Are Filipinos Worth Dying For?

        Corazon C. Aquino is dead and so was Senator Benigno Aquino, Jr.,  while we remain alive and myopic of their sacrifice and missed the golden opportunity to draw strength from their death. We remain fractious, divided, immature and greedy and offered cypress leaves to honor their graves instead of living out the ideals of their dreams and a vision for a prosperous country.  Alas, we have chosen to live a meaningless life than seek a glorious death.  In ‘Termites from Within’,  I wrote: 

      “One of 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 had landed, his military escorts shot him at the back of his head,  few stair steps before his tired and weary feet longing for home touch the drab and irreverent dusty tarmac.

           A commission was formed headed by SC Justice Enrique Fernando,  to investigate the murder of Senator Aquino but due to the intense criticism from the public, he,  being identified as a Marcos lackey and an Imelda errand boy, the commission was disbanded, and its place another commission headed by Corazon Agrava was formed.  The Commission concluded in the minority report that was  submitted by Ms. Agrava to Mr. Marcos that it was the lone gunman,  Mr. Rolando Galman who killed Senator Aquino.  The majority report which was also submitted to Mr. Marcos found that it was his 26 military escorts that had conspired to kill him.

   A case for double-murder was filed against all the 26 military escorts in 1985  but they were all acquitted by the Sandiganbayan.   After Mr. 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 SC  which had been subservient to Mr. Marcos had found its  spine back under Cory’s  skirt of newfound freedom.

  The mastermind was never known, but the people had the right suspect in their collective minds. Before Marcos was forced out of power by the EDSA Revolution in 1986, he has called for a snap Presidential election. He was pitted against Senator Aquino’s widow, Cory, a nickname she was fondly called by her supporters.  She was backed up by the powerful Catholic Church under Cardinal Jaime Sin. After the nation has voted, both had claimed victory. Marcos was declared the winner by the Batasang Pambansa while Cory was declared the winner by the tumultuous crowds on the streets of Metro Manila. While the nation was polarized,  ambitious members of the Reform the Armed Forces Movement under Gregorio Honasan tried to stage a coup. One of his underlings spilled the beans over to Mrs. Marcos. She wanted to preempt the coup by looking for its most likely patron, Secretary of Defense Juan Ponce Enrile who, meanwhile, had talked with PNP Chief Fidel Ramos into staging a mutiny at Camp Crame at EDSA. Cardinal Sin called on the faithful to go to EDSA and lend support to the mutineers. It was during this time that Secretary Enrile when interviewed by the media said that Cory was robbed of her victory as President of the Republic because of the massive cheating during the snap presidential election. Cory meantime was in the Visayas under the care of some catholic nuns. Civilian protesters shouting  “Cory, Cory” along EDSA  had paralyzed Metro Manila while in the provinces people were glued to their televisions or their radios waiting with bated breath of what could happen with massive civilian protesters confronting military tanks and armed soldiers of the Marcos government in the streets of Manila.

 Time Magazine writer Pico Iyer wrote on January 5, 1987:

 Finally, the improbable became the impossible. Marcos’ tanks rolled toward the crowds, only to be stopped by nuns kneeling in their path, saying the rosary. Old women went up to gun-toting marines and  disarmed them with motherly hugs. Little girls offered their flowers to hardened combat veterans. In the face of such quiet heroism, thousands of Marcos loyalists defected; many simply broke down in tears.”

 The nation had a sigh of relief when Mr. Marcos, his family and cronies fled to Hawaii on February 26, 1986. Cory said after Marcos had fled the country that paved the way for her own rule over a very fractious society:

 “We have achieved our freedom with courage and determination, and most important, in peace. A new life starts for our country tomorrow. A life filled with hope and, I believe, a life that will be blessed with peace and progress.”

     Peace and progress that proved to be elusive as her six year term as President had been plagued by a series of military mutinies which had been staged by military personnel who had been sidelined from their previous lucrative assignments and have lost the their lifestyles under Marcos. These coup attempts had sent the economy in yet another tailspin.

       The nation was hopeful that the country would have moved towards economic prosperity under Cory because she owed no one political debts to pay. She was catapulted to power by the people and only the people she must listen to. But the adventurous  segment of the military had denied our nation the opportunity to achieve stability, progress and peace.

         Cory should have taken power as a popularly elected president of the Republic but the ambitious military who would like to be seen as part of Cory’s triumph would like her to serve as a President of a provisional government. Either as a provisional president or a regularly elected eleventh President of the Republic, Cory was sworn nonetheless as President by the Justice of the Supreme Court.

          The military mutineers were seen by some of us as heroes of EDSA while others saw them the way they should be seen: “plain opportunists.”  These personalities were martial law architects and implementers for 12 years who have seen the upsurge of civilian support for Cory and had decided to abandon their commander-in-chief in a fast sinking ship.

      Instead of looking at these coup plotters as villains we see them as the saviors of the Republic. We elected some of them to high government positions and they continue to derive benefits from the very institutions they had subverted in favor of a Marcos one-man rule and from the institutions they tried to subvert in favor of a military junta.  On the other hand, the coup plotters against Cory were punished with ten push-ups by her Chief of Staff, Fidel Ramos and some of those prominent coup plotters found their way back in the corridors of power as senators or as  executives of lucrative government corporations.

        The perception that most of those in power were guilty one way or another of subverting our democratic institutions had prevented us from imposing the full measure of punishment to those who openly committed acts of treason and subversion against the republic. To our minds, only the members of the New People’s Army, the members of the Moro National Liberation Front and the members of other left-leaning groups deserved to be punished by death or by outright execution. The most sinister plotters that had destabilized the nation and ruin our economy and the raiders and plunderers of our treasury do not deserve the kind of punishment meted out to other subversive elements of our society when in matters of degree, the latter wrongdoers have wrought more havoc and destructions to our motherland. This is the reason why after Mr. Marcos and his family had fled to Hawaii in 1986 and most of his kins and his retinue of crony capitalists had come back, we have yet to see them go to jail.

      Filipinos have short term memory and a very forgiving race. We do not know exactly whether these qualities underpin our vice or our strength as a nation.  But as of now, I am still muted if indeed, we are all worth dying for.  (amendment to “Termites  From Within”)

 

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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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A Simple Credibility Problem for the Court

        The Court of Appeal’s  sideshow of promoting the three lady justices who acquitted Lance Cpl. Smith as beacons of probity and wisdom foreshadows a greater malaise all known too well to the public.   The presumption of regularity of performance of official duties is no longer true.  The presumption now is that government function has been discharged irregularly.    Thus the desperate but concerted efforts to portray these woman jurists as the epitome of integrity and probity was meant to address that overturned presumption of regularity.  Their plaques of citations and honors received in the past, come handy to drill into the minds and hearts of the public that their latest judicial act was judicious, prudent and had served the ends of justice.

        What prevented the CA from rendering a decision forthright and without the accompaniment of these  decorative “halos”  of integrity plastered all over the head of its jurists?  One explanation is that this Court has just been reeling from the effects of some of its “distinguished members” being axed for misconduct by another tier of a Court which is neither known for good conduct.  Mr. Marcos has his chest fully covered with medals of honor and bravery,  but the people, except perhaps the Ilocanos and some few percentage of the entire population, would still consider him a “scoundrel”.    So what has that to say about those citations of our “distinguished lady jurists?”   Does that make them prudent and clothe their decision with extravagant wisdom?  No, sir! -  It has nothing to do at all with probity and wisdom.  It has something to do with addressing its own eroded credibility.

          For his brusque conduct, Mr. Smith has been pilloried as a rapist, momentarily detained at the decrepit and stinky Makati jail, and was then transferred to a more human environment at the Rowe Security Building inside the U.S. Embassy at Roxas Boulevard only to be acquitted afterwards.

      Put yourself in the shoes of Mr. Smith and ask yourself:  “Does that look like justice having been served?”  Damage has already been inflicted against Mr. Smith.

        The way we manipulate our judicial system and subject it to public pressure is destructive of a constitutional government and that is the downside.  The upside is, our judicial officials are now sensitive to public opinion.  It is time now that we educate the public and elevate their consciousness to a level where they can approximate what justice is all about.

          In my most warp sense of justice, I cheer for Nicole.  She won her case.  She got her visa and her money through the efforts of the  public in drumbeating her one-night stand that has gone haywire.  It is unfortunate that the “orphans” she had left, have to bellyache still in the streets of Manila, in the airwaves and in the tubes, in the pages of MSM and the blogsphere with the same passion this case has generated the first time this prurient episode had hit the headlines in 2005.  

