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.

WHY ARE PINOYS SO STRESSED OUT!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

September 22, 2008
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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 TO MUTILATE A COUNTRY

     

PHOTO FROM MANUEL L. QUEZON III BLOG

The Philippine archipelago is comprised of the territory “ceded” by the Spain to US in the treaty of Paris of December 10, 1898. In the treaty, these territories are described as follows:

 

“A line running from west to east along or near the twentieth parallel of north latitude, and through the middle of the navigable channel of Bachi, from the one hundred and eighteenth (118th) to the one hundred and twenty-seventh (127th) degree meridian of longitude east of Greenwich, thence along the one hundred and twenty seventh (127th) degree meridian of longitude east of Greenwich to the parallel of four degrees and forty five minutes (4 [degree symbol] 45′]) north latitude, thence along the parallel of four degrees and forty five minutes (4 [degree symbol] 45′) north latitude to its intersection with the meridian of longitude one hundred and nineteen degrees and thirty five minutes (119 [degree symbol] 35′) east of Greenwich, thence along the meridian of longitude one hundred and nineteen degrees and thirty five minutes (119 [degree symbol] 35′) east of Greenwich to the parallel of latitude seven degrees and forty minutes (7 [degree symbol] 40′) north, thence along the parallel of latitude of seven degrees and forty minutes (7 [degree symbol] 40′) north to its intersection with the one hundred and sixteenth (116th) degree meridian of longitude east of Greenwich, thence by a direct line to the intersection of the tenth (10th) degree parallel of north latitude with the one hundred and eighteenth (118th) degree meridian of longitude east of Greenwich, and thence along the one hundred and eighteenth (118th) degree meridian of longitude east of Greenwich to the point of beginning.The United States will pay to Spain the sum of twenty million dollars ($20,000,000) within three months after the exchange of the ratifications of the present treaty.”  (Article III, Treaty of Paris).  “The Philippines comprises all the territory ceded to the United States by the Treaty of Paris concluded between the United States and Spain on the tenth day of December, eighteen hundred and ninety-eight, the limits which are set forth in Article III of said treaty, together with all the islands embraced in the treaty concluded at Washington between the United States and Spain on the seventh day of November, nineteen hundred, and the treaty concluded between the United States and Great Britain on the second day of January, nineteen hundred and thirty, and all territory over which the present Government of the Philippine Islands exercises jurisdiction.”

 

       The 1973 and 1987 Constitutions define Philippine territory as follows:

 

       “The national territory comprises the Philippine archipelago, with all the islands and waters embraced therein, and all the other territories belonging to the Philippines by historic or legal title, including the territorial sea, the air space, the subsoil, the sea-bed, the insular shelves, and the submarine areas over which the Philippines has sovereignty or jurisdiction. The waters around, between, and connecting the islands of the archipelago, irrespective of their breadth and dimensions, form part of the internal waters of the Philippines.”

1898, DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE

 

         We as laymen, come to know our territories as the main islands of Luzon, Visayas and Mindanao comprising of some 7,107 islands.

 

        We did not agree that our country was ceded by Spain to the US on December 10, 1898 because we have become independent 6 months before that when Emilio Aguinaldo declared Philippine independence on June 12, 1898. This is the reason why we continue to celebrate our independence day on this date and not July 4, as we previously did.

 

        From the time of the revolutionary government of Aguinaldo up to the present time, we have exercised sovereignty over the island of Mindanao. Mindanao had recognized our government when its tribal chieftains have run for public office and had pledged allegiance to the Philippine flag.

 

     Later, when Malaysian and Indonesian influence on the minority Muslim in Mindanao, created a vibrant religion that proselytized most of the Mindanao inhabitants, certain chieftains of the island would like to establish a Republic of Mindanao. The rise of Muslim extremists of the Al Queda type found surrogates in the Muslim inhabitants in this island. The issue of the island being neglected by the central government in Manila and the poverty level of the people in this island were used to drumbeat the need for a “Mindanao Republic”. This aspiration culminated in rise of the MNLF and MILF, or even the brigand group of Abbu Sayaff, whose chief objective is to finally establish a separate Republic of Mindanao.

 

       ARMM is the political aspect of this struggle. The peace process between the MILF or MNLF and the Government, while it is  being undertaken by the government to address and appease the grievances of the people of Mindanao, is from MILF’s or MNLF’s standpoint  a strategic struggle to establish a Mindanao Republic. 

 

        It was to the credit of some of our people who see the bigger picture that the ARMM elections and “peace negotiations” between the MILF/MNLF and the government were being used only to negotiate for time, just enough time, when these group of armed militias have all the strength and resources to wave their own flag in the island and declare the “State of Mindanao” and drive away all the Christians in the island.  

 

        Just like the “peace negotiation” the government has with the NPA, it is being undertaken only to negotiate for time before the eventual kill.  Whoever thinks that the MILF/MNLF and the NPA have the desire for peace is a real dreamer. All these groups want is power and the subjugation of people who do not think just like them.

 

       Great nations would desire for more territories, while we parcel out our own under the guise of promoting peace.  We have already abdicated our rights over part of North Borneo (Sabah) during Marcos time. We are abdicating our territorial rights now over Spratlys.  We are about to abdicate our territorial rights over Mindanao. 

 

       And some of us see nothing wrong with the way we mutilate our sovereignty and national territory.  We lack the concept of nationhood and the candidness to tell our brother Muslims that the concept of one nation and one flag transcends the parochial concerns of tribalism and wardlordism. 

 
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      The 1935 Constitution in defining the territory of the Philippines provides in Article 1: