-1826)]  Some say  it was made by the people and the people alone can unmake it.  It is a creature of their own will and lives only by their will. [John Marshall (1755-1835)].

So if you were a Jeffersonian in thought, your protest against HR 1109 is justified.  The Constitution which is too sacred a covenant will be soiled  if the scoundrels in Congress will be allowed to touch it, but if you were of Marshall’s insight,  the constitution can be rewritten by the people, or by the people’s representatives in Congress.

But which  Congress constitutes ¾  that can propose amendments to the Constitution?  HR 1109 was quite certain that ¾ of congress is the total number of congressmen and senators minus 25%.  Or if there are 265 congressmen and 24 senators,  ¾ of that number is 217.  The Resolution which the House has portrayed to have been unanimously passed on June 2, 2009 with the “ayes” drowning the “nays” brings back to memory the 1973 Marcos constitution which was ratified by viva voce in the barangay halls of the Republic Tralala.  The House claimed that the vote constituted ¾ of Congress voting to constitute itself as a constituent assembly to propose amendments to the constitution.    Its leadership calls everyone to visit Art. XVII of the Constitution and be enlightened by the reality that the said article did not say that ¾ of Congress means ¾ of the House and ¾ of the Senate convening in a joint session or separately. 

The House reads Article XVII of the Constitution  to mean that ¾ of Congress is 217 all congressmen without Senators,  or 217  regardless of whether the number has congressmen and senators in them.

But take note that the FV writer that started this brouhaha in an Open Letter said that there were  170 Congressmen who approved the resolution and therefore the number is short of 47 votes to make ¾ that is authorized to make amendments to the Constitution.  He has not intimidated that he has inside information of the insidious plot in the house to present this Resolution as having been voted by at least 217 congressmen and therefore would force through the throat of the nation that it is now authorized to tinker with the Constitution and prolong the reign of the queen.

Except for a couple of Senators who twitted on the claim of the House about what constitutes ¾ of Congress, the general response of the Senate was totally dispassionate.  The general sentiment in the Senate is that the House is free to believe whatever legal nuances it has on the constitution, but the interpretation of the provisions thereof is lodged with the Supreme Court.   So expect a forthcoming saga being fought in the judicial trenches.

But are we not supposed to have faith in  the wisdom of our elected congressmen to amend the constitution for after all we elected them to the office to perform  precisely what they had been mandated to perform, to “sit as constituent assembly to rewrite the constitution?”  Or had we been affected so much by Benign0’s  old-familiar refrain, that these bozos are the representation of ourselves as a people and therefore they are as half-wits and dimwits as ourselves to be entrusted with solemn duty to tweak the fundamental law of the land?   Who then can we trust to rewrite the constitution?

Does anyone consider our present recriminations misplaced and premature because we have yet to see how the House will brew the constitution but we were already bellyaching on the treasonous sell-out by which our distinguished congressmen offered us HR 1109?

If the recipe is abhorrent to our taste, are we not supposed to spew it out and reject it in a plebiscite that is called to ratify the amendments?  Why do we have to protest so much on an issue the resolution of which lies within our sovereign  capacity to resolve?

Apparently our discordant voices foreshadow that lack of faith in the wisdom of our congressmen we elected to office.  We are the mirror of these bozos in Congress and feel a very nauseating discomfort of seeing ourselves as half-wits and yet rewriting  the sacred law of the land.
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Tehankee, Estrada and Martinez Pardon, A Cruel Politics!

    I had been a GMA admirer, partly because I respect her late father-president, Diosdado Macapagal.  Despite her being involved in the 2004 election cheating (“Hello Garci”), I still gave her the benefit of the doubt and had consoled myself with the idea of a “movie” star as President is “gross” compared to an economist at the helm of a fractious and poor country.  Election in our country is a big joke anyway. 

 

        But pardons and clemency left and right, led me to a rude awakening that GMA’s Presidency does not have what it takes to lead a divided, poor and miserable country.  Her leadership has not only bankrupted the economy, mortgaged the future of generations to come, just like the way previous politicians did, but also deprived us of our remaining resource, our dignity as a people.  

 

              In 2007, GMA pardoned one of killers of Senator Aquino, Pablo Martinez, without imposing a simple condition that the parolee narrate  to the entire nation the story from the perspective of one who has a direct hand in the murder of Senator Aquino of what happened in that infamous day of August 21, 1983.  In the same year, GMA pardoned President Joseph Estrada for committing plunder while the ink in the Sandiganbayan decision has yet to settle dry in the pages of that verdict. Now GMA has freed convicted felon Claudio Teehankee, Jr. for the murder of  Maureen Hultman and Chapman and the attempt on the life of Leino in 1991.

  

       It is not mercy.  It is political maneuver of which GMA has  become so astute lately.  It is also mockery of our judicial system,  which is never known now nor in the past for integrity and principles.  But in the cases of Teehanke, Estrada and Martinez, the judiciary has done a splendid job and has given meaning, albeit ephemerally, to the concept of “righteousness and justice”.  

 

       Mr. Martinez was pardoned at a time when Mrs. Cory Aquino was asking for the resignation of GMA for uncontrolled graft and corruption in GMA’s administration.  The pardon was seen by many as a retaliatory move against Mrs. Aquino by GMA. Mr. Estrada was pardoned because GMA had tried to court the affection of the misguided urban poor, that  are pro-Estrada of which there are plenty in Metro Manila. The parole of Mr. Teehankee was a simple case of those in the corridors of power, (his brother being one of GMA’s diplomats) can make miracles denied of ordinary prisoners convicted of lesser crimes.

 

     GMA blew everything the country could have stand for: “the law is hard but it is the law, and justice is blind and it is administered without bias or favor”. 

 

     In the case of Teehanke, just see  how painful it is to see a “disturbed” individual getting back his freedom while his victims are several feet under the ground.  Here is Wikipedia’s grim reminder of what happened in that tragic 1991 incident involving Teehanke, Hultman, Chapman and Leino: 

 

  

      The Hultman-Chapman murder case was a murder case that gained wide publicity in the Philippines during the early 1990’s. This is due to the fact that Claudio Teehankee, Jr., the perpetrator of the crime, was the son of the late former Chief Justice Claudio Teehankee, Sr. and the brother of former Justice Undersecretary Manuel Teehankee. The case helped sway the public view on crime and restore the death penalty in the Philippines.

 

       Court records show that Chapman, Hultman, and another friend, Jussi Leino, were coming home from a party at around three o’clock in the morning of July 13, 1991. Leino was walking Hultman home along Mahogany street in Dasmariñas Village, Makati City when Teehankee came up behind them in his car. He stopped the two and demanded that they show some identification. Leino took out his wallet and showed Teehankee his Asian Development Bank ID. Teehankee grabbed the wallet. Chapman, who was waiting in a car for Leino, stepped in and asked Teehankee: “Why are you bothering us?” Teehankee drew out his gun and shot Chapman in the chest, killing him instantly. After a few minutes, Teehankee shot Leino, hitting him in the jaw. Then he shot Hultman on the temple before driving away. Leino survived and Hultman died two months later in hospital due to brain hemorrhages caused by the bullet fragments. Teehankee was arrested several days later on the testimony of several witnesses. The witnesses were Domingo Florence and Agripino Cadenas, private security guards, and Vincent Mangubat, a driver, all three being employs of residents of the village.

An Open Letter to SC Chief Justice Reynato S. Puno

 

Please look closely at the banner overhead CJ Puno. It says "Kabuhayan, Karapatan, Katarungan". Then read the entire post if you can make some sense out of the slogan on the banner.

(This letter was received by CJ Puno on September 8, 2008 and he did not even care to respond to the letter).

August 29, 2008 

Dear Chief Justice Puno; 

     Our nation is in turmoil –  our institutions are in constant challenge – we have always been under social strife.  

      Amidst this turmoil, people come to your judicial enclave to adjudicate their claim over a piece of ancestral territory, others asked that you to set them free, some asked for money to be paid by his adversary, some asked you to curb excesses of government authority, the President had asked that her executive secrets and her private tapes be forever be sealed,  still others come to dishonor some members of the Bar or the Bench.  

        I come to you today to plea for my honor back and I write this letter for posterity.  

        Yesterday, August 28, I received a letter from the State Bar of California that your Office had advised the Committee of Bar Examiners “that due to a finding of misconduct, I was suspended from the practice of law in the Philippines effective August 9, 2005, and that the suspension remains in effect”. [George Solatan vs. Inocentes, et. al A.C. No. 6504.  (Copy of the letter is enclosed herewith)].

          Your Honor was part of the Division which penned the decision about my administrative case and despite my two Motions for Reconsideration,  the Court had denied them in two minute resolutions.  The last resolution affirming the finding that I was guilty of professional misconduct was  dated March 22, 2006.  I received copy of the Order  in the first week of April and I was of the impression that 12 months after April 2006 or in  April 2007, my suspension for one year to practice law has been served and thus I am free to practice my profession again.

          If my suspension remains in effect despite the lapse of more than one year because I have to do some paperwork to restore my standing, such does not appear to be the tenor of the letter I have received from the Committee of the California State Bar. If ever I have to do some penance or paperwork to regain my good standing, a modicum of fairness requires that the undersigned be informed about them so compliance can be made.

           Like His Honor, I was raised poor and I descend from a humble beginning.  Like His Honor, I put myself through law school and for a large measure, through the help of so many good souls. My administrative case has caused me sleepless nights, pain and agony.  I consider my honor my treasure and an heirloom worthy to bequeath to my children but that has been tarnished by this administrative case.  To clear my name, I have brought to public consciousness the indictment against my character, which common mortal, would have otherwise keep under wrap.  I am never ashamed of this case, though I ache in the idea that the Supreme Court, which I have tried to believe to be the fountain of everything that is just is otherwise unjust.

        I have tried to engage the public on issues that may affect them in the future, and though I am a zealot proponent of the principle that a pending legal issue must be resolved within the confines of the court’s four walls, such issue assumed a totally different dimension when it is finally made to rest.

        A final judicial decision, like the act of Congress or the Executive, can be a subject of a public debate.  Public accountability and judicial responsibility demand that every court decision must not only be defended in the four walls of this Court, but even at the halls of public opinion.  It was under this higher constitutional precept that I wrote my book.

       If the advice by this Court to the Committee of Bar Examiners of California to derail my moral fitness qualification was an offshoot of my attempt  to debate my administrative case outside the Court, your Office should at least been candid about it and must have informed the California Bar Committee accordingly.

          This Court, under your watch has tried to light the torch of the ideals of democracy and liberty and you have the occasion to write:

        “A government’s democratic legitimacy rests on the people’s information on government plans and progress on its initiatives, revenue and spending,  among others, for that will allow the people to vote, speak, and organize around political causes meaningfully. As Thomas Jefferson said, “if a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and will never be.” (Dissenting Opinion, Neri vs. Senate, G.R. No. 180643).

        I have exercised my right to speak because I believe I am free.  I have exercised my right to dissent in the same way that you have exercised yours against the best judgment of your distinguished brethrens in the bench. Must we seek for the distinction between your dissent and mine and deny me that God-given gift as a free human being while you invoke the protection of your right to dissent without fear, without apprehension, and without expecting any reprisal or punishment?  Is there fairness in such submission?

         Your peroration on the writ of Habeas Data would stir us to look for the truth that will stand the test of time and not seek for shallow imageries or appearances of truth.  You have intoned:

          “Indeed, truth is the bedrock of all legal systems, whether the system follows the common law tradition or the civil law tradition. Justice that is not rooted in truth is injustice in disguise. That kind of justice will not stand the test of time, for it is not anchored on reality but on mere images.”

         I am your disciple in that regard and so I squelch every imagery and appearance of truth and tried to seek for its true meaning beyond this imagery and found that this Court is not the only repository of good conduct and wisdom and the dispenser of everything that is just.   In fact, history has led us to believe that the capacity of our institution to succeed in its sworn task is intertwined with its doom.  It is doomed the moment one single innocent soul is served punishment instead of reward, condemnation instead of exaltation; and despite the monumental data of probity and wisdom in all other situations, they are all dimmed by this one slip up.

      Your speech on the Writ of Habeas Data was centered on the protection of human rights from abuse of government authorities.  My right to earn a decent livelihood is a basic human right that is at stake in this exercise.  But where does one go if he is abused by the very institution where he expects justice from?   Where do I go if this Court stood pat on its position that despite the lapse of almost two years, my suspension of one year is still in effect and thus deprive me of my right to continue to practice my profession?

       Should I endear myself to the Court’s discourse on truth and justice or does that entitle me describe it as  “hypocrisy?”

        If in God’s grace I pass the California Bar and denied admission because this Court will not give me a clean bill of professional demeanor, I will not for the second time come back to this Court to beg for my honor.  I will not beg for the restoration of my honor because I believe that in the eyes of the Lord, I am honorable.  I believe I have given this Court the chance to be just when I filed my two motions and to be magnanimous when I wrote this letter.  This Court may choose to validate my thesis that this Court is unjust, nay it is vindictive.

        It was injustice enough that I was suspended from the practice of law for one year.  It was double injustice that I continue suspended despite the lapse of my suspension period.

        I write because this Court, under your watch, may be able to step down from its pedestal and provide a veneer shadow of its probity and wisdom and hear one’s plea to correct an injustice.  It is up to your Office to perpetuate it or to end it. 

 Sincerely yours,

JOSE C. CAMANO

Michigan, USA                       

 

Cc:

Committee of Bar Examiners

State Bar of California

1149 South Hill Street

Los Angeles, CA 90015-2299     

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REMEMBERING SENATOR “NINOY” AQUINO

VIDEO UPLOAD COURTESY BY:Ubermensch4ever 

“My grandfather explained about the spirit world, how the souls of our ancestors continue to need love and attention and devotion. Given these things, they will share in our lives and they will bless us and even warn us about disasters in our dreams. But if we neglect the souls of our ancestors, they will become lost and lonely and will wander around in the kingdom of the dead no better off than a warrior killed by his enemy and left unburied in a rice paddy to be eaten by blackbirds of prey”.       (Robert Olen Butler,U.S. writer).

             I honor Ninoy in my book.   I have devoted one chapter, “Are We Worth Dying For” plus some references on him outside this chapter. They are reprinted herein below:

              “One of the finest 20th century heroes of the country went home in August 1983 from a 3-year exile from the US with a prophetic candor that the Filipinos were worth dying for. Few minutes after his plane landed, his military escorts shot him at the back of his head and few steps before his tired and weary feet longing for home touch the tarmac. A commission was formed to investigate the murder and it was headed by the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court whom many have considered a lackey of Mrs. Imelda Marcos because he was seen holding an umbrella for Mrs. Marcos in one of those public functions. The commission was subjected to intense public criticism, thus Mr. Marcos was forced to create another headed by Justice Corazon Agrava,  a retired jurist who was perceived to be another Malacanang loyalist.

               The Agrava Commision came up with two reports, The Minority Report and the Majority Report.  The minority report  which was submitted by Mrs. Agrava to Mr. Marcos has cleared Senator Aquino’s  military escorts for  his death and pointed to the lone communist gunman,  Mr. Rolando  Galman as the culprit.  This was  Malacanang’s  story line on how Aquino died.  The majority report submitted by the other members of the Commission found Senator Aquino’s military escorts to have conspired to kill Ninoy.

          On the basis of this findings all the military escorts were charged with murder in 1985 but were all acquitted. After Marcos fled to Hawaii in 1986, the Supreme Court declared a mistrial and another trial was conducted and found his 16 military escorts guilty of the murder. The mastermind was never known, but the people had the right suspect in their collective minds.

    (Please take note that the new Supreme Court considered the acquittal of the military escorts of Senator Aquino as a “sham trial” and has ordered a retrial before the Sandiganbayan.  The attitude of the SC was understandable because Mr. Marcos had already fled to Hawaii and Mrs. Corazon Aquino, Senator Aquino’s widow became the President in 1986. This is the year where the SC considered the decision of the Sandiganbayan acquitting all the accused from the murder of Senator Aquino a sham trial).

         (And yes, in this Chapter I answered the query that we are worth dying for.  But you have to read the book to find out why).

         References of Senator Aquino outside this chapter:

         “ x x x Gandhi was willing to be bruised by the British soldiers without let up and without putting up a fight until the soldiers would lose their appetite to beat him up. Senator Aquino was imprisoned by Mr. Marcos for 7 years and was sentenced to die by Mr. Marcos’  military tribunal but when he got the news that Mr. Marcos was ill, he hurried back home to talk some sense to the President to call for an election and transfer power to the civilian government instead of allowing a military junta to rule the country”.

 ” x x x

         The discussion of the Supreme Court of the Aquino v. Enrile case went at length on the existence of the threat of subversion from both the Maoist New People’s Army and the secessionist Moro National Liberation Front from Mindanao, (MNLF). The threat from the NPA and the MNLF, however, can be easily contained by the Army which remained loyal to the institution of the government.  (59 SCRA 183)  The deference the Court made to the President to declare martial law on account of his control of various agencies which monitored the activities of the “enemies” of the state has blunted the Court’s right to inquire into whether such state of insurrection existed or not, and considered his determination of the state of emergency a political question therefore beyond the power of the court to inquire. Thus it has conveniently failed to inquire into the motives of the executive about those claims in the light of the fact that Mr. Marcos in 1973 can no longer run for President and even if he could, the faltering economy and the unpopularity of his government made the “Boy Wonder” from Tarlac a shoo-in for the Presidency. Martial law was an excuse for perpetration to power and the Supreme Court was nothing more than a willing accomplice of the repression that follows. The Aquino case was a plethora of 448 pages of legal dissertations and historical events designed to distort the crucial period of our history itself. Those moments in our history where two political titans have tried to compete for one political firmament and one was about to outshine the other had not his opponent beckoned the institutions of power and used those institutions to outclass his competitor. But in the minds of the historians, and the generations to come that are willing to see through the fog of distortions made by the Court, Senator Aquino has outclassed his nemesis; he died a glorious death – his blood rekindles the Filipinos’ love for freedom, while his tormentor died a silent death, felled by sickness in a strange and far away soil.”

 ” x x x    

              And by the way, the Supreme Court has a history of not standing up on the side of the truth. In 1979 the Supreme Court had refused to rescue Senator Aquino who was later sentenced to die by musketry by the military courts of Mr. Marcos.

            Senator Aquino had earlier asked the Supreme Court to transfer his case from the military tribunal to the civilian courts which were open during martial law. Frustrated by the demeanor of the Court, he tried to withdraw his petition, just like the way the late Senator Diokno did on his petition for habeas corpus in 1973, but the Court nonetheless ruled on his motion for transfer of jurisdiction against him by claiming that the military courts have been duly constituted and therefore have jurisdiction over civilian defendants. 

         It was the subtle pressure from the US State Department that spared Senator Aquino’s life from the murderous military tribunals in 1975 only to be slain in 1983 by the same dark forces that lay behind those institutions of power under Marcos. [Aquino vs. Military Tribunal, (63 SCRA 549)] when Senator Aquino went home after a three-year of exile from the US. 

“ x x x

          A congressman from Ilocos Sur was shot at the back while about to receive the sacrament of a communion one Sunday morning. The house of worship was not safe from lawlessness that was perpetrated by those who are supposed to uphold the law. Gangland execution style of this magnitude, just like the execution of Senator Aquino in tarmac in 1983 can only be done by people in authority with tacit approval of the intended plan from someone up in the chain of command”.   (NOTE:  This post has been updated from what originally appeared in the Book to make the narration more correct).

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HOW MUCH MORE HOGWASH CAN YOU GET?

CHAPTER 4

 DELIBERATE MISCUES

        At the outset, (mentioned in the extended prologue,  but not yet posted), I have pointed out that the Court would pick out the weakest argument of party and demolish this argument in a long and winded-rhetoric but it would not dare discuss a very relevant and material issue of the case if it has already made its mind on how to dispose of it.

        Observe how the Court had demolished the contention of Atty. Inocentes that as a Senior Partner, he should not be held responsible for the  “fiasco” of the attorneys’ in his employ. The Court’s discussion of this issue was kilometric and complete with 2 page-full footnotes and citations of authorities. 

     But in the case of a lawyer who was implementing a lawful writ of execution and had received partial payment for the debts from someone who offered to pay the debts mentioned in the court decision, the SC did not cite any single authority except to say that the lawyer is liable for “technical extortion”.  But why so?  

         The court was mute.

         Not a single case was cited to support the position that a lawyer implementing a lawful writ can be subjected to technical extortion from losing litigants. And if my case is the first case, the Supreme Court would normally introduce the concept as being novel and first of its kind. But in the case of a senior partner who did not supervise his associate, the Court citations of authorities were kilometric. Atty. Inocentes di d not deserve to be admonished not because he was not part of this fiasco but because there was no fiasco. 

          The Court remains mute in the face of the challenge made by the author that it defines the term “extortion or technical extortion” and to find out if those crimes, (if there is such a crime of technical extortion) applies to a situation of lawyer who was implementing a court order to evict the defendant, Gliceria and any other persons claiming rights under her to vacate the premises in question for unpaid rents and to collect the unpaid rents there from, did so pursuant to such court order.

        Readers should take note too that Atty. Camano did not go to George or Elvira to collect the unpaid rents. The mother-son tandem had approached Atty. Camano after they were refused audience by Atty. Inocentes and offered to liquidate the unpaid rents of the apartment long vacated by Gliceria and subsequently occupied by George and Elvira after the deputy sheriff had served on them the notice to vacate the apartment. 

           In any adversarial legal contest, you do not surrender any of your legal position to the opponent without a fight. Atty. Inocentes, in the light of erroneous finding of the IBP that there was a “technical extortion” committed by one of his associates, could have argued first that there was none by adopting the very reasons Atty. Camano had advanced early in the stage of the proceedings before the IBP. Then he could have embellished his argument with the usual legal refrain: “assuming for the sake of argument that one of his associates has committed the heinous act of technical extortion”,  he should not be faulted for this “fiasco”. 

        The author finds it astonishing as well as perplexing that a lawyer seemed so pleased and overjoyed for being admonished by the Court for a “fiasco” that he has nothing to do about.

      There was some slant too in the way the IBP or the Supreme Court has alluded to the fact that the apartment complex in question were sequestered because they were owned by Mr. Marcos’ cronies and thus created already a bias that the lawyers were Marcos loyalists. The law office of Atty. Inocentes was not entirely the lawyer of the spouses as the law firm was virtually forced on the spouses by the Presidential Commission on Good Government (PCGG) because the one hundred or so tenants of the complex had taken advantage of the sequestration as an excuse not to pay the rentals. The PCCG had issued a memorandum to all the tenants in 1986 to remit their rentals to the PCGG but no one has complied with the memorandum.

            Paralyzed by the legal impasse, the PCGG has authorized the law firm of Atty. Inocentes allegedly as the lawyer of the spouses to eject the non-paying tenants and among those sued the following year after the sequestration was Gliceria Solatan, sister of complainant in the administrative case, George.

       Take note also that neither the IBP nor the Court has defined the meaning of extortion or the term  “technical extortion”. The IBP made a conclusion unsupported by the facts and the Supreme Court gobbled it up hook-line and sinker. 

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PROLOGUE, Chapter 1

        Inasmuch as this is my first attempt at book writing, the pressure to come up with something that will stand the test of the times was tremendously smothering; difficult as writer Clarence Day’s standard that good books outlast the monuments and civilizations built by men:  “still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men’s hearts as the hearts of men centuries dead.” This is a very difficult task indeed, but I take comfort in Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s counsel that the dullest author can write an interesting book by relating the events of his own life with honesty and not disguising the feelings that accompanied them.  To write about my life’s experience and be truthful about it, is a task I can do and that is not as formidable as I thought it was, but nonetheless, I forewarned the readers not to raise their expectation because this book is written bereft of any literary qualities of Shakespearean ostentation, this is rather a creation of a neophyte author who tried to be honest and fair.

 TITLE FOR THIS BOOK

          In choosing the appropriate title for this book, I twiddled between two choices:  “Censuring Back The Supreme Court”  and  “Termites from Within”  I cannot prefer one over the other, so I used one for a title and the other as a subtitle.

         Censuring Back the Supreme Court is appropriate for two reasons: Firstly, the Court has been noted for its institutional arrogance and peremptory censures of judges, lawyers and court employees based on the complaints of some well-meaning as well as not too-well-meaning complainants. I thought it is time now that the Supreme Court should receive the dose of its own medicine which for decades it has prudently or imprudently prescribed to all the people it may have considered its docile subjects and trivial chattels.  Secondly, it is time now to pierce the myth of the Supreme Court’s claim to monopoly of legal wisdom, prudence and moral superiority and the myth of it being untouchable and infallible. It is time now to censure the Supreme Court back which like the other two branches of the government had been contemptuous of the concepts of liberty and freedom and the principle of public accountability.

      “Termites from Within”   is also appropriate because our leaders behave like species of social insects that gnaw the very foundation of our democratic institutions; nibble our moral fiber and desecrate our freedom which our patriotic forefathers had sanctified with their blood. Centuries after we have gained our freedom from the Spaniards and decades after we have secured it from the Americans and the Japanese, our country remains poor, our economy in shambles, and our moral values shattered. President Manuel L. Quezon was prophetic enough when he said that he would rather see a nation run like hell by Filipinos than like heaven by the Americans. 

      The country is now run like hell by Filipinos. Should we rejoice about it now?

CHAPTER 1

                                 MY PRIVATE THOUGHTS

        In the Philippines, lawyers are being looked upon for some answer in the enigma and the idiosyncrasies of the political and economic life of the nation, and therefore, they become highly opinionated. I have my opinion of the state of the nation and our leaders but I considered it one of my private thoughts. I was not about to broadcast my private thoughts because I see no reason for a public discourse of my perception of what ails the country and curse the darkness where I could have lighted a candle. But that position has changed. Cursing the darkness so the people who hold the candle and the matchstick to light it, are actually prodded upon to light it could be as patriotic act as lighting a candle itself; and viewed from another perspective, this book could serve as my own lighted candle, and hope that it brings some light in the faded vision of our leaders and light their path in the arduous travel to seek prosperity for our nation and goodwill of all others. The corruption in the Supreme Court though, was foremost of all my private thoughts. 

RADIO INTERVIEW OF JUSTICE PADILLA

       In 1997, I was driving home after court trial one morning when I heard Ms. Korina Sanchez and then retiring Supreme Court Associate Justice Teodoro Padilla over ABS-CBN radio program. Asked about the index of corruption in the judiciary from level 1 to 10, Justice Padilla said level  7.

      Tumultuous uproar was heard from the judiciary after that interview and Justice Padilla had tried to back track from his assessment of the corruption in the judiciary.

        At another time, I heard Ms. Sanchez again with the good Justice and this time he said that when he had given the level of corruption in the judiciary, he was referring to the lower courts only. I told myself, he was right because the corruption in the Supreme Court was at level 10 already!   

           This was my private thought then and I wish I could make this private up to my grave. There is some hyperbolic nuance in this claim because only the laws of science and physics can make an attribute of absolute  quantification, but in an institution like the Supreme Court, there could be one or two magistrates who remain, despite the decay in our moral values, honorable and distinguished. The claim then that the SC is 100 per cent corrupt is only to emphasize the point that it is more corrupt than the lower courts and not the other way around, and therefore, it has lost its moral authority to censure or rebuke lower court judges, and I should add, the moral authority to censure most trial lawyers.

          “I have said in my motion for reconsideration that I have high respect of the Supreme Court, but somehow its four members were able to read through my pleadings that I have only contempt of its four members when I said that I was willing to be weighed in a moral scale with any one of them. I am not afraid to trade barbs with the Court if honor is the name of the game, for after all I have not held any position of power and therefore I am clean from the filth and slime of the back-door quid pro quo transactions of those who wield power.”  (p. 10).

Chapter Two
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PURSUIT OF INNER PEACE

         Court trial in Metro Manila is a time consuming endeavor. One would get up early in the morning to go to his court assignment and reach the court after one or three hours travel because of the traffic jam in the streets of Metro Manila. Though you wake up at five in the morning and be done with your morning ritual and breakfast at seven, your two hours or so travel barely makes you to the court which normally bangs its gavel at nine and closes the session hall at past twelve noon. Some predictable traffic snarl in most streets of Manila can lengthen your travel woes and either you were late or the judge was. You arrived panting and wheezing and the first thing you do was to look at a three-page calendar of cases for the day and find out that you were on the third page of the calendar. It takes about one and a half hours to call the cases in open court to find out which of those in the list were to proceed to trial. Most of the time, pyrotechnics erupt on preliminary issues between two lawyers, thus your waiting time could stretch to another hour. At 12:00 noon or at one o’clock in the afternoon either you were hungry or the judge was, and the court would adjourn. Most cases are re-scheduled for a couple of months or even three months. Courts in the Philippines do not hold afternoon session except for certain courts whose judges were too earnest to dispose of the backlogs in their courts. Afternoon is normally devoted to writing orders and decisions. A trial lawyer in the big cities like Metro Manila wasted most of his time commuting to the court then waiting for the clerk of court to wrap up the roll-call of his calendar. Of the three dozen of cases scheduled for the day, only about three cases would go to trial. You were extremely lucky if your case went to trial and saw some glimmer of a head start of a case that had been with the court for almost eternity; otherwise you would go back to your office ahead of other lawyers who felt more honorable because the day’s fee paid by the client is not lost as he has to slug it out in court with his equally gallant opponent lawyer. But if you were a very enterprising lawyer and had already predicted that there was a ninety per cent chance that your case would be rescheduled for another date, you can accept another assignment on the same date and time in a next door judge then shuffle yourself from one court room to another and be paid on both cases. But more often, a trial lawyer despite his seal to attend to a client’s case had to agree on postponement either suggested by the court or the adverse counsel for “lack of material time”. Thus in most occasions, you have to go back to your office feeling nauseated because you earned your day’s keep by postponing your case and while on your way back to your office you feel even more nauseated by the black smoke and carbon monoxide bellowing from raggedy and rickety buses, trucks and jeepneys that ply the streets of Metro Manila. You find sediment of this pollution even in the exhaust of your private air-conditioned car and you can only empathized with the plight of the people who ride those buses and the pedestrians on the streets that are assaulted daily by this black soot and poisonous gas because for long you have been one of them until you were able to afford your own private car, which oddly enough would not even protect you from this pollution.

 

      A Filipino trial lawyer would not have much time for reflection and to seek for inner meaning and peace. Most of his weekdays proved to be unproductive. At times that his cases were finally over and won them after long years of deep slumber in the courts, his gains were purely symbolic and pyrrhic.

 

 

     The problems in the streets of Metro Manila are duplicated in the court room where the lawyer used to argue his case. Traffic moves at a snail pace, and so is justice; streets are polluted, and so are some of court decisions.  In April 2000, I have migrated to the US and left my solo and comfortable law practice. I have simple needs and simple taste; no fancy cars, jewelries, and mansions, thus a dozen or so clients support my expenses and my wife worked as a nurse in the US even before the children and I have relocated to America. I have my private thought about leaving my law practice because I love the law and dread leaving it. I have wished that my private thought about my leaving the country to seek for some greener pasture and peace should remain private up to my grave until the Supreme Court censured me for allegedly “extorting”  an individual who failed to pay his apartment rentals, then I thought that this private thought should be made public too.  In my argument with the Supreme Court explaining that I was not guilty of  “technical extortion” I have added a footnote:

 

            I have mixed feelings when in year 2000 I have decided to migrate to the US to face an uncertain future. I love my profession and I love the law. I graduated from University of the Philippines, (UP) in 1978 and I believe I learned the law well and had made use of it honorably and decently. I learned it through hard work and countless hours of reading books from the UP Library at UP Law Center and from professors who have remained steadfast to the core values of honor, integrity and valor. I consider the law profession noble and I consider it as a battlefield; a ferocious, vicious and violent one, and I consider myself as a soldier. This battlefield is littered with lawyers, charlatans and scoundrels alike who wanted to get at each other’s throat everyday in the courtroom as well as in the corporate boardrooms. After 19 years of   “soldiering”, I thought it was time to quit the battlefield and seek for inner meaning and peace. But giving this battlefield up was not an easy task. I thought I can get away from this field so easily but I was wrong. The thought that if I were to leave I would have surrendered the battlefield to card-bearing scoundrels, distresses me no end. But nonetheless I left the Philippines. I quit the battlefield and I wept. Now I weep even more to know that even the once prestigious IBP has been invaded by scoundrels, scumbags and all. I have brought this agony and anguish upon myself to bear and blame no one else, for despite the grand claim of having known it all, I have miserably failed in learning one enduring core value: VALOR. Like a true soldier I should have not quit the battlefield. I should have died fighting.