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The Police Must Keept Its Mouth Shut!

Mr. Ted Failon, being administered with cast to determine gunpowder residue (photo from yahoo news)

Trina, 45, Ted Failon’s wife is dead. Doctors  at New  Era Hospital in Quezon City pronounced her dead at 8:50 p.m. Thursday.  It is tragic but the drama that unfolds after the shooting was even more tragic.

The day that Ms. Trina was shot, police elements and media people were swarming like bees that descended upon the elegant home of the Failons in one plush subdivision in Quezon  and mistaking it  for a moment for a shrubbery of highly pollinated nectar that matches only the stature of the ABS-CBN TV-anchor, Mr. Ted Failon.

Government officials, politicians and even the  chief lawyer of a government office  mandated to aid the  “indigents” had tried to compete for the inebriating appeal of the tubes and the airwaves. In the latter case, you can ask in disbelief if Mr. Failon is an indigent.

 The effort to get into the hub of the orchard they thought rich of enervating syrup that could last them one summer had spilled over into the police precinct and hospital premises.  Not content with the initial investigation of Mr. Failon at the police precinct  after the shooting,  police operatives swarmed back at his house and had arrested his household helps and his driver, and then made one swoop at the hospital to arrest Trina’s brother.

There is nothing wrong with the effort to arrest persons the police  had suspected to be obstructing justice but these law enforcers  must do so with the least possible pomp and rudeness  in the light of the request of the Failons to respect their grief and in the case of the hospital arrest,  to be considerate over a brother’s anguished at  his sister’s fate. However, the police could care less on the sensitivity of the grieving family;  it must discharge its “duties”  regardless of the person’s stature,  may he be a TV personality of nationwide renown,  or   the quintessential “grease man“ on the street.  Does it  really want the public to believe in this?

Badgered by the media which wanted a minute-by-minute account of the ongoing investigation, the police had willingly obliged by announcing  that Mr. Failon was negative of nitrate reactant, ( no gunpowder residue found on his arms), and so was Trina.  But the police had continued to highlight its own suspicion of Mr. Failon by announcing that  the findings do not indicate that he did not fire any firearm but it would not highlight  the same observation  in the case of Trina.

If you parse the police  announcement, it is possible that Trina had fired  the gun and yet no gunpowder residue was found. The next malice was the eagerness of the police to announce that there was no “tattooing” on Trina’s skin.  Tattooing is the markings on the skin  surrounding the bullet’s entry point to indicate that the nozzle of the gun was fired about  few inches from the head to sustain the “suicide theory”, but the police did not account for the fact that the deceased was a woman with thick  bundle of  hair  that could effectively have prevented the smudging on her skin.  And the “sorry note” by the victim was not actually a “suicide note”.   You can already sense the bias in the investigation.

The police had continued entertaining the public with another angle to sustain a “foul-play” theory.  The rounding-up of the household help and the driver, (despite their lawyer’s plea for a warrant and a need of her assistance),  and  the arrest of Trina’s sister, Pamela Arteche,  was premised for their having “conspiratorially tampered with the “crime scene”.  The announcement that it was a “crime scene” is conclusionary.  It gives you an idea already that a crime was committed and the people they had arrested had tampered with the evidence of the crime.  The “suicide” theory has been downplayed.

The innocent explanation of the household was that the clean-up was made to shelter the 12 year old daughter of Trina and Ted of a possible trauma of finding blood all over the bathroom.  The clean-up of the vehicle was almost natural to even ascribe ill motive over such action.  The blood in the car was in no way determinative of who could have shot Trina and therefore no longer part of the scenario that could sustain a theory of “evidence tampering”,  but you would be amazed to note that the clean-up of the blood in the bathroom and the car were being drum-beaten as consistent acts to tamper with the evidence.

The police may entertain various theories on the tragic shooting to death of Trina  on April 15,  or it may even implicate Mr. Failon, but it must do so only after a  careful sleuthing of the bits and pieces of information and physical evidence that are logical and sensible.  It being badgered by the media to come up with some conclusion on the case does not entitle it “ to shoot from the hip”,  for one’s liberty hinges upon it,  it is horrible that the police is playing with it.

My take is that the police must continue to investigate the case until it can come up with the most  logical explanation as to who shot who. Meanwhile, it can shut  up and refrain from feeding the media with some malicious and sleazy innuendos.