 

September 12, 2005, Dearborn, MI. USA.

 

            In America, I was blessed with time to reflect. I have time to watch television documentaries and political and economic analysis of television hosts and their guest of experts. But like the television talk shows in the Philippines, the US television has it own share of garbage polluting the airwaves. I am not about to discuss this pollution. I have selectively chosen TV programs which were very enriching and informative. I have watched President Richard Nixon’s documentary and had sympathized with the man of enduring courage and wisdom. With all his fault and shortcomings, he had the wisdom and the courage to take the fall and sacrificed everything in the interest of the greater good, that of the Nation and the people by resigning the Presidency. Courage that we did not see from Mr. Marcos until the nation moved in on him in the streets of Mendiola and EDSA and courage we did not see from the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court when his integrity was placed in serious doubt so the Supreme Court can recover from whatever integrity left with it after cavorting with Mr. Marcos during those long martial law years. Courage we did not see from Mr. Estrada until few deaths littered the streets of Metro Manila and his cabinet secretaries had abandoned him solitarily in Malacanang Palace in 2001.

 

      I was amazed with Nixon’s fortitude to seek the  “peace at the center” and not to hate the people who have hated him. His philosophy could have been influenced by someone who walked this earth more than 2,000 years ago and who gave us the first enduring philosophy that we should turn our left cheek when our enemy hit us on the right cheek. The same enduring virtue Gandhi used in subduing the proud and almost invincible British Empire. It was the same philosophy that Senator Benigno      Aquino had tried to emulate before he was murdered in 1983 in an international airport in Manila, now named to honor him.

 

        Gandhi was willing to be bruised by the British soldiers without let up and without putting up a fight until the soldiers would lose their appetite to beat him up.    

         Senator Aquino was imprisoned by Mr. Marcos for 7 years and was sentenced to die by Mr. Marcos’  military tribunal but when he got the news that Mr. Marcos was ill, he hurried back home to talk some sense to the President to call for an election and transfer power to the civilian government instead of allowing a military junta to rule the country.

 

         In the Philippines I have no time to reflect. I was too busy trying to earn a living and reflection was a commodity I could not afford. When in court, most people you have met were very uninteresting people, who just like you, were simply trying to earn a livelihood and have no time for intellectual and philosophical discourse.          

             

         In separate occasions I have witnessed two lawyers while in Court suffered heart attack. One died in the courtroom and the other was partially paralyzed. The one who died was a total stranger to me and the one who was paralyzed was a lawyer of the Philippine National Railways whom I have met as an opposing counsel in a case. We ended up good friends after the case was terminated. The one who died was not fortunate enough to write about his trial experience in court, while my friend may not be  able to write as good as when he was healthy. I am more fortunate because God has given me time to reflect and to write.

              I am writing my reflections now though I have yet to attain my inner peace.     If I had my peace, I would have been tolerant of the foibles of the Supreme Court and the corruption of our government officials, but then I would have reneged from my civic duty to call the attention of the mighty that the nation suffers because of its misdeed.  A civic duty I have almost abdicated had not the Supreme Court and the IBP called me a despicable extortionist.

           It was farthest from my mind to indict the entire judicial system of which on few occasions has provided me with the opportunity to meet decent practitioners, judges and prosecutors.  The Supreme Court had virtually motivated me to exercise this civic duty and make this narrative possible.

              

          For almost 19 years as a trial attorney, and about three years as a corporate lawyer of a government-owned and controlled corporation, I have met honorable people who took pride in the ideals that they had been parts of a complex that dispenses justice to everyone.   I had agonized over the thought that my contrary perception about this complex could hurt these few good and upright people.

 

         I used to believe that whatever is the sad condition of the judiciary, there is always a silver lining in the horizon for its redemption. I used to tell my classmates who became judges later that I always see deliverance of the judiciary whenever I see my classmates in the bench. But this too was said in private occasions and gatherings among classmates. There were good judges and lawyers who did not graduate from UP and there were bad lawyers and judges who graduated from UP.

 

       Some of those who would agree with me would be quick to point out that I am one of these bad UP graduates. Atty. Vic Hipe would call this a  “factory-defect”, a description I could accept with a grain of salt even in the light of the record of the Supreme Court that I have been suspended from the practice of law for one year for  “technical extortion”.  I always maintained that I am not guilty of this misconduct and those who know how to read the records and evaluate the evidence can attest to this fact.

         I must be prepared too for the brickbats thrown on my way genially for after all this is a free country (or is it?) and everyone is entitled to voice out his opinion on the issue.

 

          But I did not draw the first blood.

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THE SINS OF THE SUPREME COURT

                                                         Chapter  2  

 

  “There have been instances when the Supreme Court has legitimized official action offensive to human rights and disruptive of Constitutionalism. Hence, as we await the  decision of the current Supreme Court on the constitutionality of the gag rule in Executive Order 464, and of Proclamation 1017 and the various official actions it occasioned, as  well as the uses of BP 880, it might be salutary to review how our Supreme Court has sometimes,  to our national regret, played around with sacred constitutional principles”.  (Fr. Joaquin Bernas, S.J.).  

      The sins of the Supreme Court are in the pages of its court register and the volumes of SCRA and run through the pages of Metro Manila newspapers and in the 2003 impeachment complaint  against the Chief Justice.   If one would think that not only once, but several times, the Supreme Court had been embroiled in scandals, then it must not be seen as a dispenser of censures but as a receiver; it must get the dosage of its own medicine and instead of dishing out censures and reprimands to lawyers, judges, sheriffs and judicial employees, it should be able to prescribe one for itself or the public must dish it out forthright to the court in return.   

      An accusation was made against the Supreme Court or its Chief Justice that it has illegally disbursed the Judicial Development Funds which was earmarked for the cost of living allowance of judicial employees. The accusation went on to say that judicial employees’ entitlement to P527 Million had not been paid. Funds for cost of living allowance were disbursed instead to renovate the Supreme Court Session Hall for P64 Million; Renovation of Baguio vacation houses for justices, their families and friends, P34 Million; construction of SC-CA Multipurpose Building, P100 Million; Acquisition of Luxury cars, P31 Million, and subsidy for the CA printing press, P5 Million. 

         The Supreme Court has a misplaced sense of values and priorities. Ordinary court employees who were reeling from the effect of the astronomical cost of living expenses throughout the country could hardly afford, let alone dream of a vacation, and yet the Court has spent, among others, the funds earmarked for them for the jurists’ luxury cars and vacation houses for their families and friends in Baguio City. 

        There was this not too recent bar scandal too where two associate justices got sacked because one had asked the other to work on the bar grader to adjust the grade of a candidate who happened to be the son of the other magistrate. 

       In another yet befuddling scandal, a jurist had conveniently retired from the Supreme Court to avoid further public scrutiny over a decision which was allegedly  “ghost-written” by the lawyer of a big telecommunication involved in the case before the court.

         But the most grievous sins of the Supreme Court were committed during the martial law years.  A chief justice ran errand for Imelda Marcos and held her umbrella so the First Lady would not be exposed to sunlight and ruin her flawless skin. 

        And on referendum cases, except for two of its members: Justices Claudio Tehankee and Calixto Zaldivar, most of its members considered the “Marcos constitution”  ratified by  “viva voce” in the barangay meetings held throughout the country in 1973.

           President Marcos was a brilliant and an astute politician. When he declared martial law on September 21, 1972, he immediately ordered the closure of Congress and the various mass media outlets and ordered the arrests of those whom he cannot control.  Mr. Marcos knew that he could not contain the irrepressible spirit of Senator Aquino, the oratories of Senators Tanada, Sumulong and Soc Rodrigo, and the depth and wit of Senators Jose W. Diokno, Jovito Salonga and Gerardo Roxas. 

           Mr. Marcos cannot use the carrots to silence Congress, thus, he used the stick and brute force to quell congress. The President cannot silence the press too with carrots so he used the stick instead. He ordered the closure of the Free Press Magazine by the Locsin’s and the Manila Times by the Roces family, Manila Chronicle by the Lopez’s as well as other media outlets. 

         Mr. Marcos did not touch the Supreme Court. He knew that these aging magistrates were pliant and malleable. He saw the Court as an effective ally who on subsequent years proved to be true as the Court had virtually pledged undying loyalty to the   President by ratifying his every act and giving him the authority to rule by Presidential Decrees when these decrees were challenged before the Court. Thus, it has clothed Mr. Marcos’ dictatorial regime with color of legitimacy and validity. Mr. Marcos must have used the carrots, or it was possible that the justices. intellectual predilections have perfectly dovetailed with Mr. Marcos’ agenda hence there was no need for the carrots.  But who knows?   As a newspaper columnist had aptly said during the bar re-grading scandal:  “If a member of the Court can do someone a favor for the sake of his own  “brethrens” in the bench, imagine what he can do for money?”

        During this re-grading bar scandal, a newspaper columnist wrote that of all the members of the Supreme Court, only one has the balls intact to speak about the truth and it was possessed uncharacteristically by a woman jurist. Obviously, he was referring to Justice Ameurfina Hererra who was instrumental in blowing off the lid wide open about the bar scandal.

      Justice Hererra must have been outraged by this dishonesty and she thought it unfair to her and others who have taken the bar exams without any illicit external aid from those who are supposed to fight against it. She was after the integrity of the process which her distinguished  “brethrens”  did not care so much about and they would wish to keep the scandal hidden from the public and sealed under the court’s well-manicured rugs.

             AQUINO V. ENRILE

                The discussion of the Supreme Court of the Aquino v. Enrile case went at length on the existence of the threat of subversion from both the Maoist New People’s Army and the secessionist Moro National Liberation Front from Mindanao, (MNLF). The threat from the NPA and the MNLF, however, can be  easily contained by the Army which remained loyal to the institution of the government. The deference the Court made to the President to declare martial law on account of his control of various agencies which monitored the activities of the  “enemies” of the state has blunted the Court’s right to inquire into whether such state of insurrection existed or not, and considered his determination of the state of emergency a political question therefore beyond the power of the court to inquire. Thus it has conveniently failed to inquire into the motives of the executive about those claims in the light of the fact that Mr. Marcos in 1973 can no longer run for President and even if he could, the faltering economy and the unpopularity of his government made the  “Boy Wonder” from Tarlac a shoo-in for the Presidency. Martial law was an excuse for perpetration to power and the Supreme Court was nothing more than a willing accomplice of the repression that follows. The Aquino case was a plethora of 448 pages of legal dissertations and historical events designed to distort the crucial period of our history itself. Those moments in our history where two political titans have tried to compete for one political firmament and one was about to outshine the other had not his opponent beckoned the institutions of power and used those institutions to outclass his competitor. But in the minds of the historians, and the generations to come who are willing to see through the fog of distortions made by the Court, Senator Aquino has outclassed his nemesis; he died a glorious death – his blood rekindles the Filipinos’ love for freedom, while his tormentor died a silent death, felled by sickness in a strange and far away soil. 

       Early in the game, the late Senator Jose W. Diokno, whose arrest was made on suspicion that he might join the  “rebellion”  had petitioned the Supreme Court for habeas corpus through his wife Carmen, but later he had withdrawn his petition and abandoned Senator Aquino, accused as a murderer and countless other prisoners who were considered participants in the rebellion because he had seen the Supreme Court neutered by Mr. Marcos’ power-grab and was rendered spineless by his shadows. He refused to join the masquerade firmed in his belief that the Supreme Court cannot perform its solemn duty to uphold the law and dispense justice for everyone.

         Incisively, Senator Diokno told the Court: “that the decision in this case by the Court, what ever it may be, will be cited in history books many, many years from now. And it will be quoted wherever lovers of freedom ask the question,  What did the Court do in that difficult hour?” 

            The nation knows the answer too well. Treason!

              “Thus the grievous treason and subversion committed against the motherland was perpetrated not by the murderous thugs and misguided elements of our society, but by the very people in the corridors of power, who paradoxically, were sworn to uphold the law and be the zealot guardians of its citadel”.  

        The termites of our society were having a field day.