 

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Justice for Lance Cpl. Smith

 Ms. Nicole had vanished into the dead of the night.  She has left a conundrum of orphans and a lot of far more troubling questions.  Was she a victim or a victimizer?  Why did the poster girl of  Gabriela and Bagong Alyansang Makabayan go as to even render yet another  unlikely orphan, the venerable old man, Senator Jovito Salonga? But in the wake of her disappearance she has left a trail of what could have really happened on November 1, 2005.   Her previous statement which provided the basis to charge five people with rape was whittled down to one, Lance Cpl. Smith  by Hon. Judge Bejamin T. Pozon in a decision on December 4, 2006.  Her latest statement provided us  another yet troubling aspect of what  really could have happened on that night of the day of the dead.  From five people whom she has claimed previously to have conspired to bang her inside  a Starex van,  she says now that there was none, and   the intimate liaison between her and Mr. Smith, the accused detained in a comfortable U.S. embassy premises in Roxas Boulevard, “could have been consensual”.

Can the same group who rallied behind Nicole on a paramount issue of justice take the cudgels for Smith now for the same reason?  Or are we programmed only to see ourselves as victims and never as abusers?

Don’t call me heartless and callous.  I have two daughters.  In 1993, Mayor Sanchez  raped and killed a college coed and her beau. My youngest daughter then was in the kindergarten, the other was third year high school.  In one post  I said:

      “ I was already a lawyer when Aillen Sarmenta and Allan Gomez were murdered, the former after being gang-raped. I have two young daughters then, tears flowing from my eyes after reading the newspaper account of the bestiality committed on Aillen and her plea for life after she was ravished had fallen on deaf ears. I have chill all over my spine.  I  have to close the door in my room, my two daughters were in school and I wept”.

 My youngest daughter is going 20 and here she is singing:

 

 

Given the unfolding drama that continues to fixate the entire nation, I would still be cheering for Nicole.  Unlike some young women who are better situated,  Ms. Nicole has  limited options but the route she has taken is the best for her though her own private sense of justice has trampled upon another sense of justice, that of Lance Cpl. Smith. 

Meanwhile the drama continues to unfold both on and off-court. Expect  a sequel in this spicy episode. 

 

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The Electroral Process RP Should Envy

There is something that the Philippines should envy about the election process in the U.S. For my entire life I have just voted twice. The first time was in 1975 when Senator Ninoy Aquino ran against Imelda Marcos and her ticket for the Batasang Pambansa. I voted for Ninoy but he was cheated out of his victory. I have never voted in any election then.

The second time was in the U.S. Presidential election this Tuesday, November 4, 2008. The line in the polling precinct where I voted was about 20 meters long, but the process was orderly. You can vote by party affiliation by blackening the oblong in the ballot box or you can mix and match your choice by blackening an oblong opposite the candidate name.

If you opt for block voting, you have to darken only one oblong and all the candidates of the party are voted for from President, Vice President, Senators and Congressmen.

Next you are required to vote for non-patisan candidates like State Supreme Court Justices, District Court Judges and even School Board Officials.

In Michigan, the ballot also carries a referendum on legalizing marijuana production for medical use and another referendum on “embryonic cell research”.

After filling up your ballot you insert it into a machine where it is being scanned and tabulated while pushing your ballot inside the machine.

Few hours after closing you know who wins the election and you find the losing candidate conceding his defeat.

The U.S. is composed of 50 States but she can manage the elections so smoothly. Though there was that famous “hanging chad” controversy in Florida that glued the entire nation on the outcome of the election in 2004, but such was resolved in few days.  This year’s election was model in its orderliness.. The Philippines land mass is less than that of California and I could venture that it has more electorate than the Philippines but our canvass would last for three weeks to two months, and the nation hold her breath for the outcome, which more often is incredible to say the least.

State SC Justices and district court judges have tenure and have be to voted upon by the electorate. This way, these Justices cannot abuse their authority because they can be voted out of office in 4 years.

The Philippines can copy the U.S. experience if we really want to strengthen our institutions and free ourselves from the manipulation of our politicians and their corrupt cohorts.

Why I Am Voting for Mccain-Palin!

The Republican Party has already conceded Michigan to the Democrat Obama/Biden but I am still voting for  Mccain and Palin because I found Obama a phony and Biden a “trapo”.

Here is my objection to Obama, please click these links:

 

 
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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.

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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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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