                “The nation has not been forewarned of the Ides of March and even if she was, just like Julius Caesar, she too was helpless in the face of determined assassins’ intent to do her harm. So, in those dark years, she has not only been ravaged and plundered but her institutions had been defiled. The vicious dagger slid through her side and she was caught off-guard. The Brutus and the Cassius of our nation  were in place and hailed the tyranny in the name of liberty. The nation lay prostrate from economic  ruin but its linen soaked in blood of betrayal had overshadowed the  debauchery of its coffers, and as she  struggled to get up,  she caught a  glimmer  of an imposing structure lined with 12 people in fine judicial robes and in a faltering  voice she managed to whisper: Were you in it too?”

               We do not have the sage and the judicial temperament of US Supreme Court Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor who said: “A state of war is not a blank check for the President when it comes to the rights of the nation’s citizens.” 

        And as the magistrates retreat in their chambers and reflect on the fate of the nation or the plight of a convict facing the lethal injection, one could only wish that they suffer not from the maladies that seem to lurk and haunt every corner of the court’s expensively renovated halls.

Chapter Three

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PARALLEL IN OBSCENITIES

BOOK COVER

 

                 CHAPTER 5

                 PARALLELISM

       In 1969, my father, while working as a capataz was laid off from his job together with some 20 other  “plantilla”  employees when the new governor of the province of Camarines Sur took over.  For more than two years my father was out of job so we have to quit school. Atty. Vicente Bonot, ex-provincial board member took the cudgels for the employees and sued the provincial government and the governor and after more than 2 years of legal battle, the dismissed employees were ordered reinstated by then Court of First Instance Judge Ulpiano Sarmiento.  (Cledera vs. Sarmiento, 39 SCRA 552).

 

       The employees were paid their back wages.

                                             

       After my father got his job back, one of my brothers had refused to go back to school. I did not hesitate to go back to school. I persevered and I thought that whatever setback I have had in life, God must have willed it that way.  Instead, my resolve to pursue education became more intense.

 

       As I looked back in hindsight I could not help but ask what if at the time of my suspension from the practice of law I was still in the Philippines and my family was totally dependent on me for support? What if I did not allow my wife to work abroad and keep her around the house to attend to her children? Would my youngest girl who was in second year high school at the time of my suspension have the same mind set as my brother who refused to return to school because his classmates were gone and he would be the biggest boy in the class? I viewed this possibility with endless trepidation and I could have felt endless bitterness to see my daughter out of school because I did not have the money to send her to school.  It must have been providential that we settled far and beyond the reach of the most vindictive IBP and the most corrupt Supreme Court that could financially hurt my family.  

 

         But such distance, alas, provides only veneer protection from the venomous pillory and scurrilous libel spewed by the most high and mighty on your good name. It is still embarrassing for someone to note that he was suspended from the practice of law for technical extortion. The balm of clear conscience is not soothing enough to calm you down. While we were not financially hurt by my suspension,  it has ruined my honor in the eyes of the public and I have to clear that cloud by writing this book though I do not have to write a book to claim my honor before God.

          

          Other lawyers, judges and court employees not situated as I was, may not be able to fight back the vitriolic venom spewed by the Supreme Court on their honor least they lost their pensions and retirement benefits they may have including their license to practice law.  May this book provide them some comfort and strengthen their belief that our Supreme Court could be that vicious and savage behind those immaculate judicial robes.

        

        When my father was removed from his job, I was saddened because my brothers, sisters and I have to quit school.  I did not feel any bitterness or pain. But as a teenager, I always inquire why some people have so much power that they can use to devastate others. I see no difference between the Supreme Court and the Governor of our province who dismissed my father and others from their employment in 1969. But the governor and the provincial board did not have the final say. They were censured by the trial court and ordered them to reinstate the laid off employees.

  

         Where does one go if the Supreme Court becomes unjust? Or where its claim to institutional infallibility and sole seat of legal wisdom becomes pure arrogance and hypocrisy?

  

           I have no answer. I have to write so I can reach the readers and tell them about the Court’s arrogance and insensitivity and corruption too. The readers are common people whose thinking is pure and unadulterated. They were not schooled in the art of  “compromise”, “double-dealing” and “double-talk”, the higher forms of twisted dialectics which seem to be the hallmarks of the Supreme Court and our government leaders.

  

         Of the three branches of government, it is the Supreme Court which is in a very enviable position of power. Unlike the President and the members of Congress who have to seek the mandate from the people every six years, four or three years, the members of the Supreme Court have a life tenure and they continue to serve as members of the Court throughout their fruitful as well as fruitless lives and even if they misbehaved while in office.  The only way the people can boot out a corrupt jurist in office is if he resigns or retire from office in a huff or in a hush, or under Mr. Marcos, “arm-twist” them to resign.    If you try to impeach a jurist of the Supreme Court, he would throw every bag of tricks on your way to protect his employment and sometimes he would invoke a constitutional technicality if convenient.

  

          And despite of what Mr. Marcos had done to the country during the darkest years of his misrule, some people could not help but feel nostalgic about the initial martial law years when he had purged the misfits in the Courts and had dismantled the private armies of the provincial warlords.

 

        I called the accusation of IBP for “technical extortion” moronic and its lawyers possessed with picayune talents and the officialdom of the IBP corrupt because I treasure my honor and consider it sacred and I do not want someone to play with it.   If someone is called an “extortionist” and it is not true, one would understand the language I used in fighting off this libel.  I was like a wounded dog placed at the corner and nowhere to go except to fight back and I did.

 

         I had asked the Court to rescue me from this baseless accusation. It was strange that the Supreme Court considered it of no moment to read the records of the case in order to repute my arguments and had simply denied my motion for reconsideration in one sweep minute resolution. Then another minute resolution had denied my second motion for reconsideration.

  

          Suddenly it dawned on me that during its  “fund anomaly crisis”  in 2003, which had been a subject of an impeachment proceeding in Congress against Chief Justice Hilario Davide, Jr., himself, the IBP was one of loyal adherents which embraced the Supreme Court and tried to shield it from attacks from some idealist members of Congress.

 

         The Court was comfortable in hiding behind the issue that  “no impeachment proceedings against a member of the judiciary can be filed twice in one year” instead of accepting the challenge made by its accusers and prove them wrong.  It was very ironic that inasmuch as you have already been previously questioned of wrongdoing, such would provide you immunity from being questioned for another wrongdoing. While I can understand this principle if it involves ordinary mortals who could be ruined by repetitive malicious prosecutions, the Supreme Court holds an awesome power not possessed by these mortals to have seen it fit to hide behind this doctrinal coattails.

  

        At the height of this “fund scandal”  I was in America. I was not one of the apologists of the Supreme Court like the IBP.  There was no rhyme or reason for the Supreme Court to rescue me and trash the IBP.

  

          Again, the Supreme Court was playing true to form: “returning someone a favor at the expense of the truth.”